By Jim Steele
Peak of the Atlantic hurricane season occurs between mid-August and mid-October. Christopher Landsea is Chief of the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch at the National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center. In May 2022 he informed us there is no upward trend in hurricanes and calmly states “we cannot yet say with confidence whether there is any detectable human influence on past Atlantic hurricane activity, and this is particularly the case for any greenhouse gas-induced changes.”
Nonetheless, click-bait media typically denies expert science, ranting the opposite like the Washington Post’s How Climate Change is Rapidly Fueling Super Hurricanes.
In 2005, Landsea left the IPCC protesting agiast alarmist scientists like Kevin Trenberth who were dishonestly hijacking the narrative. Landsea wrote, “It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming.”
Landsea’s expertise helped convert Dr. Judith Curry. She had testified to Congress in 2006 that the only reason for any debate was due to “influence of global warming deniers, consisting of a small group of scientists.” But Landsea’s expertise soon convinced Curry that the science is more complex, and constructive skepticism is a mainstay of the scientific method. But, instead of applauding Curry for exemplifying what makes science great, Scientific American tried to squash any debate, vilifying her with the article Climate Heretic: Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues.
Alarmists admit there’s no upward trend in hurricane frequency but argue that greenhouse gases are causing more extreme category 4 and 5 hurricanes. However, any examination of the path where hurricanes intensify, begs the question: if a warming ocean drives more intense hurricanes, why are most hurricanes low intensity tropical storms while over warm tropical surface waters, but intensify as they migrate northward to cooler surface waters?
Below is a map showing how Hurricane Ian’s stint with a category 4 intensity was uncommon, short lived and happened in only one small location.
The major dynamic behind this paradoxical behavior is the formation of barrier layers. Barrier layers form when lighter fresh water sits above warmer dense salty water. The fresh water prevents the warmer water from convecting to the surface to ventilate. That behavior is the basis for science of solar ponds, as seen in the illustration on the right. Strong salinity gradients can raise subsurface water by as much as 60C warmer than the surface.
Hurricanes and typhoons pull cold deep water to the surface preventing the hurricane from intensifying further. However, where barrier layers exist, that dynamic is thwarted, and its stored heat instead intensifies the hurricane. A 2023 peer-reviewed paper has shown that a freshwater plume from the Mississippi River created a barrier layer in the Gulf, causing Hurricane Sally to briefly intensify from a weaker storm into a category 2 hurricane before hitting Alabama.
For more detail on barrier layer formation:
Read: Science of Solar Ponds Challenges the Climate Crisis
https://perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-science-of-solar-ponds-challenges.html
or watch Jim Steele’s presentation The Science of Solar ponds on our ClimateTV page.
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Christopher Landsea has the most appropriate name for a hurricane specialist.
If WaPo was right, then hurricane ACE would have increased. It hasn’t.
If WaPo was right, then tornados >EF2 would have also increased. They haven’t. And the past increase in recorded EF1-2 is purely due to the development and deployment of Doppler weather radar more capable of ‘seeing’ them.
WaPo’s masthead motto is “Democracy dies in darkness.” WaPo provides the darkness.
Hurricane numbers before satellites, ie 1960, can’t be compared with since then.
Landfalling hurricanes and tropical storms can be directly compared.
And while we will never know about any storms that formed out over open water and were never observed, prior to the satellite era, we can make some inferences, such as that we can notice more of them now than then.
On top of all of that, the Carribean and Gulf Coasts and the East Coast have continuous habitation going back many hundreds of years, and bad storms were made note of.
From all of this we know a few things, such as that places like New England, and New York, and much of Florida, have been very lucky in recent decades, because just the ones we know about mean they occurred more frequently at various intervals of the past.
So even though there are hundreds of years of records of hurricanes hitting everywhere from Texas to Mass., whenever one hits anyplace in recent years, it is screeched to be proof of “climate havoc”, or whatever the latest scary name for weather is, and taken to be of course the fault of humans burning CO2.
WaPo’s masthead motto is “Democracy dies in darkness.” WaPo provides the darkness.
+42
How recently has WaPo claimed an increase in number of tornadoes, especially ones F2/EF2 and stronger?
Thanks, Jim. I will be in Key West mid-August on vacation, I’ll let you know what happens.
Enjoy the Conch Republic. Key West is a fun place, and spiny lobsters will be in season. The South Florida mini preseason is next week July 28-29.
Hurricanes were stronger in the Little Ice Age cool period than in the Modern warm period.
Sediments, as studied back 5000 years in Belize, historical records, such as damage reports on land and ships’ logs, show a colder world is stormier.
https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-902/#:~:text=Midlatitude%20Little%20Ice%20Age%20(LIA,modern%20records%20began%20in%201851.
This study is still under review so might run afoul of the thought police.
Hang on, you mean it’s not “settled”? /sarc..
Then there are other variables like wind shear. Given that we’re in El Niño now, I would expect more of that and more “fish storms” this season- in the Atlantic basin. In the eastern Pacific, expect it to be more active.
NHC says conditions for present tropical waves 1 and 2 development are negative because of windshear.
But Landsea’s expertise soon convinced Curry that the science is more complex, and constructive skepticism is a mainstay of the scientific method.
nope.
his expertise didnt convince her
and
skepticism is a TOOL not a mainstay
if skepticism was a Mainstay youd be skeptical of skepticism
Got to agree with Mosh here. We were all around in 2008 during Curry’s steady move away from the “Team”.
McIntyre likely had a lot more to do with it than Landsea.
I believe this is Dr. Curry’s first comment on ClimateAudit.org, before she ever met McIntyre.
https://climateaudit.org/2008/02/06/off-to-georgia-tech/#comment-135428
That was way back when Mosher knew how to punctuate and capitalize. But he was still just as full of himself.
That follow-on comment from Mosh is truly DERANGED and incoherent…. full of errors and mostly BS. !
He hasn’t changed at all.
It signifies that brain damage gets worse over time.
Just based on observation I conclude that “himself” must be a synonym for what hits the fan.
In a subsequent post in that thread, she said:
“For the record, all scientists are skeptics, that is how science moves forward. no one can get a paper published that says i agree with everything somebody else already did.”
Oh my, how time have changed! 🙁
So now I know where Fauci got his “THE SCIENCE” BS.
Curry used that phrase several times in that post. The only thing that made her seem the least bit reasonable was her use of skeptic instead of denier.
Her more recent stuff leans towards real science, but she never got all the way there IMO. Her climate science roots show through.
Once we get to where these people don’t use “climate” science as something special and just speak of science, and proofs and data, not “their” science and models, then there might be progress.
I especially like that the whole post was essentially an apology to her “friends” in CLIMATE SCIENCE for daring to let TRUE SCIENCE to taint their students with facts.
At https://skepticalscience.com/ I noticed that their motto is: “This website gets skeptical about global warming “skepticism”.”
So, I asked, “is it also OK to be skeptical of those who are skeptical about global warming skepticism???” That comment was not appreciated and they warned me that any more comments like that and I’d be locked out. Hypocrisy!
Given that none of us can say what and who were the most convincing arguments that converted Curry, it is really an irrelevant argument. I attributed much to Landsea simply because Curry engaged with Landsea at the time and was criticized by some for doing so.
My main points were simply that experts like Landsea were expert skeptics that alarmists tried counteract and that Curry deserves much props for engaging in discussions from all perspectives!
As to Mosher’s comment that “skepticism is not a Mainstay because youd be skeptical of skepticism”, he is just wrong! Skepticism does not mean you are skeptical of the value of the intellectual discipline of examining and challenging all arguments. Skepticism simply means you question all arguments and identify blind assumptions!
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. — Richard Feynman
Skepticism is THE bedrock of the scientific method.
More than just the scientific method, especially in the internet era. Wrote a whole ebook about critical thinking and skepticism—The Arts of Truth, published late 2012. Even the book title is a deception, because the hundred of illustrated examples in varying conceptual categories are all artful untruths.
OTOH, nothing really new. Mark Twain wisely said over a century ago, “If you don’t read the newspapers, you are uninformed. If you do, you are misinformed.”
“Skepticism is THE bedrock of the scientific method.“
Don’t expect Mosh to understand that comment.
Unthinking, irrational belief… which is what “climate change™” is based on…
… is NOT science of any sort.
Isn’t that the reason hypotheses need to be tested and verified by empirical evidence rather than just accepted? The climate liars believe that the data must be tortured to fit the hypothesis, which is the antithesis of the scientific method.
Feynman said that if your theory doesn’t match the data, you need a better theory.
Climate alarmists say that if your theory doesn’t match the data, you need better data.
I’ve been skeptical of the claims of climate alarmists that respect skepticism.
Well, I am, and it appears that you are also.
The vast majority of the hurricanes that occur, happen long after the water temps have begun to cool.
In fact there are more hurricanes in October than in July, and rarely during June does one form.
The peak of the season is the first week of September, and it is not until mid-August that there is a very high chance of a hurricane forming in the Atlantic basin.
Also, warm el nino years are notable for having far lower tropical activity than cooler la nina years.
Warm ocean surface temps are considered a requirement for hurricanes, but there are numerous factors that are more important.
And some contradictory evidence, such as the fact that tropical systems have formed in the Atlantic basin during every month of the year. They are just far more common during “hurricane season”.
And the vast majority of storms do not coincide whatsoever with peak ocean surface temps.
The largest factor is lack of wind shear at all levels, and absence of any dry air whatsoever.
When optimal conditions arise, it seems pretty much any swirl of clouds can spawn a tropical system. But when such conditions are not present, none will form whatsoever, no matter the sea surface temp.
Sea surface temperatures more than a few degrees north of the equator mostly peak in late August; these tend to substantially lag the temperatures of land and air shortly over land. Also, the eastern Atlantic is usually unfavorable to tropical cyclone development before early or mid August because of usual seasonal variations of weather patterns, such as more dry (even dusty) air and less presence of moist and storm-favoring tropical waves coming from Africa.
Although, this year and last year had more pre-August tropical cyclone development in the eastern Atlantic than usual, with unseasonably warm sea surface temperature for the time of year there being part of the story this year.
Partly in response to Jim Steele’s question about hurricanes and surface water temperature:
I am unaware of any studies that thoroughly examine just how tropical storms actually develop – there may be plenty that have been done, but I haven’t seen them. I expect that it’s a mechanism that’s not very well understood just yet. But surely there is more to it than the simplistic “warmer water equals stronger hurricanes”.
I think that is is pretty well understood that tropical storms are another mechanism, besides the atmospheric conveyor belt and oceanic currents like the Gulf Stream that transmit heat energy in the atmosphere from the tropics, where it surface temps are the highest and most sustained (over many months), to the more northerly latitudes, thus providing a feedback mechanism as the equatorial atmosphere warms.
So given that hypothesis, then it follows that a warmer tropic oceanic airmass may well contain more energy as well as greater water vapor content, but does not necessarily create stronger cyclones. Just as with thunderstorms that can arise from cold fronts, it is the rate of change in temperature of the air column as warm air rises then hitting cooler air releasing the heat of vaporization that creates energy driving cyclonic winds. The strongest thunderstorms can occur only where there is a steep drop in temperature per the standard lapse rate of 4.6 deg F per 1,000 ft that releases the most precipitation.
In any event, a lot more understanding is needed about precisely how cyclones strengthen over time. Warmer water does create the conditions for cyclones, which is why they tend to occur only in the warm season, not the cool season. But the strongest cyclones also tend to occur in the fall, late September to late October in the northern hemisphere, when oceanic surface temperatures have already cooled quite a bit from mid-summer highs.
There is also more complexity in how cyclones form and strengthen besides water temperature. For instance, wind patterns, particularly upper level shearing winds inhibit cyclone formation and strengthen, and dry air masses, especially dry with significant dust content, also in inhibit cyclonic formation and strengthening. Right now we are getting a lot of Saharan dust in the upper atmosphere here in Florida which is inhibiting our normal summer afternoon thunderstorm pattern.
Warmunists always try to make their argument based upon simplistic assumptions that are not proven or givens. The atmosphere, the oceans, the entire planet is a very complex system of systems, nothing is simple, no one thing controls everything else as they foolishly argue.
The gales of November remember.
The most basic error of it all is that ‘temperature’ causes anything.
Wrong. Temperature is just a number, that’s all. It is a ‘dimensionless quantity‘
They do come kinda close in the intial premable describing Global Warming when they talk of (trapped) heat.
‘Heat’ is energy – heat is palpable and real
What makes weather and thus climate is neither and both of those things.
Weather (thus Climate) is caused by the movement of (heat) energy from one physical (x.y,z) place to another place over the course of some time (t) interval
What causes the movement of the heat and how rapidly it moves depends on temperature difference between different locations
i.e. Weather depends upon the thermal gradient between places – **not** the absolute temperature.
And in *all* situations and contra to every explanation of the GreenHouseEffect, the heat energy *always* moves from high temperature places to lower temperature places.
Always
Answer: Coriolis force
Wrong answer. Indeed the coriolis force is required to impart spin and thus hurricane formation. There is no coriolis force at the equator so all hurricane get formed several degrees poleward of the equator.
Hurricane intensification is driven by water temperatures.
Read: Upper-Ocean Temperature Variability in the Gulf of Mexico with Implications for Hurricane Intensity Potter (2021)
“Strong winds in tropical cyclones (TCs) mix the ocean, causing cooler water from below the thermocline to be drawn upward, reducing sea surface temperature (SST). This decreases the air–sea temperature difference, limits available heat energy, and impacts TC intensity.”
and The barrier layer of the Atlantic warmpool: formation mechanism and influence on the mean climate Balaguru (2012)
Sea surface temperatures in most of the Northern Hemisphere more than a few degrees north of the equator are not much below peak in mid or often even late September.
Also, please have a look at this list of Cat-5 Atlantic hurricanes, with the time-of-year distribution of these being centered in mid-September, and these have happened in August about as much as in October: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes
“Climate Heretic: Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues.”
In his day Louis Pasteur probably faced similar criticism.
I’m sure that his critics cursed him with “A pox on your house!”
“Nonetheless, click-bait media typically denies expert science, ranting the opposite like the Washington Post’s How Climate Change is Rapidly Fueling Super Hurricanes.”
Wow, we’ve heard about supervolcanos (yes, spelled that way) in recent years- now it’s superhurricanes!
There is a Wikipedia entry for supervolcanos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano) but not one yet for superhurricane. But there is one for a hypercane! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercane)
No doubt, soon the climatistas will start telling us that if we don’t get to net zero by ’50, the world will be smashed by hundreds of hypercanes. Let’s see how long it takes them.
A new one for me. Nicely illustrated by a hyper(hurri)cane devastating the western part of the United States, when the surface temperature of the Utah Ocean passed 50 degrees C 🙂
Peak Hysteria media storm season approaches.
Nice report Jim.
X
X
“That behavior is the basis for science of solar ponds, as seen in the illustration on the right. Strong salinity gradients can raise subsurface water by as much as 60C warmer than the surface.”
Has anyone ever measured undersea temperatures of 60 C (140 F) or more? What would be the heat source to make the sub-surface sea water this hot, given the high specific heat of both fresh and salt water? If there was such a strong temperature gradient between the surface and some lower water, wouldn’t this result in rapid heat transfer toward the surface by conduction, which would tend to flatten the gradient?
Also, what would be the source of a layer of fresh (low salinity) water near the ocean surface? The solubility of sodium chloride in water doesn’t vary much with temperature, so there wouldn’t be much driving force to precipitate salt out of cooler water and dissolve it in warmer water. There could be a fresh water layer from a rapid runoff from a river near the shore, but this would require a torrential rain over the land before the hurricane arrives.
Although I agree with Jim Steele that the fear of hurricanes has been over-hyped, the concept of “solar ponds” with extremely hot and salty sub-surface water underneath fresh surface water in the ocean seems to stretch the laws of thermodynamics and heat transfer. Is there any empirical evidence to prove this theory?
SteveZ there is absolutely no stretching of the laws of thermodynamics. Humans have been actively examining how solar pond dynamics can provide electricity and warmth. Read
Practical design and construction of solar ponds
Solar Energy 246 (2022) 104–112
Ah, so a shallow pond on land equates to the ocean now?
There is nothing so effective as carefully crafted bullshit.
Those of us who have swum in tropical waters know that – as I believe Willis asserts – the sub-sea temperature below any thermohaline gradients seldom exceeds about 30°C.
And its a well known fact that absent of sub sea vulcanism, deep water temperatures are close to 0°C..
“The temperature of ocean water also varies with depth. In the ocean, solar energy is reflected in the upper surface or rapidly absorbed with depth, meaning that the deeper into the ocean you descend, the less sunlight there is. This results in less warming of the water. Therefore, the deep ocean (below about 200 meters depth) is cold, with an average temperature of only 4°C (39°F). Cold water is also more dense, and as a result heavier, than warm water. Colder water sinks below the warm water at the surface, which contributes to the coldness of the deep ocean. The vertical structure in the ocean created by temperature differences has a large impact on how life is distributed in the ocean.”
But don’t let facts get in the way of an alarmingly grotesque model…
LOL Very weird that you think the argument was a pond on land EQUATES to the ocean. Obviously you are totally ignorant about barrier layers. And as much as you want to deny it with false equivalencies, the thermodynamics of a salt gradient when present operate in any body of water to trap heat.
Learn some science Leo!
You can build a “solar pond”. It will be more expensive per square meter than solar panels, be quite inefficient since most of the heat will be absorbed in the upper few cm. where it is lost to the air, and the pond will have decided to “turn over” when you need the heat the most. So impractical tech that can be talked about.
“ begs the question”
Raises the question. Begging the question is a logical fallacy.
Jeff give it up. Begs the question has become a phrase commonly used by the public to simply say that a statement raises questions!
True. Unfortunately the ongoing degradation of language to muddy political discourse has served the Left very well, e.g., calling themselves ‘liberals’ and placing nazis on the political ‘Right’.
PS – Nice article, as usual.
People commonly mis-pronounce “nuclear”, “anti-semitic”, “peripheral”, etc ad nauseum. That doesn’t make them right. Why not just say “raises the question”? Why is that hard?
Actually I prefer “begs the question” because it suggest a more blatant error that must be addressed vs “raises the questions” that connotes just a simple musing.
This is a good synopsis of the Media Hurricane Lifecycle.
From the above article:
“However, any examination of the path where hurricanes intensify, begs the question: if a warming ocean drives more intense hurricanes, why are most hurricanes low intensity tropical storms while over warm tropical surface waters, but intensify as they migrate northward to cooler surface waters?”
I believe the straightforward explanation is that it not the “warming ocean” that drives the intensity of hurricanes, but it is instead the average temperature differential between air & moisture mass of the cyclonic storm versus the surrounding air and sea surface.
Where tropical storms/hurricanes first form, more towards the equator, this gradient is less than occurs as a storm moves generally northward or northwestward. I further understand that this increasing horizontal gradient is more driven by ocean surface temperature decreasing at a faster rate than that of the cyclone air and moisture mass as the storm location moves in a northerly direction, at least up to latitudes of the upper part of the US eastern seaboard, say ~40° N.
Like any good heat engine, the energy (power) derived depends on available delta-T, not all on absolute T of the working fluid.
That is NOT the map of Ian. That is the projected path with cone of uncertainty generated on the Sunday prior to hitting Ft Myers. As we now know, Ian hit Ft Myers which is on the very eastern edge of that cone on that day.
This was the true path of Ian into Florida
Tom, Indeed the final landfall of Ian happened on the southern edge of predictions. But the post was not presented to show the exact path at landfall but how Ian intensified. Your illustration shows a generalization of the same intensification.
Your illustration also agrees with mine that Ian’s path was over western Cuba on Tuesday at 8 AM.
Is your argument that changes in Ian’s intensification are wrong????
This map is the real path and intensity changes of Ian.
Tom, based on NOAA and the National Hurricane Center here is why I questioned your BBC map doubting it is the “real path” and intensity.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092022_Ian.pdf
Ian’s landfall intensity in mainland southwestern Florida is estimated to be 125 kt [category 4]
Because of instrument failure, no reliable surface observations exist from the coastal areas where the eyewall came on shore. In addition, aircraft reconnaissance was no longer in the storm environment.
The highest reported sustained wind observation near the landfall location with a complete dataset was 94 kt [cat 2] at 2020 UTC 28 September with a peak gust of 122 kt from a Weather STEM station (anemometer elevation unknown) in Iona, Florida.
Florida Coastal Monitoring Program placed a mobile meteorological tower near the Punta Gorda airport that measured peak sustained winds of 78 kt [cat 1] with a gust of 96 kt at 1959 UTC 28 September.
Sir,
I am not questioning your points about time and intensity. I am simply pointing out that you made a statement :
“Below is a map showing how Hurricane Ian’s stint with a category 4 intensity was uncommon, short lived and happened in only one small location.”
And to validate the statement you presented a map of a projection of what the timing and intensity were guessed to be rather than a post storm map of what actually happened. That was the point.
Just an FYI, I live about 40 miles north of the suspected landfall, 1 mile inland from the Gulf. I was lucky, metal storm shutters up, roof with 125 mph rated shingles, extra waterproofing under the shingles. I only lost 1 shingle and suffered no building damage. Estimated winds in my area were around 100 mph. Fortunately shortly after landfall, the northwest side of the eye wall, where I am, started to collapse which gave us straight line winds into the back side of the storm rather than swirling, tornado causing wrap around winds. My store, which was another 12 miles closer to the center, had the showroom windows blown out and the showroom destroyed with all in it. No other damage. But the building next to ours lost it’s roof and the building next to that had the walls collapse entirely. We suspect a mini tornado hit them and missed us. Those two stores are still not open, and my store has been open but we have been confined to a small room off the warehouse for the last 10 months of sales. We are waiting for the final electrical inspection to finish our showroom so we can get back to normal. Many people are still waiting for repairs and insurance. As I say, it only takes one.
Tom, Im glad to hear you were so well prepared.
Your report of estimated winds at 100 mph would mean that Ian was a category 2 when arriving at your town. That agrees with my map.
Keep in mind that I was 40 miles away from the eye wall on the “good”side so winds at landfall were much higher than I experienced.
I watched closely as Ian came ashore. There were no measured wind speeds that reached Cat 4.
I have never seen a robbery in progress or a person being murdered.
NOAA et al have been lying about intensity since about 2017. They are attempting to nudge the data to fit the narrative just as has been done with “adjustments” to actual historical surface temperature data, which those adjustment values plotted against CO2 concentration forms a straight line, meaning the adjusting has been to fit the theory which is not “science” it’s propaganda.
I live in SE Florida and have been through 3 hurricane eyewalls. Francis, Jeanne and Wilma. So when one approaches I carefully watch all sources I can find to perform my own reality check, as I found relying on official sources was, well lacking in those real experiences.
My aviation background means I know how to read weather maps and how to find the real info and interpret it. When you monitor ocean Buoy data, radar and in the past Hurricane Hunter aircraft real time data streams – against official figures as the storms progress – you find they severely overestimate the wind speeds/
And this data fudging is on a sliding scale – the further out from land, the worse the fudge, because at landfall it is hard to control individual weather station data of lay persons or the like. And close in weather radar will refute their over hyped wind speeds too.
Recently the Vortex data from the hunter aircraft are no longer public, because persons like myself were pointing out they were reporting flight level winds as the surface winds and showing the emperor has no clothes ist verboten. (ground level wind speed is virtually always much slower than at 10,000 feet MSL due to friction)
But another method exists – which I wrote up about Ian here I believe. That is the ADS-B transponder data from one of the last hunter aircraft passes as Ian was making landfall – showed the max eyewall wind speed on three penetrations of the eyewall from varying heading/tracks was it was only a strong cat 1 or weak cat 2. And there is no argument or denying these facts. (your reporting that no hunter aircraft were present is false, it was clearly posted on FlightAware, however the aircraft designator was an obscure name, not the flight number or tail number)
And I posit from the observation of their pushing the wind speeds up in the past that Ian never was a Cat 5 out in the ocean, at best it was a Cat 3.
ADS-B is the aircraft transponder which broadcasts the plane’s altitude and GPS coordinates every few seconds (primarily for collision avoidance). From the coordinates and time spans the ground speed is derived and plotted on publicly available charts and graphs. Since we know with certainty what the plane’s ground speed was and the heading vs the eyewall wind direction at that penetration point, we also know the max manuevering speed of a C-130. And the delta and some trig shows the actual eyewall wind speed at FL100. (max maneuvering speed of an aircraft is that speed above which structural damage will occur if encountering strong turbulence) (and I used a speed of 15 knots below the maneuvering speed of the C-130 because the three penetrations were at a quartering headwind, a quartering tailwind and a direct tailwind and from their differences with respect to the maneuvering speed, it was obvious the plane was using maneuvering speed minus 15 kt)
Having done this and also watched the buoy and other data as it made landfall, the official word on landfalling wind speed is a lie as it has been for some time. (the climate catastrophe zealots have infested every level of society even official or academic or scientific domains)
(caveat is when mini tornadoes form in the eyewall, as occurred to me personally when Wilma’s eyewall passed over my house. the eyewall was strong by itself, but a very narrow – 50 feet diameter tornado ripped apart some trees and tore off the flat roof on my back porch, and skipped and went on to demolish a pawn shop a half mile away and this damage path was indicative of a small spawned tornado. This added damage carved a narrow path on my property with higher damage than the hurricane category indicated for a small localized zone) (in other words very small, localized tornadic winds above the storm’s wind speed can and do occur with landfalling hurricanes, but this does not increase the overall category) (Hurricane wind speeds regards category are sustained for 2 minutes, not momentary gusts or mini tornadoes – the one that hit me lasted only 10-15 seconds ergo was merely a gust)(oh and the only reason my flat roofing got torn off, is it was nailed at 36 inch centers not 8″ centers as code demands)
Storm surge and barometric pressure alone proves Ian was at least a cat 4 over the water as it approached.
937-940 mb and 15′ surge make it a cat 4 as it came ashore, regardless of what land-based anemometers were able to measure.
What about the difference between indicated airspeed, IAS, (relevant to flying at “maneuvering speed”) and true airspeed, TAS (relevant in determining aircraft velocity relative to movement of the outside air mass, and thus to determining the airspeed-groundspeed delta).
TAS corrects indicated air speed for the actual outside pressure and temperature at any given aircraft altitude. These two independent parameters can vary significantly as one passes through a hurricane at a given altitude.
If one is using only ADS-B (GPS-based) to derive ground speed how does one determine TAS at any given moment in flight?
You are correct, TAS at this altitude, pressure and temperature will be approximately 20% higher than IAS. And the maneuvering speed is flown based on the IAS.
However going back to my calcs, if we use TAS for the conditions, this puts the max eyewall winds about 20-30 kt slower than I reported, making it not even a Cat 1 storm which is not sensible.
The Va for the C130 in this configuration is around 230 kt IAS, and I used 215 kt as their speed. So if we correct for TAS this means the IAS they flew was closer to 180 or 190 kt. Then the differentials make sense.
Otherwise not only would it mean the eyewall winds were below hurricane status, but on one of the hunter’s legs they would have been flying below stall speed, again which is not sensible.
As to differences in pressure and temperature causing large swings in TAS – no. The TAS with FL100, 215 kt IAS and 40 deg F and 1010 mb is 255 kt. with the same parameters and pressure at 950 mb it is only 263 kt – an 8 knot difference for calm air vs a cat 2 hurricane pressure. So the pressure changes as it flies in and out of the storm don’t change the TAS much. Neither do the expected temperature changes.
No despite TAS vs IAS vs ground speed, the envelope to safely fly a C130 through the eyewall in a triangle pattern with different tracks separated by 120 degrees puts the storm at landfall right near the dividing line of a Cat 1 and 2 when you use sensible values for the airspeed against the groundspeed values from the ADS-B data.
Likewise the groundspeed data just beyond or before encountering the eyewall shows a stable ground speed in calm winds which shows the sensible range of actual airspeed.
Strict math only takes you so far, the returned values have to be sensible. And you can gauge sensibility from the flight through calmer regions of this long flight track that was displayed on FlightAware. (and you can rule out some values as they would take the plane to below stall and it didn’t crash and burn)
Bottom line, is if you assume TAS added to published maneuvering speed, this makes the eyewall wind too low to be sensible, and puts one of the legs below stall speed. Hence they had to be flying an Indicated Airspeed well below the maneuvering speed putting the TAS in the range I reported.
950 mb in North Atlantic Basin hurricanes much more south than Cape Hatteras is typical of Cat-3 more than of Cat-2.
Most of a hurricane’s eyewall has wind speed much less than the maximum. The maximum happens in a small part of the eyewall’s circumference around the eye, and in a small range of distance shortly outside the eye. Also, the National Hurricane Center’s definition of storm wind intensity is their determination, even from indirect measurements, of maximum wind averaged over 1 minute anywhere in the storm at any altitude above the surface up to and including the 10 meter official altitude of surface wind, and this has been true since before manmade global warming became a significant political issue.
I was right in the midst of this storm, and I can tell you, it was a very powerful hurricane. Anyone not here just has no idea, you are just guessing.
I have lived through 3 eyewalls passing over my house! One of them was 22 hours in the eyewall because it was expanding in diameter and slowing down so my unfortunate position kept me in that 90 MPH sustained winds for 22 freaking hours!!!
Yes, even a cat 1 can be extremely powerful. I have also looked a lot of evidence from Ian, based on my first hand knowledge and I see nothing suggesting it comes close to the damage of Andrew which was a real cat 4 at landfall and it leveled brick and block houses.
One case of a respected civil engineer whose house was supposedly in the eyewall, well he filmed it out his balcony window and the trees and other indicators showed me nothing stronger than what I felt in Francis, Jeanne and even Wilma without the mini tornado that hit my back porch.
Mobile homes get destroyed in an afternoon thunderstorm so they don’t count, and the big devastation images were from storm surge with water being about 800 times more dense than air so relatively tiny water velocity causes extreme damage.
So you have been in some hurricanes, and you saw a video out the back window of someone house in Ian, and therefore you can judge the max winds that existed in the storm, and according to you it wasn’t all that bad?
Is that seriously what you are saying?
One thing that needs to be understood is that this part of Florida is protected by a string of barrier islands and a bunch of smaller islands, so by the time the eyewall reached, for example, Punta Gorda airport, it was well inland and had already passed over many miles of land.
Hurricanes always weaken rapidly, especially the very strongest winds, when the center moves over any land at all, even a small dot of an island.
It takes a certain amount of wind to drive a 15 foot storm surge.
It only takes one location with a given wind speed to give a storm an intensity rating. It has always been very rare for an anemometer to capture the max winds in any hurricane…it just does not happen very often.
Here, for reference:
No they do not always weaken rapidly. It is a spinning wheel of mass some 150 miles in diameter. And it’s inertia alone takes some time to dissipate.
I point to Wilma and hoe dramatically, catastrophically bad was the prediction that it would weaken as it made landfall in the SE of the Florida peninsula, and travelled North Eastward toward Palm Beach county. Well duh, these so called expert forecasters forgot that it passed over the everglades, a large body of WARM water and it intensified!
And duh #2, these expert weather forecasters forgot to account for the looming cold front which impacted the eye right near the east coast, and further intensified the thunderstorms that comprised the eyewall!!! (weather 101 is that a cold front creates thunderstorms by lifting warm wet air)
The eye of Wilma came right over my house and the approaching side was strong, breaking trees and causing some mess and power outage…. But the eye was calm, however a black wall approached and the temperature dropped 40 degrees F in 20 seconds as it neared – that cold front intensified the eye storms, and the second impact was tremendously more powerful than the first part.
So no that generality is not always the case, regarding a storm weakening at landfall.
What you describe in no way refutes the observation that tropical systems, particularly powerful hurricanes, weaken after coming ashore.
That does not mean they will be weak storms when they hit your house.
Friction with land slows down wind.
Here is one list of recorded wind gusts in Ian:
Note that none of these places are right where it should be expected the strongest winds were located.
Those places would be the locations along the outermost barrier islands, which are all residential areas, or preserves.
And all of those locations were severely damaged or completely wrecked, in spite of them all having been hit recently, being high end and thus well built, etc.
And many of these records are truncated by the anemometers either being destroyed, or losing power, etc.
Nicholas you are mixing apples and oranges.
You present wind gust data.
However the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based only on a hurricane’s maximum sustained wind speed.
Yes, that is wind gust data, but I know of no sources that suggest such gusts over such a wide area will be found in a cat 1 or cat 2 storm.
Friction with land always causes a decrease in intensity, regardless of the fact that some storms retain relatively strong winds well inland.
So whatever is measured tens of miles inland, are certainly not the max winds that existed as the storm made landfall.
It is also almost always going to be the case that there will not be a functioning anemometer located where and when the strongest winds exist in a powerful hurricane.
Jim, I know very well all of what you said is true.
But for a storm to be a cat 4, it only has to have one place where there are sustained winds of 130 mph.
It does not mean that an anemometer has to record such a wind speed.
That almost never happens.
These winds are over a wide area, almost all of those places reported power out or anemometer broken after these winds were recorded, and none of them are on the outer string of islands.
Most of them are tens of miles inland.
I for one cannot find a single source that asserts that a 15′ storm surge can result for anything but a strong cat 4 hurricane.
I do not think it is physically possible.
So anyone saying this was a cat 2 storm, is just not looking at all the data available.
“The surge height at landfall is ultimately dictated by the expanse and intensity of the storm, the height of the tide at the time of landfall, and the slope of the seafloor approaching land. The longer and shallower the seafloor, the greater the storm surge will be.”
There are almost no tides to speak of in this part of Florida, compared to most places.
And of course the shape of the coastline and the offshore topography heavily influences storm surge, which is why there is a wide range shown for each intensity level.
There are maps of surge potential for every inch of coastline.
Nicholas I dont think you are looking at all the data. “Superstorm” Sandy had been downgraded and no longer rated a storm with hurricane winds when it drove a 12-foot surge into New York!
Sandy made landfall one hour after the National Hurricane Center declared Sandy had completed transitioning into an extratropical type cyclone, so according to their policy then they discontinued their warnings and watches, and their last official advisory was their next scheduled one at 11 PM 10/29 (for post-tropical cyclone Sandy). Their determination of Sandy’s maximum sustained wind at that time (peak 1 minute average anywhere in the storm up to 10 meters above the surface, even if analyzed from indirect measurements according to how they did things since at least as far back as the mid 1980s) was hurricane force, although determined to have probably only happened offshore. Meanwhile, when Sandy made landfall, its central pressure was 947 millibars and it was a huge size storm consisting of a large and intense nor’easter that formed around the hurricane. As is usual with large intense nor’easters, the storm surge was much greater than typical of a hurricane with the same maximum sustained wind speed.
A completely different formula must be used to forecast surge in a cold storm than in a warm one.
There have been some well known cases of the warm air formula being used for official forecasts, when the air pushing the water was far too cold to use that formula, and lack of proper warnings going out as a consequence.
Colder air is far more dense and hence has far greater ability to push water at the same wind speed.
Also, note the shape of the coastlines south and East of New York.
It is funnel shaped.
I do not think it is valid reasoning to discount the winds of all subsequent storms, hurricanes included, using the example of one storm in one place which by all accounts was one of the most unusual storms ever.
I was not in Sandy, but my recollection is that it was cold enough to snow in that storm.
I think cold air is something like 20% more dense than high humidity tropical air.
One factor you are over looking is surge dynamics via the path of the storm relative to the coast. The counter-clockwise spin of hurricanes causes a northward moving hurricane to have its leading edge to direct winds and surge inland. In contrast its trailing edge blows winds and water seaward. Similar dynamics were observed with Ian as to south winds caused a strong surge while to the north water was pulled out.
Instead of Superstorm Sandy simply paralleling the coast and relatively briefly causing a storm surge until the storm moved further along, a high pressure system blocked Sandy’s path such that the inland directed winds and surge were focused on the New York region and sustained for much longer as the storm now headed westward.
These are among the reasons for the common practice of analyzing strength of tropical cyclones from indirect measurements.
Very rarely is there any land based wind speed recorded that is even close to the max winds in a powerful hurricane.
There are many reasons for this, but the two that are probably most important are the relative scarcity of official anemometers, and the fact that they tend to break, power tends to go out, as the most powerful part of a major hurricane gets very close, if one happens to be directly in the path of the eyewall to begin with.
It is not logical to believe that lack of a certain wind speed recording on an official instrument, means that such a wind speed did not occur in a given storm.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Andrew is a great example…the official wind gage at the National Hurricane Center famously broke long before the most powerful part of the storm passed over that location.
And it is rare, very rare, for any location to have power when a major hurricane is passing the eyewall over that place. Power generally goes out long before winds get that high, especially in places where all the power lines are overhead, like in almost all of Florida.
Tom, Are you arguing that the map here does not represent how Ian’s intensity changed over time???
I am arguing that the map you showed was a PROJECTION of Ian from the Sunday prior and not the real path or change in intensity over time. The real map is the one I posted in a reply to myself.
This is the official track and intensity plot:
“In fact, measurable disturbances of a hurricane only reach a maximum depth of about 90 meters (~300 feet) below the surface . . .”
— https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/hurricane-impact.html
“Most of the heat energy of the sunlight that strikes the Earth is absorbed in the first few centimeters at the ocean’s surface, which heats during the day and cools at night as heat energy is lost to space by radiation. Waves mix the water near the surface layer and distribute heat to deeper water such that the temperature may be relatively uniform in the upper 100 metres (330 ft), depending on wave strength and the existence of surface turbulence caused by currents.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline
Putting these two statements together implies that hurricanes most likely do not create transport of, let alone mixing of, water at depths of, or below, typical thermoclines in the tropical Atlantic oceans (average depth of the Atlantic ocean and dependent seas is about 11,000 feet).
Therefore, the statement in the above article that “Hurricanes and typhoons pull cold deep water to the surface” deserves much more explanation, especially vis-à-vis the verb “pull”.
It is always good to be skeptical so disagreements by TOLDYOUSO provide a good check on skeptical ideas. Unfortunately I don’t think TYS has really delved into the science he so casually criticizes. I suspect he/she/it is really just trying to protect his personal theory about thermal gradients that he posted above.
Barrier layers typically form between 40 and 70 meters deep, an adequate depth to prevent cooler waters from 90 meters depth from cooling the surface. In the western Pacific along the equator (138oE-145oE, 2oN-2oS) barrier layers have been measured between 18 m – 35 m.
TYS’s statement that most of the solar energy is absorbed in the first few centimeters is simply wrong and reveals he/she/it is a rookie oceanographer. True, typically within the first 10 m, water absorbs more than 50 percent of the visible light energy. That does not prevent storage of heat in barrier layers.
Thus arguing that hurricanes only pull cool water from depths no deeper than 90 meters is an irrelevant factoid.
Jim, as I clearly indicated by cited reference, that statement came from Wikipedia, not me.
I apologize if I needed to make that more obvious.
Also, I intentionally (by using bold typeface in my post above) used the word “implies” in my post so as not to state conclusively that “hurricanes only pull cool water from depths no deeper than 90 meters”.
And I don’t have any skin (any personal, pet theory) in this matter, even though you suspect otherwise.
Finally, I am saddened to see that your conclusion above is misplaced . . . I am not, and never claimed to be, an oceanographer, rookie or otherwise.
As I posted below, most good scientists welcome valid questions and scientific debate . . . perhaps I was wrong on that as well?
Oh but I do welcome valid questions. I just thought your statements were NOT questions but were challenges to my assertions and revealed a lack of a depth of understanding.
Once again: Not all my statements, but one quoted from NOAA and several from Wikipedia.
But I did state, in the closing sentence of my OP in this thread, “deserves much more explanation”.
Oh well.
No hard feelings on my part . . . good fortune to you.
“In fact, measurable disturbances of a hurricane only reach a maximum depth of about 90 meters (~300 feet) below the surface . . .”
obviously ,you haven’t talked with a sub sailor who sailed under a super typhoon ….
😉
No I have not . . . have you? If so, what specifically did he/she tell you about the changing water temperatures when sailing under a “super typhoon” at whatever depth(s) it was then?
I would certainly like get that data on record.
Why does everybody nitpick at Jim like he was mosh or something? He deserves more respect and gratitude.
Thanks for all you do Jim!
“Test all things; hold fast what is good.”—Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)
Just because challenges to/questions about a given hypothesis are surfaced does not necessarily mean any disrespect is intended to the scientist proposing the hypothesis. And not all challenges/questions merit the, ahem, disrespect of being called “nitpicks”.
Most good scientists—and I certainly included Jim Steele in that category—welcome valid questions and scientific debate.
1 Tim 6:4
Very interesting (and revealing), Rich.
In the context of preceding verses, that Biblical passage is the antithesis of the scientific method and the way science has progressed for the last millennium. Reference “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Thomas Kuhn, 1962.
But here’s one back at ya’: Romans 1:22
The biblical reference (bless your little heart, but you started it!) is to the puffed up pride of those who love to quibble over minor points to hear themselves talk. Even the silly name you’ve chosen to hide behind is an illustration of the self-aggrandizing theme.
‘It’s a little known fact’ that if science advanced by obsessing on irrelevant side points, you and Cliffie Claven from Cheers would be the new Einsteins.
The Biblical reference you offered (1 Tim 6:4) has, like every verse in the Bible, slightly different interpretations in various translations. Here is the first sentence from the New Living Translation (NLT) version:
“Anyone who teaches something different is arrogant and lacks understanding.”
— ref: https://www.biblestudytools.com/1-timothy/6-4.html
I stand by my statement that this verse (taken in context) is the antithesis of the scientific method and the manner in which science progresses.
BTW, pen names have been used since time immemorial, and by many great authors (e.g., “Dr. Seuss”, who was not a doctor, and “Busy Body” and “Benevolus” used by Benjamin Franklin), for purposes other than self-aggrandizement. You think I’m hiding behind a “silly” pen name . . . I think I’m following a proud tradition.
I’ll stand by the statement that you have no sense of what is relevant and seem to like to “hear yourself talk”. (metaphorically speaking)
I made a Bible reference because you led with a Bible reference. But it was tongue in cheek. From the literary treasure KJV:
But what do you say we bury the hatchet (other than in my back)?
If you agree that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY then we have all the common ground that I care about.
Thanks Rich! But it is just par for the course. Everybody, whether alarmist or skeptic, believe ONLY their beliefs are the total truth.
If I were presenting something for the world to see, I’d want it nitpicked, preferably BEFORE I published it. So, y’know, I don’t say “begs the question” instead of “raises the question”. 🙂
I hate seeing the misuse of “begs the question” probably almost as much as you do. But I also decry singular “they”. At some point we have to recognize that the dynamic language has moved on. Thou art stubborn if thou resistest these changes.
Soooo much garbage and misunderstanding from all corners.
Any and all hurricanes always run/operate at the maximum intensity they can
There are only two things involved in that:
Amount of Energy in the water below themTemperature gradient (Lapse Rate) above that waterThis contrived confection about Barrier Layers and Solar Ponds is exactly that: Contrived
Visit the link below to understand them a little better. It’s the exact same graphic as we see here – did the author of this piece not read it?
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Solar_pond
What you will discover is that Solar Ponds
Require to be = A Pond (shallow with sides)Require pristine clean water throughoutRequire constant refreshment of the surface layerRequire immensely salty waterAre destroyed by ANY amount of convection or vertical mixingAre destroyed by anything that causes turbidity
IOW: Perfectly NONE of the conditions anyone will EVER find in any ocean and especially if there are any thunderstorms around. As there always are – that’s where hurricanes come from
The reasons for why hurricanes intensify as they approach land is gobsmackingly simple:
The water near the land is muddy – especially around the estuaries/deltas/outfalls of large rivers.
Surprise surprise = a direct result of soil erosion
How/why: Rivers are constantly moving silt/sand/mud out into the ocean, it is what built the continental shelves after all. It is why ‘Yellow River’ is called what it is, having been renamed from ‘Great River’ (Similar translation to ‘Mississippi’)
That silt also why the waters above continental shelves are so fertile and productive – waters beyond the shelves are tantamount to aquatic deserts.
OK. That dissolved mud/silt constantly being carried out to sea means that solar energy is absorbed in the water to much shallower depth than if/when the water was/is crystal clear.
But as the water goes out to sea, it gradually clears, the silt precipitates out meaning that ‘far out at sea) solar energy is absorbed to depths of about 100 metres.
Thus that the absorbed solar energy is much more diffuse through the water column – the vertical thermal gradient is shallow and much energy is stored ‘at depth’
{I’m using ’25 metres’ as an example – I haven’t a clue what the figure is or might be. ’25 metres’ is to describe the principle)
When the water is muddy/turbid, the same amount amount of solar energy will be absorbed in probably the top 25 metres.
The surface waters will try to get very hot (they can’t because the 31C Limit) but that 31C water will be present at 25 metres depth whereas it wouldn’t be in clear water
IOW. Muddy water builds a Solar Pond alright but one that is completely upside down
It is that because more energy is stored in 25 metres of muddy water than 25 metres of clear water.And in muddy water, virtually no energy below that depth because the solar energy is all stopped/blocked/absorbed by the mud suspended in the water ##
Now you see why hurricanes get more active as they near land fall.
It’s that simple. Muddy water
And the example of Hurricane Ian, seemingly ‘briefly reaching Cat 4’ is perfect
Ian had been running over relatively clear water and so was ‘feeble’ until he passed over some muddy/turbid water flowing out of some river somewhere – it can’t be hard to find which one.
Once he’d gone over the muddy patch (an upside-down solar-pond) – he could relax and he did.
Ian ran over a puddle of mud and got worked up about it
Bad News incoming: Rivers and streams flowing out into The Ocean are NOT supposed to be epic torrents of red/orange/yellow or black mud whenever it rains.
Hence ‘Yellow River’
Until industrial-scale farming started on its watershed it was ‘Great River’ = a constant gentle (big & voluminous yes) flow of translucent light grey/clear water and it never varied from that
When the farmers arrived – it turned yellow.
Testable prediction: Where are The Scientists. Yellow River is a perfect testing ground.
Did land-falling Typhoons/Hurricanes increase their strength around the time of the river’s colour change?
## And because no energy is being stored below 25 metres and the water at 0-to-25 metres can never go beyond 31C – doesn’t that point to Global Cooling?
edit:
Back to thermal gradients and Lapse Rate and how to destroy the theory of global warming
Esp: Why hurricanes seem to pick up in number from end August on = exactly when the water is cooling
Yes the water is cooling but the air above that water is cooling faster.
Thus, the gradient, surface to ‘some altitude’ is steepening and that is what sets off more storms and hurricanes
Autumn is stormy exactly because Trapped Heat is Garbage
Absolutely BINGO.
Go look at where Atlantic hurricanes usually form – The Cape Verde Islands.
Head a little east and you find The Gambia River – follow it inland.
It runs along the southern boundary of The Sahara and thus can be doing NOTHING ELSE but shovelling immense amounts of sand and silt into what is the exact spawning grounds of most Atlantic hurricanes.
Testable: Did The Atlantic have any hurricanes prior to (say) 6,000 years ago when some enterprising two-legged critters burned/overgrazed an immense rainforest.
Thus setting off an avalanche of soil erosion that persists to this day – and hurricanes to suit.
Peta, another “gobsmackingly” wrong diatribe! Barrier layers have been measured and trap heat just as solar ponds do but to different degrees of efficiency.
Learn some science!
Nice theory, except for the fact that no tropical storms/hurricanes form in the relatively warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico within 100 miles of the Mississippi River delta, where there is huge amount of mud/silt carried out to sea in shallow depths below the surface.
“…no tropical storms/hurricanes form in the relatively warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico within 100 miles of the Mississippi River delta…”
Yeah…no.
That would be wrong…again.
We only have to go back two years to find at least one, Fay:
Yeah . . . no.
There was no tropical storm or hurricane named Fay in 2021.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Atlantic_hurricane_season
There was a tropical storm named Fay in July 2020. But
“The NHC began to track an area of disorganized cloudiness and showers over the far northern Gulf of Mexico early on July 5. This area was associated with the remaining section of the surface trough from which Edouard had recently formed. The disturbance moved inland over the Florida Panhandle by 06:00 UTC the next day. It subsequently emerged off of the South Carolina coast into the Atlantic on July 8. Once offshore, the low moved northeastward, and around 18:00 UTC on July 9, the center re-formed and became better defined near an area of strong convection. At about the same, an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft observed that the system, then near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, was producing sustained tropical-storm-force winds. The low was then designated as Tropical Storm Fay.“
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Atlantic_hurricane_season
(my bold emphasis added)
It says right on it what year it was.
I never said it was in 2021.
But you said no such storm had ever formed.
No storms
Ever.
That is what you said.
I made a typo, you made up a ridiculous lie.
Why do you just make stuff up?
Speaking of which . . .
2019, Barry:
“A mesoscale convective vortex formed over the Central United States on July 2 and moved slowly eastward, southeastward, and then southwestward, reaching the Gulf of Mexico about a week later. The low, which had a large area of deep convection, gradually organized, becoming a tropical depression around 00:00 UTC on July 11 roughly 190 mi (305 km) south of Mobile, Alabama. With an increase in convective banding on the south side of the cyclone’s circulation, the system quickly intensified into Tropical Storm Barry just six hours later.”
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Atlantic_hurricane_season
(my bold emphasis added)
Note: 190 miles south of Mobile Alabama is equivalent to about 140 miles SE of the mean contour of the Mississippi River delta.
Oh, now it is the mean contour?
But that is not what you said.
Lots of these systems originated in the area you referred to, and some first achieved TS or Hurricane status in that area.
Honestly, I do not care, except it really diminishes the value of serious discourse when people just invent crap and pass them off as facts and doing it for no particular reason is worst of all.
2017, Emily, was pretty close to 100 miles:
“Tropical Depression Six developed at 18:00 UTC on July 30 about 165 mi (266 km) west-northwest of St. Petersburg, Florida. The depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Emily early the following day. The storm then peaked with winds of 60 mph (95 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,001 mbar (29.6 inHg). Around 14:45 UTC, Emily made landfall on Longboat Key.”
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Atlantic_hurricane_season
Note: 165 mi W-NW of St. Petersburg, Florida is about 270 miles SE of the mean contour of the Mississippi River delta, not even close to 100 miles. And that’s not accounting for the additional eastward distance the depression travelled before becoming classified as a tropical storm.
2011, Lee:
“A tropical wave developed into the season’s thirteen tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico about 255 mi (410 km) southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River at 00:00 UTC on September 2. About 12 hours later, the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Lee.”
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Atlantic_hurricane_season
(my bold emphasis added)
2007, Edouard:
There was no tropical storm or hurricane named “Edouard” in 2007.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Atlantic_hurricane_season
Yes, you are correct about that. It was 2008.
Tropical Storm Edouard (2008) – Wikipedia
2003, Henri:
“A tropical disturbance developed into Tropical Depression Twelve on September 3 about 300 miles (480 km) west of Tampa, Florida. It moved eastward and strengthened into Tropical Storm Henri on September 5.”
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Atlantic_hurricane_season
(my bold emphasis added)
Note: 300 miles west of Tampa, FL, is about 175 miles SE of the mean contour of the Mississippi River delta.
2002, Bertha. This one formed so close, it made landfall about 3 hours after forming:
“A surface trough of low pressure that would later spawn Tropical Storm Cristobal developed a tropical depression in the northern Gulf of Mexico on August 4. It quickly strengthened into a minimal tropical storm early on August 5, and made landfall near Boothville, Louisiana, just two hours later. Bertha weakened to a tropical depression, but retained its circulation over Louisiana.”
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Atlantic_hurricane_season
Unfortunately, Wikpedia does not provide the distance from any landmark at which Bertha was first declared to be a tropical depression/storm. It may indeed have “formed” within 100 miles of the mean contour of the Mississippi River delta.
1998, Hermine.
The list is endless.
Please do carry on.
Peta theory is horrible and not supported by anyone!
Virtually every study of hurricanes shows that a 26C ocean temperature is the key controlling factor. Arguing whether a hurricane can form close to the coast is a silly argument that ignores the main drivers. In the Gulf of Mexico the warm Loop Current and its eddies provide the temperature profile with deep warm subsurface water temperatures (creating barrier layers) that can support hurricane formation and intensity. Sometimes it comes very close to the coast depending on if the Loop Currrent is in an contraction or expansion phase.
I never have any idea what Peta is babbling about.
But I know that ToldYouSo just made up what he said, and never even bothered to check if it was even remotely true, let alone specifically a fact.
I doubt it would prove much one way or another if that exact place has no records of storms forming.
Obviously if you look at all coastlines everywhere, storms can and do originate close to the coast sometimes.
But there is much more ocean far from coasts, and also land is known to be generally unfavorable for tropical cyclone intensity
Clearly lots of storms form in that area, some form very close to the coast.
I do not think it says much one way or another, but I hate it when people make stuff up and spew it out as if their every random thought is a fact.
Two typhoons in the Philippine Sea.
Regarding “if a warming ocean drives more intense hurricanes, why are most hurricanes low intensity tropical storms while over warm tropical surface waters, but intensify as they migrate northward to cooler surface waters?”:
Many hurricanes become hurricanes or even major hurricanes while they’re still in warm tropical waters, or warm waters near the tropics. Every Cay-5 hurricane recorded in the North Atlantic Basin became Cat-5 over very warm water in or not much outside the tropics.
Although, there are two things that often happen with Atlantic hurricanes & developing hurricanes:
1) They often run into wind sheer, often related to TUTTs / “tropical upper tropospheric troughs” and/or the subtropical jet stream while around or approaching 20-25 degrees N latitude, or while approaching the Carribean from the east during or shortly after an El Nino. But when they get past such stuff, they can intensify, although generally while over water that is quite warm even if at latitude well into the 30s north, for example the Gulf Stream.
2) Atlantic hurricanes can have one measure of their intensity, central surface pressure, getting more intense even with decreasing wind speed when they get farther north. Latitude farther from the equator and larger storm size favor the Coriolis “force” causing a decrease of maximum sustained wind for a given central surface pressure. North Atlantic hurricanes especially major intensity ones often get larger as they get older, in part from eyewall replacement cycles, and in part from transitioning into extratropical type cyclones when they run into stronger horizontal temperature gradients when they get farther from the equator, especially at times of the year when the Arctic is cooler and horizontal temperature gradient is greater. An extreme example is Sandy, which formed late enough in the season to be happening early in prime nor’easter season, and headed into an area where a major nor’easter was about to form. A major nor’easter formed around Sandy and Sandy became a huge size storm, and its central pressure bottomed out at 940 millibars while its maximum sustained wind was only 90 MPH even though while Sandy was a little south of Cuba and just before landfalling Cuba it had its peak wind speed of 115 MPH and central pressure of 957 millibars.
Don,
I wasnt trying to argue that hurricanes don’t start in the warm tropics or to quibble over where in the Gulf of Mexico waters are designated as tropical. And indeed wind shear has a major effect on hurricane formation and perhaps I should have mentioned that. But my focus was on how barrier layers create warm water whether in or outside the tropics proper.
Typically when you see a hurricane intensify it happens when the storm passes over a barrier layer that prevents cool water from reaching the surface.
Here’s 4 hurricanes that briefly intensify at higher latitudes where waters are warmer due to barrier layers
In terms of Ian, can’t we all agree that there is no measured wind speed data from bouys that show Ian was a Cat 4? I am not saying that it wasn’t a Cat 4. What I am saying is that I watched closely as it came ashore thinking I would see very high wind speeds and I didn’t. Of course, bouy coverage isn’t perfect and the maximum sustained winds could have missed being recorded. When I looked at pictures of the damage, palm trees still had fronds on them, which I wouldn’t expect in a Cat 4 storm.