LibertyBell

Also isn't it true that alpine areas warm more slowly and areas close to the oceans are warming much faster because the oceans act as heat sinks? Same reason why the arctic warms much faster than antarctica

What were the highest confirmed wind gusts and storm surge with this? I looked around and for confirmed numbers found 112 mph for highest wind gust and 10.88 ft for highest storm surge. That makes me think it will be upgraded to Cat 3 in post, as the highest confirmed wind gust reported usually corresponds with the highest sustained winds at landfall.

lol I think there's a hole in this idea of tacking on forward speed to the speed of a system east of the track.

Gloria was also moving at 70

interesting that coastal Delaware and Atlantic City and Cape May have a freeze warning and long island and NYC dont lol

Looks like the cold coming Monday doesn't look like we'll get into the 20s anymore? I've seen forecasted low temps coming up- more like low to mid 30s now?

the official reporting location is the airport which is in the western part of the city, correct? so they wont get the strongest winds there. But there should be other high order stations in and around the city to make up for it. Do you or does anyone have a list of the strongest hurricanes that have directly hit NOLA and the strongest winds reported there (100+)?

the 125-136 measurements for gusts are similar to what was reported for Laura out in SW Louisiana.

very marshy areas and moving quickly, probably wont weaken until north of NOLA

what time is high tide?

not only that, those marshy areas aren't going to weaken it much, if at all.

Yeah and I'm not sure they have any official wind instrumentation near those bayous to measure wind or surge for that matter. I remember the same issues with Laura with surge as people thought surge was lower than expected because of where it occurred, but later studies showed that the surge was higher, but in a much more sparsely populated area.

I just wanted to be clear that's what you said because in the first part of the sentence you said it would be reported as 110 mph and in the second part you said 115 mph lol. This part: Not cutoff at 2.5mph and if it's a 112 major they'd say it was 110. They'd say 115 cat 3 if winds support 112. Regardless, interesting read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/10/28/hurricane-zeta-track-louisiana/ Flight-level winds during a midafternoon Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance flight hit 138 mph; extrapolated down to the surface, that would suggest 101 mph winds at the surface. A dropsonde, or probe, released shortly after found a surface wind of 115 mph in the southern eyewall. That would indicate Zeta is near or at major hurricane status. The National Hurricane Center did not upgrade Zeta in their most recent advisory, raising the potential that the measurement was suspect. Regardless, Zeta continues to increase in strength and could approach Category 3 intensity as it makes landfall.

New advisory has a pressure drop to 970

ha not worth the effort. It looks like it may be upgraded later anyway. We went through all this with Michael too. I remember that discussion well.

Okay so they dont follow the rules of significant figures and if they measured 112 or even 111 it would be reported as 115 in the public advisory?

Wind speeds in the official reports issued to the public sure are rounded- that's why you see official reports of wind speeds always listed in 5 mph increments. And on top of that the categorization of these storms are based on those rounded numbers, which is why the SS scale should be rounded to the nearest 5 mph too. I work in data and this is a thing we call "significant figures." You can't categorize something beyond the accuracy of the information you have to do so.

But that's ridiculous because like you said "there's no difference" I dont believe they tailor their forecasts or reports based on panic either. They are objective scientists so they go by the data. If people act irresponsibly that's on the people. Besides panic at this late stage isn't going to make a difference, people will just hunker down more, which is what they should be doing anyway.

This has nothing to do with politics, but the simple fact that wind measurements aren't accurate enough to separate a Cat 2 110 mph storm from a Cat 3 111 mph storm and wind measurements are rounded to the nearest 5 mph anyway. But like the other poster said, this is likely to be upgraded later anyway.

Also is there such a thing as the "speed of a surge"- so a faster moving storm means more force from the surge because it moves in faster too?

How about the rapidity of its movement? Does that increase the surge factor too?

it gets confusing lol- because we have the old English system of mph and then we have the metric system with kmph and then we have knots. I dont know why there is so much resistance to the metric system here (we use it very comfortably for focal lengths and objective apertures of lenses and telescopes.....I could never imagine measuring focal length or objective aperture in "inches" lol)

It may be semantics, but someone is going to get hit hard by this hurricane. It's definitely NOT a weakening junk storm falling apart landfall like I thought it would be. It's one more to add to the list of the RI storms we've had in the GoM this year. I didn't think it would be doing this either (no one did), it looks like the shear didn't affect it the way people thought it would.

it depends on the local geography

Looks like they are going for a SE to NW pass. We should know definitively whether or not this has reached MH status prior to landfall. It's Cat 3....111 weird lower threshold for Cat 3 should be 110 since all measurements get rounded to nearest 5 mph anyway.