LibertyBell

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.

Isn't this the worst direction for N.O. though? I always thought that storm surge flooding is worst for N. O. when storms pass just to their east and keep the city under a northerly flow, so they get surge from the lake. N. O. is too far away from the GoM to get a lot of surge from the south.

This is basically a Cat 3, the weird SS threshold of 111 notwithstanding. That scale needs to be rounded to the closest 5 mph just like the measurements are. It's a Cat 3.

and now I'm going to go off on the SS scale. There is literally no reason for Cat 3 to begin at 111 mph. No one measures winds at this speed- this is a Cat 3. They need to round out Cat numbers to 5 mph intervals....Cat 3 begins at 110 mph.....no reason for the weird number "111".

this could be a Cat 3 at LF a direct hit from a Cat 3 there is no picnic

regardless this is going to bring the growing season and allergy season to an abrupt end. YAY

isn't this just flurries and snow showers coming in with the passage of the arctic front?

ouch! this would be a lock for below freezing lows areawide.....do you have a similar map showing the lows Monday and Tuesday morning? Typically if the highs are 45 or below, the lows are guaranteed to be below freezing with clear skies.

Well, as you know, we can't go from 60 to 0 on a dime so I suspect there's a consensus developing about the transition curve....is it following along the IPCC guidelines (50% by 2030, 90% by 2040 and 100% by 2050, if I remember correctly)?

also big difference between the 1994 el nino and the one we had last year.

Yeah thats why Jan 2016 was so special.....probably the largest snowfall I will ever see.

is 2050 the latest any nation has committed to, Don?

it also ended earlier than expected. In the middle of the afternoon here

ridges on the west and east coasts with a sharp trough in between?

3 inches in Lynbrook? It was more like 1.5 inches also confirmed at JFK

I saw the NYC discussion on that storm....someone should've posted them here- 6-10 inches was predicted for NYC! Ended up with 3" there and 1.5" here near JFK but 6" as close by as the Bronx and Newark. Probably the only time NYC will ever have a winter storm warning in October lol- then again we said that 30 inches would never again be predicted for NYC after the Jan 2015 debacle and then we had it again exactly one year later in Jan 2016 and that time it actually verified at JFK lol. October 2011 reminds me in many ways of the April Fools Day storm in 1997. NYC ended up being the Fool lol..... 8-16 was predicted and we ended up with 1-2.