WxSynopsisDavid

Just seen this on Twitter, apparent picture of the Bassfield tornado as it was tracking through. Picture seems to be about the time the tornado peaked

The combination of high ocean heat content, Gulf Stream, and notable warm eddies does point towards Category 3 being the ceiling and a real possibility now.

The massive violent wedge earlier when it was passing by Clarksville, TX

The tornado earlier near Sulphur Springs, TX

8 hours ago, TheGhostOfJohnBolaris said:

Didn’t Ian initially show the same thing? Slamming into the Yucatán?

Yup there were several runs showing that

Maybe someone can help validate this claim but I seen various sources say "at least 10,000 missing". That number, along with the death toll, still does not factor in Cuba from my understanding. Also, the Ian wikipedia page has been updated and shows "10,000 missing". Just curious if the number being reported is true.

4 hours ago, sojitodd said:

CNN is reporting 100 deaths now in Florida, with 4 more in North Carolina. So it appears to be over the 50-100 mark at this time.

At least 1 death in NC was attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning because someone started up their generator inside their house and went to sleep shortly after. 

2 hours ago, RU848789 said:

Like always?  Meaning everything reported to date by the media on Ian has been BS?  Of course not, the reporting has generally been fantastic.  Such an ignorant statement. 

Fantastic? No it has not been fantastic. Matter of opinion I guess, but often after these storms we get stories they report and it an exaggeration of the truth due to the fact they don’t do their homework. There’s already been some things covered/reported on in the wake of Ian that is questionable.

Death Toll now stands at 87: 83 in Florida and 4 in North Carolina

2 hours ago, Iceresistance said:

Lots of Dry air in the Northern GoM right now, which is why it's very hostile to Tropical Cyclones. 

Across the northern Gulf, yes. But I wouldn't write the Gulf off yet. A path into southern FL or southern TX is still on the table if a system could stay across the southern Gulf. Also, we seen recently with Fiona and Ian that if these systems can RI and establish a deep core with convection upshear they can become resilient to not only shear but mix out dry air from the CDO. A lot of uncertainties remain and its way too early to say for sure what's going to happen. Let's hope the 18z GFS is right 

Let's hope your theory is right because SST's in the Gulf are still 85+ and there is still a pocket of high Ocean Heat Content

Deja vu all over again, this early track consensus reminds me of the early days of Ian. Though this system should track more to the north and not into South America, its very interesting to say the least 

5 minutes ago, dan11295 said:

Another issue was the media was so focused on the possibly of a direct hit on Tampa. Once Ian kept moving to the right of the track and it was clear Tampa was going to avoid the direct hit/surge, the "hype train" of how dangerous Ian could be got dialed down a bit. Obviously the intensification the night before landfall that wasn't forecasted also played a role as far as danger perception to the public.

 

I remember with Katrina the media paid little mind to MS/AL coastline ahead of Katrina. When we started to see the devastation, of course the media started changing their tone. Just similar mistakes being made here, media only out for the hype/ratings and hone in on major cities without covering all the areas to be impacted. 

46 minutes ago, Pellice said:

Hearing people on TV trying to argue that Ian "should have" been a Category 5, and maybe they would then more would have heeded warnings.  But I think it's important to reinforce the idea that hurricanes don't have to be "Cat 5" to be lethal, that lower designations are also dangerous.  Ian will be an important example to be cited in the future.

And just like Katrina, outside of politics and politicians, the media is at fault here with Ian.

39 minutes ago, Pellice said:

Hearing people on TV trying to argue that Ian "should have" been a Category 5, and maybe they would then more would have heeded warnings.  But I think it's important to reinforce the idea that hurricanes don't have to be "Cat 5" to be lethal, that lower designations are also dangerous.  Ian will be an important example to be cited in the future.

And here presents another difficulty no matter what we use: saffir simpson, IKE, severity index, etc. The media is problem #1 here. They misunderstand how hurricanes are rated by the SS and often times only focus on gusts without explaining sustained winds and how they are dangerous. Another issue are all these media outlets incorporating their own rating scales (low, medium, high/minor, moderate, extreme). Often they will create their own tracks/paths for these storms and it either conflicts with what the NHC has and/or they overlay their forecast on top of NHC's cone. The media also does a poor job concerning the cone NHC uses because they don't use it properly and explain to their audience what the cone actually is. Impacts are felt outside the cone and the media makes it seem its the opposite.

22 minutes ago, MANDA said:

Not to at all diminish the death toll, one is too many but I think this will likely be the costliest hurricane to hit Florida.  Populated area, slow moving and intense at landfall.  Swath of flooding as it crossed the state and some very expensive real estate in the way.  We'll see hot it goes but for certain will fall into the top 3.

Seen a new estimate today, $63 billion for Florida. Again that’s mostly for damage caused in SW FL and not the flooding damage through central and eastern sections of the state. I’m curious as to the total cost Ian will have inflicted overall. 2 US landfalls with extensive flooding which should put him in the Top-3 for US hurricanes. And there’s Cuba and we still don’t know a lot about his impacts down there yet. Ian has a shot at being one of the costliest Atlantic hurricanes.

1 hour ago, OSUmetstud said:

Some of the Cat 5 landfall talk seems pretty silly. It may have been a cat 5 a few hours west of landfall in the western eyewall, but there was no evidence of it being a cat 5 at landfall that I saw. Michael actually had near 140 kt SFMR near landfall. At least one of the reasons they didn't upgrade operationally for Michael was that the SFMR does have a high bias in shallow water. 

Fairly certain there’s been questions with Michael too. I remember when Tim Marshall surveyed the damage after Michael he noted he couldn’t find proof winds ever exceeded 140mph. His survey didn’t yield any definitive proof either and that was because as he noted a lot of the structures in the panhandle are pre-1995 and were constructed poorly. With Ian, he caused catastrophic damage to an area that has modern building codes and an area that was rebuilt after Charley. We will see what his survey says and what NOAA decides to do in the months to come. In the end NOAA went against the survey and still rated Michael a Cat 5. Also we are still not seeing the whole picture with Ian and it’s still in the early stages of the aftermath.

17 minutes ago, USCG RS said:

Facing a Dire Storm Forecast in Florida, Officials Delayed Evacuation https://nyti.ms/3SKlqzP

"But while officials along much of that coastline responded with orders to evacuate on Monday, emergency managers in Lee County held off, pondering during the day whether to tell people to flee, but then deciding to see how the forecast evolved overnight."

This is pretty damming if its the whole story

I sincerely hope the media is exaggerating that story or they reported BS and didn’t do their homework like always

5 hours ago, jbenedet said:

Use IKE. Integrated kinetic energy.

 

 

How could this be used to get the general public to understand it?

4 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

Why don't we adopt a more West Pac type scale?  They get the worst TC on the planet and I like their scale better.  Instead of Cat 5, they should be called "Super Hurricanes" when they hit 150 mph.  And the scale should be ordered by 5 mph (or 10 mph) which is how the numbers are reported instead of some random number like 74, 111 or 157.  Minimum hurricane should be 75 mph and the highest category should be double that or 150 mph "super hurricane".  It makes a lot of sense and is far easier to remember.

Minimum hurricane ..... 75 mph (or 70 mph)

Moderate hurricane ..... 100 mph

Major hurricane ...... 110 mph

Catastrophic hurricane ..... 130 mph

Super hurricane ..... 150 mph

 

I do like that scale they have and adopting a similar scale might help the general public understand hurricanes better. However, the scale still focuses on winds. This still doesn’t solve the issue with Sandy, Fiona, Ike. Sandy and Fiona were both hybrids. Fiona struck Nova Scotia with 931mb of pressure but winds were only 100 mph (Cat 2) and Sandy struck the northeast with 940mb but only had 80mph winds (Cat 1). We need a scale that also handles these hybrid hurricane situations properly…..and storms like Ike that were a Cat 2 but generated Cat 4/Cat 5 surge at landfall.

24 minutes ago, Floydbuster said:

What about the "Hurricane Severity Index" thing from a few years back?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Severity_Index

I actually think Hurricane Ian may have ranked rather high on that one, because it takes into account size and strength. 

 

You may be interested in this study from 2008 about "return periods" for hurricanes. Basically, it takes factors into account based on wind and pressure at how often a hurricane of similar wind or pressure should hit an area.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/21/2/2007jcli1772.1.xml#i1520-0442-21-2-403-t03

For example, as you can see, a "Charley" type storm should hit the United States every 13.7 years. We should see another Camille storm by 2032, which would be the next ten hurricane seasons. They note the rarity of the 1935 Labor Day storm. 

One that seems overdue by all standards and accounts is Hurricane Hugo. I also think Georgia's major landfalls of over 100 years ago make that coastline overdue.

Picture a tiny pinhole eye over Padre Island, TX or Key Largo, FL with a sub-900 mb pressure. That'll probably be the next '35 Labor Day-type storm. 

 

I will have to read up on the severity index. The return period study is also interesting so I’ll have to delve into that more. Now concerning the GA/SC coastline, yeah they are overdue and been overdue for a long time. Let’s not forget how close they came with Florence, when in the early stages of that storm the Euro was showing a Savannah, GA landfall as a Cat 4. Than it shifted to a SC landfall before eventually locking on a Wilmington, NC landfall. Not just GA/SC but NC is overdue as well.

35 minutes ago, Floydbuster said:

I think the only future U.S. Category 5 landfall that isn't a posthumous upgrade would have to be something long-tracked and constant Category 5 (like if Irma had never gone to Cuba and had struck the Keys as a consistent Category 5) or if the pressure wound up so low (something like 912 mb) with corresponding winds to where it would be painfully obvious the storm was landfalling as a Cat 5.

The downside to using pressure is Sandy and Fiona type events. They had pressure of Cat 4’s but struck at much lower intensity concerning winds. I do like where this conservation is going because it’s obvious the Safir Simpson scale is outdated. It doesn’t do a good job with these Sandy, Fiona, Ike, Katrina, Ian type storms.

18 minutes ago, Floydbuster said:

I guess the word on the street among the people I know who don't track hurricanes that they "heard" the NHC wouldn't call Hurricane Ian a Category 5 for "insurance purposes".

I actually don't think Ian ever achieved Category 5, despite what many have stated on twitter. Michael was a different story, getting to 919 mb on the North Gulf Coast in mid-October, blowing trains off their tracks, and insane sustained winds. Ian was a high-end Cat 4 no doubt, but the NHC would have upgraded had the information indicated a Cat 5. It didn't.

Michael didn’t achieve Cat 5 until the review process and the TCR was composed. Andrew didn’t achieve Cat 5 until the reanalysis in 2004. When these storms landfall there’s a whole set of data they have that we don’t have access to that they flag for review purposes. We see only what they want us to see if the recon data. So in saying that, we will wait and see what their review shows of Ian. Keep in mind damage might not look that bad and understand a lot of that area was rebuilt after Charley. Michael rolled through an area that had poor building codes. 

7 minutes ago, bdgwx said:

Per the latest NHC advisory and using the IKE calculator Ian has an IKE of 128 TJ. 

That’s very impressive, Irma for comparison was 125 TJ