Hurricane Agnes

Oh I have been on that site looking up and down the coast. I also posted something here - about how the storm damage seemed comparable to what happened in Barbuda and St. Maarteen after Irma came through and contrasted with Harvey's damage in Rockaport!

I was looking at some of the archive footage of Harvey coming into Rockaport, TX, which seemed to have become somewhat of an indicator for "damage" from a Cat 4. And although many residences were more scattered throughout the area, there were strips of densely-built homes near the waterfront that suffered both major and catastrophic damage, but not to the extreme that you see at Mexico Beach. Harvey at initial landfall had a central pressure of 937, almost 20 mb more than Michael. The geography of the Rockaport area include barrier islands that may have had some mitigation of the surge as I don't recall seeing any chaser video that showed the type of surge that Michael produced at Mexico Beach. In fact since you mention Irma, the damage that you see in Mexico Beach seems to mirror that of Barbuda & St. Maarten from Irma (which was a Cat 5 at the time it hit those islands and had a 914 - 916 mb pressure at landfall). I can't speak for the type of construction code in Barbuda or St. Maarten vs FL, but the impacts of the hurricanes on each area seem pretty comparable. You also see some similarities with Maria landfall at Yabucoa & Humacao, P.R. in terms of white-out winds/rain.

Glad you made it out safely. I cannot imagine the terror and heartbreak for anyone who ended up riding that out and/or coming back to nothing but debris or nothing at all.

Ended up with my high for the day of 62 at midnight, and low of 49. It rebounded a bit to 57 but is now on the way down. Did have sun most of the day and then the high clouds rolled in. Currently 55 with dps in the mid-30s (haven't had that for awhile) and mostly cloudy.

Front came through after 11 pm and dropped an additional 0.15" yesterday for a total of 0.24". Also received 0.01" after midnight. High for yesterday ended up being 67 just before 10pm. Current temp is 53 with dps bopping around the low 40s.

Yes me too! Am trying to get some of my potted citrus plants sprayed with some horticultural oil before I bring them in for winter and it has literally rained almost every day since the 8th except yesterday. The temp has slowly crept up to the current 66 and it's overcast.

Had a low of 52 this morning and 0.09" of rain (so far), after which the temps started rising quickly. Currently 61 and overcast. And it does kindof feel warm out! lol

Hey Paul - You may have stumbled on this already but there is one out there called "Weather Display" http://www.weather-display.com/index.php It seems to have a rather active forum and I even noted that it had a WxSim subforum too since I think you use that as well. I can't vouch for it (with all the rest of my hobbies I wish I had the time to devote to something like this), but it might be one to try. It has a 30-day fully functional free trial to boot.

There is something else that happened (or didn't happen IIRC) that allowed this to thread the needle the way it did coming in "hot" and that was that I don't believe it ever got chance to go through an ERC before landfall. For much of its journey, it didn't keep a consistently closed eye until right before it hit, so it's scary to imagine if it had had an hour or so more time to ramp up even more before landfall, before it might have actually gone through an ERC (but by then it would have already been over land).

This was from a few days ago but look forward to the final analysis of surge - Also an interesting article pre-storm (10/10/18) reprinted by Scientific American - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hurricane-michael-could-do-billions-of-dollars-of-damage/ An early analysis from the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic Inc. found that just over 52,000 homes are at risk of storm surge damage if Michael arrives as a Category 3 storm on the northern Gulf Coast. Under a Category 4 scenario, the number of at-risk homes rises to 84,000, according to the firm. As of yesterday evening, the National Weather Service had issued a hurricane warning along roughly 340 miles of the coast, from the Alabama-Florida border to the Suwannee River. A westward drift—toward the Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin metropolitan statistical area—would be considerably more destructive than a landfall between Panama City and Port St. Joe, where both the number and value of at-risk homes is lower, based on reconstruction cost- value estimates provided by CoreLogic. If Michael’s storm surge is centered even more to the east, over Apalachicola Bay, it could hit several barrier islands—including the resort community of St. George Island—before plowing northward through the Apalachicola National Forest toward Tallahassee. There, between 7,000 and 12,000 homes would be at risk from a Category 3 or 4 storm.

The sun attempted to make an appearance here just before it set. lol I did see some cool altostratus undulatus clouds this morning. Got up to 58 today and currently 53 and falling. With the overcast, it might not get as low overnight as it did last night and seems that more rain is progged too.

Unless a bunch of folks were returning and attempting to go back to a house that managed to survive there, the town really doesn't have that many people there because quite a few of those properties were vacation/tourist rentals & "2nd home" condos and with chasers driving through, you really didn't see many cars still around. I think some of the hard hit areas (in terms of population of people who stayed), were in the areas east of Panama City like Parker and Callaway, and particularly Parker because it is pretty close to Tyndall AFB which was ground zero.

If you still have thousands of trees/electrical poles & wires/other debris across roads, plus buckled roads and destroyed bridges, people may not be able to get to a drop site to pickup any MREs. Other than Panama City & Panama City Beach, the rest of that area within the panhandle is pretty much rural. This was one of the issues that came up with Katrina - road access (and lack therof). And sadly you still have post-Florence cleanup going on. I heard on the local news here that some of the crews that had still been working in the Carolinas had left there and were on their way to Florida.

Looks like I bottomed out at 44 this morning and had a high of 56 yesterday. Currently 45 and mostly cloudy.

Many of those Mexico Beach houses/condo complexes were seasonal/vacation rentals and their big "season" tends to be in winter. If you do a Google Street View up and down the streets you will see all kinds of signs in front of the complexes hawking "vacation rentals". The "municipality" itself has a population of about 1200 (according to census reports) so I doubt the housing there was 100% occupied with 50% staying behind. You may have had some year-round residents who were back off the ocean a couple blocks who tried to stay (and may have holed up at one of the hotels) but I expect the larger casualty numbers may actually come from towns/cities like Panama City Beach (est. pop 12,800) and Panama City (est. pop. 37,600), where there were numerous pics showing several plots of land with trailer/RV parks filled with double-wides and campers, most of them flipped and/or tossed around. You also had Port St. Joe and Beacon Hill along 98 that probably had similar situations with some year-round residents vs rentals/vacation homes.