jm1220

This will be rough for SC. Huge area of TS to minimal hurricane winds will move a lot of water. It's more the size of the high wind area vs the strength of the wind that determines the surge. That plus any harbors/rivers to funnel it in which SC especially near Charleston has plenty of.

There’s already an insurance crisis in FL which I won’t get further into but I’m sure this will make much worse. I’m not too familiar with the Gulf FL coast, but it’s the same story in SE FL which I’ve visited many times since I have family/friends there. Every time I go it somehow gets more built up, and tons of developments around easily flooded canals/drainage ditches. I think the one thing that’ll finally stop the influx of newcomers is insane cost of living and unavailability of insurance. Basic 1 bedroom apartments are $2000+/month now without the corresponding salaries you’d get in the NE. It’s just insanity.

Agreed 100%. But the peaking before landfall isn’t unheard of but it seems more common especially in the last 10 years. Camille 1969 slammed into the N Gulf as a Cat 5. S FL’s population explosion was a catastrophe waiting to happen. And you can make building codes as tough as you want, people will still die when 6-10 feet of water comes charging through the neighborhood. The next one is the PBI to MIA stretch. Way overdue for a massive strike and even north of West Palm Beach is becoming overdeveloped. Thankfully that stretch isn’t too surge prone but when so many live just over sea level it doesn’t matter.

Not to go too far down this rabbit hole but “not tropical” doesn’t make it less severe. The most devastating part of any storm tropical or not is the surge, and “not tropical” Sandy was horrendous on that end as was 1938 and Fiona which just hit Canada. That’s another bias people need to get out of their head.

Hopefully for the south shore there’s a good soaking. It’ll be a nasty Saturday anyway with the increased winds/clouds so hopefully we can at least get the rain up here.

It’s already 70 mph and high end TS gusts are still happening in NE FL so it wouldn’t be a stretch at all for this to reach 80-85mph before landfall. There’s a lot of dry air and shear around with a disrupted core so it won’t come back more than that.

Doubt if they know for sure they stayed or if they got out at the last minute. No one knows for sure how high the death tolls are right now, hopefully it’s a significant overestimate. Too early to speculate on something like that and I’m sure crews are out doing rescues, but it wouldn’t be surprising if many did decide to stay that there’s a high death toll. Hundreds of thousands of people live in that area.

Very densely populated down there, and anecdotal stories that many decided not to evacuate. Hopefully not true and hopefully many can still be rescued if they decided to stay.

We take what we can get.

The surge would be that height above ground level plus the height above normal water level. So if a location is 13 feet above normal water level, 10 feet above ground level, and got flooded the surge was at least 13 feet. The surge is the height above the normal water level at that time.

Charlotte Harbor lucked out. Maybe the eastern shore got hit with surge as the eye pulled away but the big surge looks to be from Naples up to Sanibel. The major impact for Punta Gorda was wind, and I’m sure they got rocked. I wonder if it was worse than Charley. Probably lasted longer.

And water still rising in Ft Myers. Up to 8.57ft.

If that’s how bad Naples is I can’t imagine how bad Ft Myers Beach and Bonito Springs are near the eye.

When you’re told to leave and you’re in a flood area when you’re under a warning and well within the uncertainty cone, you leave. Intensity is the hardest thing to forecast in a hurricane and it was supposed to strengthen to landfall. Sorry, if you still refuse to leave I don’t have sympathy for you. And not everyone of course but as others pointed out Cape Coral/Ft Myers aren’t economically poor places. And they’ve boomed in population in the last 25 years. Catastrophe waiting to happen. Curious to see how it rebuilds after, but I’m sure it will given the demand still to move to FL waterfront cities.

They’re in for huge surge in Ft Myers for hours still. When the eye passes, wind will turn west which is still right into the bay. And that’s when the big surge into Charlotte Harbor will start (not as bad as Ft Myers/Cape Coral).

FT Myers is screwed for the back half of the storm too. All that is westerly wind coming into the bay. The images that’ll come in from there tomorrow/after will be horrendous, probably Katrina like.

Yeah honestly-hard to have much sympathy for people in Ft Myers/Cape Coral that stayed. If you’re told to leave and warned for days about the storm and refuse, that’s on you. And if they assumed EMS can come get them now, that’s a hella rude awakening for them too. Those surge maps showed maybe 90% of Cape Coral underwater up to 9 feet. With 200k people there, if even 10% decided to stay, yikes.

Probably a reason why we're not seeing footage from Cape Coral (200k people most of whom are housed next to canals) anymore. They're done.

And it's 12 feet above ground level (if the camera is 12 feet above ground). The actual surge would probably be 15-16 feet or whatever it is above the normal water level.

Eyewall should be at Punta Gorda/Pt Charlotte now.

The bumps east in the last hour or two have made it much more serious in Cape Coral/Ft Myers. Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda may relatively luck out. Cape Coral looks like it has about double the population as Charlotte Harbor. Captiva may be getting into the eye now.

That city's screwed, not sure how else to put it. Over 200,000 people in that area. Yikes.

Yeah, sad to think that all that water going out some place is coming back in at another place. It's really like a mound and like we're seeing, something like a tsunami.

We'll probably see some land confirmations soon for the stronger northern eye wall. Headed for Venice and Sarasota as you said. Thankfully for them the surge won't be too bad. Charlotte Harbor and Cape Coral though....

Yep, presentation looks like it should be cover of a textbook. That EWRC yesterday was at the worst possible time clearly. Eye probably has the stadium effect. Captiva may be about to get into the eye.