jm1220

7 minutes ago, StantonParkHoya said:

Believe me, no one is using this thread full of nut-jobs to make decisions. It's really more for ease of aggregation of information (ie. models, met commentary, etc.) in one place. I really don't care what Bob Smith in Philly thinks is going to occur.

7 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Euro is very wet 

Hope it’s right. Would be worst for people who need it. 

1 minute ago, Great Snow 1717 said:

Sandy wasn't a Cat 3 or higher hurricane. ....the damage would be far more extensive.

It had the pressure of a Cat 3, huge overall size and the funneling effect of NY Harbor and back bays to channel in the surge. The winds weren’t Cat 3 level but the same energy was just spread over a larger area. The surge was devastating for millions of people. Actual Hurricane Gloria made landfall in my town and was nowhere near as bad, as well as actual borderline TS/Hurricane Irene. 

Again there’s no magic delineator between “non-tropical” and “tropical” that defines how dangerous a storm is. It’s why so many changes were made to the NHC products after Sandy. My hometown on a barrier island had scores of people that stayed because they heard “Sandy won’t even be a hurricane” when it gets here. 

Some places preemptively cut the power in FL where surge intrusion was expected, which was probably a very good call if it happened. Another mistake my town made was keeping the power grid on even as the surge was charging in.   

9 minutes ago, NJwx85 said:

Sandy more or less destroyed the power grid from Tom’s River up to Brooklyn/Queens and most areas had power back in about 7-10 days. Now a days you have massive mobilizations of crews from out of state, the power wouldn’t be out for more than a few weeks.

My town had no power for a month because of the power infrastructure problem FL will be dealing with. Places that didn’t flood in Sandy did get the power back in a week or so, and crews from IN and MO were in my town working on it. In areas that had saltwater intrusion into any power infrastructure it likely needs to be rebuilt entirely. Anything electric/metallic, the salt water destroys. 

12 minutes ago, MattPetrulli said:

I feel like a lot of this region will receive Hurricane Matthew esque impacts if not worse.

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. 

1 minute ago, ag3 said:

 

I was just in SW Florida. From Clearwater Beach to Captiva. Visited all of it and made stops at several of the pristine beaches. The entire time I was thinking, I cant believe what they have built on these barrier islands. It was a disaster waiting to happen. They got complacent and built homes, condos and beachfront buildings where they should not have been.

I'm curious to see if they rebuild to the same extent. If I'm an insurance company I would never again cover any structure on those barrier Islands and if I did, the premium would be tens of thousands a year.

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. 

1 minute ago, SnoSki14 said:

The complacency and hubris is the killer. Yeah let's just build a city partially underwater. Let's build floating neighborhoods in a known hurricane region. 

But blocking patterns and warmer sea surface temperatures have elevated surge/flooding. Hurricanes peaking before landfall like Michael was unheard of. 

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. 

2 minutes ago, Akeem the African Dream said:

the 1938 SNE storm wasn't even tropical at landfall

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. 

2 minutes ago, MANDA said:

Convection building around the northern and eastern quadrants of the circulation, there was nothing there for most of the morning.  A faster movement across FL and wider swing east over the gulf stream before heading to the north will given Ian the edge to reach low end Cat 1 status prior to SC landfall.  As a side note it really is interesting how through most if not all of the track it has favored the right edge of the cone.  Anyway radar and visible satellite not looking shabby.

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. 

Just now, Mikeymac5306 said:

Easy. They have a list of places they evacuated and a list of those who stayed in those evacuated places. 

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. 

7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

That is just awful news is true, and totally presentable.

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. 

1 hour ago, WestBabylonWeather said:

Not happy for a weekend washout. But I’m ok with it. Need it on the south shore 

We take what we can get. 

Just now, schoeppeya said:

Severe studios cam there was that elevation and was submerged pretty early on.

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. 

1 minute ago, bobbutts said:

I don't see any evidence of Punta Gorda underwater based on live video throughout the event.  The winds have not aligned to push water up Charlotte Harbor.

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. 

Just now, HKY_WX said:

Haven't seen surge images like this since Katrina.

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

2 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

 

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

1 minute ago, Sportybx said:

My parents are in Cape Coral right now , they were never told to leave , they weren’t evacuated. They are in zone 3 . Up till last night they were told it was only a high cat 2 maybe cat 3 that was going to hit Tampa , a lot of people stayed thinking it wouldn’t be that bad .
When you tell someone 4 hours before it hits its now a cat 5 . It’s to late .
That is on local , state and federal agencies.
I can’t even put blame on meteorologists because they are only right 8% of the time with anything .


.

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. 

Just now, MANDA said:

Looks like Englewood, Murdock, Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda and Lake Suzy are primed to get into the western and NW eye wall over next 30-90 minutes.  Going to be bad.  Fort Myers area in prime surge area they are getting lambasted by onshore flow and will continue to be for a while longer.  Surge still rising there.

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. 

7 minutes ago, H2O said:

They were told to leave

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. 

3 minutes ago, MattPetrulli said:

 

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. 

Just now, psv88 said:

Listening the whole time. Just said the camera being covered is 12 feet of surge

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.