Irene Makes Landfall as a Category 1 Hurricane
Hurricane Irene made landfall this morning near Cape Lookout, North Carolina, as a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds estimated at 85 mph.
There is some indication on satellite and radar that Irene may actually be getting slightly better organized at this hour — the Outer Banks don’t provide much real land interaction, and the hurricane is still drawing plenty of moisture from the Atlantic, so that’s possible — but I’ll believe it when it’s verified. There have been a ton of false alarms over the last few days with this storm seemingly trying to get organized, so I’m not going to jump at every radar or satellite blip that suggests “tightening” or intensification. In any event, it’s hard to see Irene getting significantly stronger at this point. If she’s tightening, maybe she’ll hold together as a minimal hurricane through landfall in Long Island, instead of weakening to a strong tropical storm. That’s probably the realistic worst case at this point.
Regardless, the general parameters of this situation seem quite clear, and basically unchanged since yesterday. Wind damage will occur, particularly with trees and branches, but the winds will not be catastrophic by any means. In terms of wind, this may feel to a lot of folks like a strong Nor’easter. Power outages will likely be widespread. Inland flooding will be a big, big deal — if there are deaths in this hurricane, aside from the odd Darwin Award-winning surfer or beachgoer, that’s where they’re likely to come from. The severity of the storm surge is the big open question; we’ll see. (Watch the tidal gauges.) Residents in low-lying areas in evacuation zones should continue to assume the (realistic) worst, and should already be out or rapidly getting the Hell out. Bottom line, Irene is a big storm to be taken seriously, and it will cause a stormy weekend and plenty of damage, but this is by no means the worst-case scenario for NYC and the northeast — and to the extent the media or government is pretending otherwise, they need to ramp down the hype, for the sake of avoiding complacency about the next storm. Fear of a calamity was fully justified 24-36 hours ago, but we can now be quite confident this won’t be a world-historical disaster… even while being equally confident that it is a force to be reckoned with, and one residents should not blow off. Surely there must be some way to communicate both of these concepts simultaneously.
UPDATE: Irene, and its storm surge, head north
The track appears to have taken a substantially more western direction than most models I have seen. Could you comment on the implications of that (especially for NJ/NYC) either here or on twitter? Thanks
Brendan, Many thanks for your informative and well-reasoned posts on this storm. I am in eastern PA (Lehigh Valley area) and have been glued to your blog for several days now. Still up to my ears with prep work, but hopefully will have most of it done by tonight.
Slow news weekend…. Irene came ashore with winds of 33 MPH!
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/noaas-phony-hurricane-coming-on-shore-with-33-mph-winds/
Some places (Wilmington, VA Beach) 12 MPH winds!
Steve
Common Cents
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
Brendan -
Please comment on this map, from Weather Underground.com.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/noaas-phony-hurricane-coming-on-shore-with-33-mph-winds/
You can clearly see the eye and the circulation around it but the highest wind speed seems to be 35mph!
Looking at this, I see no hurricane at all, at best/worst I see a tropical storm. I checked weather.com because I thought this needed a sanity check and the highest wind speed I found there was 45 mph.
Looks to me that the scientific community once again has major egg on their faces and the major media and authorities are just lying with their scary headlines.
You state that Irene is attempting to get organized. Would a community organizer help? This could certainly help Irene become more destructive. We have seen increased destruction in our economy through the efforts of a community organizer.
1) It is often difficult to get accurate real time wind gauge info as a storm making landfall. 2) Ive seen reports elsewhere of 100+ mph gusts. 3) In any event, there is no possible way a 950mb storm is a tropical depression. 950mb is typical of a Category 3 hurricane. Inconceivable that it would only have 35 mph winds. Impossible.
Steve, do you even know how to read NOAA reports? Or how theyre generated?
1) Maximum sustained winds isnt the same thing as some kind of average across the storm. I cant provided an accurate definition (Im not sure whether its watching that the peak winds across the entire storm dont drop below a particular value over a particular time interval, or whether its somehow tied to a locality within the storm), but perhaps Brendan can offer some explanation once the event is over.
2) At the time you made that assessment, the fastest-moving part of the storm (from what I was watching, an arc on the east side of the eye) hadnt even reached land.
3) Windspeeds arent just measured at ground-level, theyre also measured by doppler radar and other instruments, and all storms are three-dimensional beasts. So to cry foul and single out one class of instruments, which can only see part of the picture (and a thin slice at that), is either foolhardy or disingenuous.
Heres your wind speeds. http://classic.wunderground.com/US/NC/ This is a tropical storm. NOAA strikes again. When will we defund these crooks?
NOAAs scientists are not crooks. Wind speed estimates are subject to some error, of course. But if a 950mb tropical cyclone were truly only producing 35 or 40 mph winds, wed have to rewrite the basic rules of meteorology, if not the laws of physics. This is a weather blog, not a sci-fi fantasy blog. Please take your ill-informed, half-baked NOAA Truther conspiracy theories somewhere else.
P.S. Are those official weather stations, or Weather Undergrounds Personal Weather Stations? If the latter, it is especially likely that power is out, instruments are malfunctioning, etc. Regardless, I stand by what I said. Is it possible Irene has a somewhat differently structured wind field than estimated, and maybe SLIGHTLY weaker winds? Yes. (Although I say again, I have seen reports elsewhere of much stronger observed wind speeds.) But this certainly, obviously is not some conspiratorially concocted fake hurricane. Thats truther talk.
(Sorry for the disappearing apostrophes and quotation marks. iPhone WordPress app issue.)
Brendan Loy
1) It is often difficult to get accurate real time wind gauge info as a storm making landfall. 2) Ive seen reports elsewhere of 100+ mph gusts.
I think the weather underground was reporting on GUST also. I remember hurricane Opal, we were inland in Alabama Opelika 80-70 MPH can cause a lot of damage. We lost many mature trees and power lines were down. I want to think we were without power for 5 days.
From weather underground: NOAA claims the winds are 85 MPH, but none of the Weather Underground stations in the area report higher than 33 MPH winds. By definition, this is not a hurricane – and is just barely a tropical storm.
So they are using their stations stats.
Par for the course.
No good deed goes unpunished.
The messenger is always attacked,even when he is right.
Good catch, keyboard jockey!
According to Weather Underground:
The terrible, awful, Godzilla like Irene is delivering devastating winds at an unimaginable 2.8 mph around well inshore Lanham MD. 35 miles and just a touch North of East of DC right now at 2:04pm est.
When I was a kid in the 1960s. This stuff was called Inclement Weather.
Its a Summer Storm, people! But we already know that.
thought in passing: A lot of people are going to complain about dire warnings that didnt come true. …but if the government didnt go there and do that, guess what everyone woulda said if the storm had been as bad or worse than initially feared? Ayup. Why didnt the government do sumpin?
Cant have it both ways and still call yourself an adult.
This s a dangerous ol world, folks. S*** happens…and a lot of that s*** can and *will* kill you, including the wind and rain in a weak tropical storm or even in a Category 1 hurricane.
Now, does anyone wanna go play with matches, because they didnt get burned the first time they did it?
Well said, Warren. Well said.
Anyone who is suggesting this is just a summer storm and nothing to be worried about must be ignoring multiple news reports of roof collapses, etc., and people being killed including a young child who had a tree fall through their 2 story house. Of course, this is not the storm of the century, but to scoff and suggest it is nothing to worry about is irresponsible at the least.
From Jeff Masters blog:
Wind damage
Irene is slowly deteriorating, but the storm is too large to weaken quickly. The latest wind distribution map from NOAAs Hurricane Research Division (Figure 3) shows that all of Irenes hurricane-force winds are on the storms east side, so only North Carolinas Outer Banks will get winds of 75 – 80 mph.
So much for the conspiracy theories about NOAA having egg on their face. The anti-intellectualism of a segment of the population is truly depressing to watch.
http://www.weather.com/tv/tvshows/Livestream
Streaming live coverage up and down the coast…
Its a bit worse than some commenters might think. At least six dead, so far, four in N.C. and two in V.A. …yeah, a couple of those dead folks did the Darwin Award thing… but a couple of them did everything right and died anway…
Winds forty to seventy mph with gusts over a hundred mph.
An inch per hour or more of rain in many locations. Totals of six to twelve inches or more are expected. iow, expect flooding and even flash floods in some streets and low-lying areas.
Unless trial lawyers become involved they will never show up in any storm related death statistics. but you can be certain a fair number of individuals have already died as a result of evacuation orders. In hospitals and nursing homes it is called transfer trauma or transfer shock. It is a well known. if little discussed, phenomena. Any time patients or residents are moved from one facility to another, or even one room to another for that matter, a certain percentage will die, most within 24 hours.
Ordering the evacuation of hospitals and nursing homes kills. It may be necessary, greatest good for the greatest number and all that, but to do so days in advance of an event which may or may not occur, may or my not amount to a hill of beans just to make it look like some politician is on top of the situation and doing something, is borderline criminal.
Dave, you raise an important point about the human cost of evacuation. You then make some pretty damn weighty charges. When exactly when would you suggest that evacuations occur? Keep in mind, uncertainties in meteorological forecasting (with the best presently available scientific tools) mean that once a worst-case scenario is certain, or nearly certain, to occur, it is already too late (by a wide margin) to evacuate. Evacuation decisions, yea or nay, therefore necessarily MUST be made at a time when the worst case may or may not occur. Unless and until our forecasting ability drastically improves, there will always be a large number of false positives, given the time needed to evacuate, coupled with the uncertainties of the forecast in that 48+ hour window. Did you think about those facts (not opinions) when you just basically accused numerous government officials of murder?
When its all over I think everyone will look back with amazement that such a minimal Hurricane caused so much damage.
It goes to show everyone how ill prepared we are for a Cat 3- to a Cat 5.
Thanks for the link Warren !
Why do we keep NOAA buoys if we simply discount the info we get from them? This is not meant as snark, but an actual question. I have been way offshore, listening to the official Weather Service Forecast on my marine radio, telling me winds were 5 knots form the North, with 3-5 ft seas, hanging on for dear life in 20 knots of wind, with 15 foot waves.
Ive been on NOAA all day, and have yet to see a measured wind gust above 60 mph. They also seem to be in terrible repair; all the ones of interest are broken. What the cynic in my thinks is that NOAA would rather have satellite info, than deal woth buoys, because its easier. If they have turned into economists, and, instead of identifying the real problem, simply read some tea leaves which have a political payback, like trusting to a plane at a different altitude and using some computer gimmickry to give them the answers, instead of doing actual work, then it is indeed a conspiracy. They might not be in on it, but aerospace beats buoys in every govt department. The only thing cooler is your own swat team. And government stupidity has no bounds. After all, whos gonna fire them?
Either we cant trust buoys or we cant trust planes and dipsticks. You cant have it both ways. Only experts, lazy experts would even try. Remember, if 100 out of 100 scientists say the sun will rise in the west tomorrow, 100 out of 100 scientists are full of crap.
Just tell me the truth. I can figure it out myself from there.
Perhaps I am just jaded from all that CYA small print that states Side effects may include… Never-the-less, whenever I see or hear the words may or could used as qualifiers in association with some pronouncement, a small voice in the back of my skull whispers Then again, it may not – weigh the risks then make your decision.
The problem as I see it is not that planning for a potential evacuation is unnecessary. (It might be noted that, by law, as a part of disaster preparedness, every health care facility in New York has a comprehensive written evacuation plan.)
Nor, when circumstances dictate, am I opposed to carrying out an evacuation ordered by authorities. The operative words being when circumstances dictate. To my mind, such an order 72 hours in advance of a slow moving storm whos path and intensity are still subject to an enormous fudge factor smacks of public relations. Twenty four to thirty six hours prior to the storms arrival would be more than sufficient and in a best/better case scenario, have mitigated or even eliminated much of the human cost.
I live in eastern NC (Swan Quarter). According to the various weather reports the center came directly over my house. There are a number of very large trees down. There was some flooding in areas not encircled by a local levee. I have lived here for 57 years and while Irene was not the worst storm I have seen, she aint much fun.
If I lived in a densely populated area where flooding was a problem or if I had a large tree near my house, I would worry.
Did you think about those facts (not opinions) when you just basically accused numerous government officials of murder?
I do not think even for a second these politicians are consciously trying to murder anybody. The problem is that human beings often tend to lie to themselves when it suits their purpose. Many of our elected officials and bureaucrats sense an advantage to hyping the danger of the storm. Political sector employees are also serious beneficiaries. They are paid while staying home. Those who do report to work receive extra hazard pay. Indeed, one has every logical right to be suspicious concerning their motives.
Modern ambulances are built for one, maybe two stretcher case at a time. It sure would be nice to have the ambulances to empty all of the hospitals and nursing homes in an area targeted by a potentially dangerous storm in a couple of hours. Sorry, there aint that many ambulances and crews. Add the distance to the new, safe areas and the time it takes to spread those people out among the facilities that are mostly running at probably 85+% of capacity themselves and you damn betcha they make those decisions early. They have to.
In North Carolina where my daughter lives in Greenville, 60 miles from the coast, multiple trees were down in very heavy rain and her power went out yesterday at 2pm with 60mph winds. Fortunately she and hubby currently live close to the hospital where he is an administrator and power was restored within 6 hours to their area. My niece stationed at the AFB nearby reports their fighter jets were flown out at noon and they lost power at her house by 2pm.
I have a hard time believing anyone had winds 33 mph in Irene. Perhaps in the eye of the storm. Weather Nerd had better recalculate his analysis!
Bloomberg quietly open pro-Hamas operation at WTC
http://wwwtwosetsofbooks.blogspot.com/2011/08/bloomberg-quietly-opens-offices-of-anti.html
(Sunday afternoon) It has been a week for this Professional Engineer, and perhaps a time for all to learn what professionals really know, and what we do not know. On Thursday, I spent 45 minutes walking around my church. There were several spots where 3-4 bricks, on an edge, had split, roughly vertically, near the foundation. They probably were shear failures, in which the earthquake snapped north, and the building could not follow. Some caulking is in order, or freeze thaw will cause more damage, over the decades.
In the recent age of electronics, we have days of warning before a hurricane hits. We all now know it draws energy from warm sea water, and as long as it travels over warm water, it can grow. Other factors destroy its well defined high winds; it is inherently unstable, and falls apart into a rain storm. When this occurs, defines life or death for millions along the US eastern seaboard. I thought Gov. Christie of New Jersey shown the most wisdom, Get the hell off the beaches. The death toll is circa 11; he saved the 1.5 million (???) who listened, in his state, and evacuated.
Half of hurricane deaths occur after the storm, due downed power lines and traffic accidents. During the storm, most die due to surge, which is a very local phenomena.
Summing up, the lesson is use common sense, get educated on real dangers, and stay informed. And take the experts with a grain of salt. This is true of all technologies, on the edge of the state of the art.
I offer, in my expertise, structures, that quakes and wind storms, test, in a few seconds, the strength of any structure, you learn, for the first time, if they put the nails in. A good home should take 100-110 MPH wind with some damage (the occupants live), with smart preparation. Above ~ 110 MPH, leave. If you expect 1 ft of surge, leave. The experts simply are not accurate predicting wind speed and surge accurately, but they are getting better.
Haven`t the media milked this storm Irene, enough all ready. I am so tired of seeing it on TV and hearing about it. The people were warned, if they listened they are okay, if they did not heed the warnings. We do not have to worry about them anymore, it is called thinning the heard!