Re: Stump the Meteorologist

by halfwise Mon Aug 28, 2017 7:06 pm

Here's a good interview. It seems that they had a very good idea it was going to stall, based on upper level winds which are far more predictable than lower ones. So yeah, if there was a plan to evacuate flood prone areas they could at least have gotten the most at risk out.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/26/16206554/hurricane-harvey-2017-flood

by halfwise Tue Aug 29, 2017 11:48 am

Harvey's drifted for New Orleans! Crap, crap, crap, crap!!! Sad

by Pettytyrant101 Tue Aug 29, 2017 12:04 pm

{{{Oh that should be ok Halfy- its mainly black people live there. If the last time New Orleans got hammered by a massive storm is any guide we should know by now no one really cares in America when its happening to black people! Maybe Trump can send some white supremacists down to hold a party instead. }}}

by halfwise Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:12 pm

Actually looking at satellite and radar together, it looks like the wet spiral arm is passing over now, then the direct rainfall on New Orleans should be over. Will still have river surge to contend with from inland rains....

by azriel Tue Aug 29, 2017 2:48 pm

https://www.facebook.com/ABCNews/videos/10156233926518812/

saw this on facebook, hope all the animals are ok ???

by halfwise Tue Aug 29, 2017 3:26 pm

There are thoughtful souls like those in the video, and with the low death count of humans so far they may have time to get the animals out, if they complain loud enough! (note how many of these kind souls appear to be the type Trump is trying to keep out or incarcerate. Mad

)

by malickfan Wed Aug 30, 2017 3:56 pm

Came across this photo on reddit,

Stump the Meteorologist - Page 10 4eadvap6triz

This was uploaded yesterday, about 7-8 foot below those waves lies the Interstate 10 near the town of Winnie, Texas...take away the sign and you might think it's the ocean.

Apparently that photograph was taken more than 15 miles inland. Shocked

Video:

by azriel Wed Aug 30, 2017 4:33 pm

You can hardly believe this is possible pale

Its frightening !

by halfwise Wed Aug 30, 2017 4:51 pm

I grew up in Houston. I need to find a map of flood water depths to mull over my old stomping grounds.

by Eldorion Wed Sep 06, 2017 10:24 pm

So with Irmageddon having arrived in the Caribbean, is this looking like the worst Atlantic hurricane season since 2005? All I really have to go on is how much hurricane-related devastation I can recall hearing about in any given year, which isn't a great metric.

by halfwise Wed Sep 06, 2017 10:58 pm

It's really not my area of expertise. Anyone can look this stuff up as well as I can, but I think you are right to zero in on damages, which are primarily to do with hurricane track and only secondarily to do with actual hurricane intensity. Most don't make landfall, as seen by this map of hurricane tracks, where color denotes intensity. So a "bad hurricane season" may be pure chance of where or if they make landfall as opposed to whether they are actually stronger or not.

Stump the Meteorologist - Page 10 8-1-12_IOTD_HistoricalHurricaneTracksToolNOAA_720_395_s_c1_c_c

Stump the Meteorologist - Page 10 8-1-12_IOTD_HistoricalHurricaneTracksToolNOAA_720_395_s_c1_c_c

by azriel Sat Sep 09, 2017 7:23 pm

https://www.facebook.com/kelly.johnson.184881/videos/10211815999173532/

by Mrs Figg Sat Sep 09, 2017 10:02 pm

I wonder if Mar a Lago will get hammered.

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Sep 10, 2017 2:19 am

{{Can but hope for some small humour to come of all this catastrophe Figg! }}}

by halfwise Sun Sep 10, 2017 1:34 pm

If Mars a Lago is wiped off the earth it would save us more in secret service costs than it would to rebuild it. Evil or Very Mad

Az: I've never seen anything like that before! Seems the low pressure of the Hurricane created such a swell below the storm that it dropped sea levels significantly around it. I would *never* have believed it if not for that video. Just WOW.

by azriel Sun Sep 10, 2017 4:01 pm

I know ! I could not believe what I was seeing, its astonishing !

by halfwise Sun Sep 10, 2017 6:09 pm

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hurricane-irma-sucked-ocean-away-032624546.html

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Sep 10, 2017 7:23 pm

{{{ Well on the bright side at least you've got a President and an Administration that takes climate science seriously........}}}

by Eldorion Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:55 pm

So, halfy, how fucked is the East Coast at the hands of the "bomb cyclone" or "winter hurricane" that's about to hit. Is this the real deal?

by halfwise Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:31 pm

Well, I'm not a forecaster so I can't look at patterns and tell you how unusual a situation is looking. But I can tell you we have setting up the proper conditions for "bombagenesis", in which the low pressure that is currently over the Great Lakes has air circulating around it counter-clockwise, pulling cold air down from the north and blowing it over the atlantic along the coasts of the southern states. This pattern is moving north east.

so what does this do? Cold dry air from the continent is blowing over the gulf stream, which is currently anomalously warm, especially up north, as shown in THIS MAP. So you have cold dry air over warmer moist air. Of course warm air if perturbed into the cooler air above it will continue to rise. What's more, once the moisture condenses it will warm by condensative heating, while the dry air above it will not, increasing the temperature contrast. This is the same reason we have tornado alley off the rockies: cool dry air from the rockies meets warm moist air diverted along the mountains from the Gulf of Mexico. Same effect: massive storminess.

It's the warm anomaly of the Gulf Stream plus the strength of the continental low that's got people excited. But don't look to me for making predictions - not my area.

by Eldorion Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:40 pm

Thanks, I appreciate the insight. Smile

Local reports I've seen seem uncertain whether we'll get snow this far from the coast (which isn't that far, but at least we're west of the Chesapeake Bay). Hopefully it's not too much.

by halfwise Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:57 pm

Yeah, the more typical pattern is the warm moist air from the ocean gets pulled over the land to mix with cold air, cooling and precipitating. This moist air is often coming in from the North East, hence the "nor'easter". It's less intense than what would happen over a warm ocean, but still full of snow.

by halfwise Tue Apr 17, 2018 7:31 pm

Interesting, Fox News published a rather alarming climate story with no snide remarks.

Dying Gulf Stream may trigger a global nightmare
Published April 17, 2018
Newser
Scientists are raising alarm bells after two studies found that the Gulf Stream—an ocean current key to regulating Earth's climate—is the weakest it's been in 1,600 years, the Guardian reports.

The culprit is apparently melting sea ice and glaciers, which inject fresh water into the North Atlantic and weaken the stream. "Fiddling with [the Gulf Stream] is very dangerous, because you may well trigger some surprises," says climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf.

"I wish I knew where this critical tipping point is, but that is unfortunately just what we don’t know." If the stream dies, scientists say, its equatorial heat would stop reaching the North Atlantic—plunging Europe into bone-numbing winters and affecting weather worldwide.

Even subtler changes "could wreak havoc" on the Atlantic Ocean's "delicate ecosystems," Smithsonian reports. The studies differ in approach and timeline but both say the Gulf Stream has diminished by about 15%, Nature reports.

One study spotted it by measuring sediment on the ocean floor and says the problem began when the Little Ice Age subsided around 1850. The other, which analyzed sea surface temperatures combined with advanced climate simulations, says the decline started around 50 years ago.

But both see human-influenced climate change as a cause, Nature says. And with Greenland's huge ice cap melting at a historic rate, some say the Paris climate agreement is our only hope.

"If we can keep the temperature rise to well below 2C as agreed in the Paris agreement, I think we run a small risk of crossing this collapse tipping point," says Rahmstorf.

(Meanwhile the Doomsday Clock has ticked 30 seconds closer to "midnight.")

This article originally appeared on Newser: Dying Gulf Stream May Trigger a Global Nightmare

by David H Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:59 pm

I saw an article about that in the Guardian a few days ago. I'm glad to hear FOX is joining in the conversation. Tipping points are fascinating things scientifically, but you don't necessarily want to live to close to one..... pale

by halfwise Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:19 pm

I'm glad they were being cautious about saying what the ramifications were. A scenario common 15 years back is global warming melts the glaciers, which freshens the water around the arctic, shutting off the gulf stream because the less dense water cannot sink for the return journey...and then things got wild: the lack of northern transport of heat leads to and increase in arctic ice, which leads to more reflectivity and global cooling to the point of an ice age!

This snapback effect is fun to discuss but shouldn't be pushed with any certainty. If this idea had been pushed there would be much wagging of heads.