Topic: Hurricane Irene And All East Coast Related End O' The World Disaster Type Stuff

[RickZ]

Bastardi said it's going to Norfolk if she cuts up Chesapeake bay she could pick up steam
all the way to the Patuxent river.

The only good thing about going up the Chesapeake Bay is that the bay is rather shallow, and would slow the storm from strengthening, unlike if it hit Norfolk then went back out to deeper water before striking New England, Long Island, the Jersey shore or New York City.

[Pandora]

Pan you feeling yet?

Wind kicking up a bit but nothing major yet.  Not supposed to get critical until early morning.  Some of the NE part of the county already lost power, though.

[rickl]

After I left Lowe's, I fell back on Plan B which was to go to a gas station and buy some ice.  I have a big Igloo cooler, and I can also stuff as much as I can in my refrigerator and freezer.  When I got to the gas station I thought I was back in the 1970s with the lines at the pumps.  Luckily I didn't need gas.

But the ice in the gas station's freezer was almost gone.  I had to go into the back of the freezer, with the door closing behind me, to reach some.

I might try to get some more ice tomorrow.  Fortunately, there isn't any other shopping I need to do.  I would prefer to stay far, far away from any kind of store or gas station on Saturday because they are going to be absolutely nuts.

[John Florida]

After I left Lowe's, I fell back on Plan B which was to go to a gas station and buy some ice.  I have a big Igloo cooler, and I can also stuff as much as I can in my refrigerator and freezer.  When I got to the gas station I thought I was back in the 1970s with the lines at the pumps.  Luckily I didn't need gas.

But the ice in the gas station's freezer was almost gone.  I had to go into the back of the freezer, with the door closing behind me, to reach some.

I might try to get some more ice tomorrow.  Fortunately, there isn't any other shopping I need to do.  I would prefer to stay far, far away from any kind of store or gas station on Saturday because they are going to be absolutely nuts.

 Fill anything you have in the house with water and put it in the freezer,nothing too big or it will take a couple of days to freeze in case you can't get any ice later,you should have 24 hours anyway before it gets bad.

[Glock32]

Fill the bathtub too. You can use it for flushing the toilet if you lose water.

[rickl]

Fill the bathtub too. You can use it for flushing the toilet if you lose water.

I plan to do that tomorrow.  I should probably clean it first.

[John Florida]

My mother's a little worried about the storm so I have her cooking like crazy and she'll be filling the tub and her stainless steel pot with drinking water. But she has to wait for the storm to start first this way it won't be time wasted if the storm doesn't come.

 She wants to clean the house too for some reason just in case people come over??It's like wating clean underwear in case you go to the hospital I guess.

[Pandora]

My mother's a little worried about the storm so I have her cooking like crazy and she'll be filling the tub and her stainless steel pot with drinking water. But she has to wait for the storm to start first this way it won't be time wasted if the storm doesn't come.

 She wants to clean the house too for some reason just in case people come over??It's like wating clean underwear in case you go to the hospital I guess.

Because it gets harder to clean once the power goes out, if it does.  Plus, it helps work off the anxiety.

[John Florida]

My mother's a little worried about the storm so I have her cooking like crazy and she'll be filling the tub and her stainless steel pot with drinking water. But she has to wait for the storm to start first this way it won't be time wasted if the storm doesn't come.

 She wants to clean the house too for some reason just in case people come over??It's like wating clean underwear in case you go to the hospital I guess.

Because it gets harder to clean once the power goes out, if it does.  Plus, it helps work off the anxiety.

 OH I know. I'll be on the phone all day with her on Sunday. Pop will be on his couch watching westerns toll the power goes out then he'll be bitching up a blue streak.She'll be telling him to shut the hell up with the damned westerns and before thet kow it it will be Monday and start to get back to normal.

[rickl]

Irene has weakened overnight and is now a Category 1.  It will still bring a lot of rain to areas that don't need it, so flooding will still be a concern.

[rickl]

000
WTNT44 KNHC 270857
TCDAT4

HURRICANE IRENE DISCUSSION NUMBER  28
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL       AL092011
500 AM EDT SAT AUG 27 2011

SATELLITE IMAGERY AND COASTAL RADAR DATA SHOW THAT IRENE HAS LOST
SOME ORGANIZATION THIS MORNING.  THE CLOUD TOPS HAVE WARMED
SIGNIFICANTLY IN THE WESTERN SEMICIRCLE...AND THERE IS A LACK OF
CONVECTIVE BANDING IN THE SOUTHWESTERN QUADRANT IN THE RADAR DATA.
THIS SUGGESTS THAT DRY AIR SEEN IN WATER VAPOR IMAGERY TO THE WEST
OF IRENE IS STARTING TO ENTRAIN INTO THE HURRICANE.  AN AIR FORCE
RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT CONTINUES TO OBSERVE 90-100 KT
WINDS AT 700 MB OVER THE EASTERN SEMICIRCLE.  HOWEVER...THE HIGHEST
SURFACE WIND ESTIMATES FROM THE SFMR HAVE ONLY BEEN 70-75 KT.  THE
INITIAL INTENSITY IS REDUCED TO 80 KT...AND THIS COULD BE A LITTLE
GENEROUS.  DESPITE THE DECREASE IN CONVECTIVE ORGANIZATION...THE
AIRCRAFT REPORTS THAT THE CENTRAL PRESSURE REMAINS NEAR 952 MB.

THE INITIAL MOTION IS 020/12.  IRENE IS WEST OF THE SUBTROPICAL
RIDGE...WITH WATER VAPOR IMAGERY SHOWING A MID/UPPER-LEVEL
SHORTWAVE TROUGH IN THE WESTERLIES MOVING ACROSS THE GREAT LAKES.
IRENE SHOULD CONTINUE TO MOVE NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD INTO THE
WESTERLIES DURING THE NEXT 36-48 HOURS...WITH THE CENTER MOVING
OVER EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA...OVER OR NEAR THE COAST OF THE
MID-ATLANTIC STATES...AND THEN OVER NEW ENGLAND.  AFTER 48 HOURS...
THE CYCLONE SHOULD TURN NORTHEASTWARD AND THEN EAST-NORTHEASTWARD
WITH AN INCREASE IN FORWARD SPEED AS IT REACHES THE CORE OF THE
WESTERLIES.  THE NEW FORECAST TRACK IS AN UPDATE OF THE PREVIOUS
TRACK AND LIES IN THE CENTER OF THE GUIDANCE ENVELOPE.

LAND INTERACTION...DRY AIR ENTRAINMENT...AND INCREASING VERTICAL
WIND SHEAR SHOULD CAUSE IRENE TO WEAKEN AS IT MOVES ALONG THE U.S.
EAST COAST.  HOWEVER...THE CYCLONE IS EXPECTED TO REMAIN A
HURRICANE WITH A VERY LARGE WIND FIELD UNTIL AFTER LANDFALL IN NEW
ENGLAND.  EXTRATROPICAL TRANSITION SHOULD OCCUR AFTER THE NEW
ENGLAND LANDFALL...WITH IRENE GRADUALLY WEAKENING FROM 48-120 HR.

THE RADAR PRESENTATION OF THE CENTER OF IRENE HAS DECREASED TO THE
POINT THAT WE WILL BE REVERTING TO THREE-HOURLY INTERMEDIATE
ADVISORIES.

FORECAST POSITIONS AND MAX WINDS

INIT  27/0900Z 34.1N  76.5W   80 KT  90 MPH
 12H  27/1800Z 35.7N  75.8W   75 KT  85 MPH...INLAND
 24H  28/0600Z 38.4N  74.6W   70 KT  80 MPH...OVER WATER
 36H  28/1800Z 41.9N  72.7W   65 KT  75 MPH...INLAND
 48H  29/0600Z 46.3N  69.6W   50 KT  60 MPH...POST-TROP/EXTRATROP
 72H  30/0600Z 54.0N  59.0W   40 KT  45 MPH...POST-TROP/EXTRATROP
 96H  31/0600Z 57.0N  41.0W   40 KT  45 MPH...POST-TROP/EXTRATROP
120H  01/0600Z 58.0N  23.0W   35 KT  40 MPH...POST-TROP/EXTRATROP

$$
FORECASTER BEVEN

[RickZ]

Just got back from walking a couple of blocks to a grocery store to pick up a few items.  My gawd, but is it ever humid out there; it's like a 75^o sauna.

Bought some pan con chicharon for breakfast tomorrow as I know the Uruguayan bakery will not be open.

Now I've got to get motivated and make some French toast.

[Pandora]

Entire storm just dead-east of us right now.  Not too bad here.  Raining, with some gusty wind.  If it stays this way for a couple/three more hours, piece of cake.

[rickl]

I'm already seeing comments on other blogs that it's just a fizzle and nothing but media hype.  God, people can be stupid sometimes.

"Lifeboats?  Are you kidding?  I barely felt a thing.  A little ice on the deck never hurt anybody."

[warpmine]

Overhyped is what all these mental midgets did for the ferocity of the storm. It seemed perfectly logical that a cold front with dry Canadian air was going to play a big roll in this scenario but all the meteorologists chose to ignore it because it didn't fit their narrative of the "storm of the century. "

Ive seen it before time and again how that dry air diminishes a tropical storm rapidly. Hurricanes need moisture above anything else and so when they suck in that dry air, the moisture saturation of said air takes away from the energy of the storm. If there was a Bermuda high in the usual location and no cold front, this storm would have strengthened and stayed together far longer but it wasn't meant to be. Better luck next time.

The worst of this storm will be flooding from the rain which will be compunded because of the strom's track at slow speed.

[Pandora]

I believe it was a bit over-hyped as well, however, as none of these forecasters have perfect information/data, they put out what they think and the "newsies" do the hyping.  A couple days ago, the track was forecast to make a right turn and skim the coast; it never did make that right turn until a few hours ago, which is what kept me checking the "maps", dry air notwithstanding.

At the risk of harping on Hurricane Fran, nobody suspected she was going to roar right up the middle of NC along route #40.

[rickl]

I don't watch TV news, but I can well imagine the hair-pulling hysteria the MSM has been engaging in.

The winds are dying down.  That's good; it means less wind damage.  But Irene is still a large storm and will dump tons of rain in places that are already saturated and can't take any more.  That means flooding, and lots of it.  This storm isn't over by a long shot.  I continue to maintain that the preparations and evacuation orders were 100% justified given the information that was available at the time.

Here's Brendan Loy from last night:

Really, at this point we’re in the stage of waiting and watching what the actual impacts will be. We can be fairly confident that the flooding rains will be severe, and that power outages will be widespread — but that otherwise, the winds won’t cause much severe damage beyond North Carolina (although the duration of sustained tropical-storm force winds will create some problems). The big question is how bad the storm surge will prove to be. (Speaking of which, you can watch various NOAA tidal gauges in Irene-affected regions here.)

It’s expected that the sheer size of Irene, coupled with astronomical high tides, coupled with the storm’s slow movement (meaning that, at any given location, winds of at least tropical-storm force may extend through an entire tide cycle or two), will result in a greater surge than you’d expect given what Irene’s wind speed will be. This expected surge is seen as a major threat to various coastal locations, including low-lying areas in New York City, as well as to the NYC subway system, which is why New York ordered an unprecedented mandatory evacuation of “Zone A” and all of the Rockaways, and announced it would shut down its entire transit system starting Saturday at noon. (It also led to New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s epic rant at dawdling beachgoers, in the YouTube clip at the top of this post.)

But will the surge predictions be borne out? I remember well the predictions of a catastrophic, higher-than-the-winds-would-indicate storm surge with Hurricane Ike in 2008, and those predictions weren’t borne out by the reality (although the surge was plenty bad). Will the same thing happen with Irene, or will the surge meet (or exceed) forecasters’ expectations? I just don’t know. I certainly continue to strongly urge everyone to assume the predictions are true, and prepare for the worst. But I’m really very curious to see what will happen. Will the subways flood? Will the airports and the Rockaways be submerged? Will much of Hoboken be underwater? We’ll find out soon!

In the mean time, some smart decisions were made today. Mayor Bloomberg proved he’s not an idiot — well, at least not on this issue — and that he’s no Ray Nagin (who, incidentally, is apparently MSNBC’s new disaster preparedness expert), by ordering the mandatory evacuation around midday today, instead of tomorrow morning as he’d foolishly planned. Also, the NFL preseason game between the Jets and Giants, which had been absurdly scheduled to go forward tomorrow afternoon amid evacuations and transit shutdowns, has been rightly postponed to Monday evening. Sanity prevails over indefensible idiocy. Hooray!

Of course, the biggest decisions are the ones to be made in the next 12-18 hours by individual people in the path of this storm, deciding whether to take it seriously and what precautions to take. Bottom line: take it seriously. If you’re in an evacuation zone, leave. If you’re not, hunker down and make sure you have everything you need for a potentially long and unpleasant aftermath. Maybe some of the evacuations will prove, with the benefit of hindsight, to have been unnecessary, and maybe some of the hurricane-kit items won’t be needed, but it’s far better to be safe than sorry, especially when dealing with something as difficult to predict as a hurricane. So, as I keep saying on Twitter, take Irene seriously and #PREPARE.

And remember that, if the worst doesn’t happen, that doesn’t mean the storm was “overhyped.” It means that, of the various plausible scenarios that presented themselves to forecasters, we ended up experiencing one of the numerous “less bad” scenarios. Worst-cases are always unlikely, and most hurricane “alarms” end up being, at least in part, “false” alarms. That’s just the nature of the beast, as I wrote in my “misconceptions” post. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for the worst — every time. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. There’s just no other choice. That’s exactly what people should keep doing now.

Oh, and get the Hell off the beach.

[rickl]

As if on cue, Brendan just put up a new post.

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 it’s 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.

Regardless, the general parameters of this situation seems quite clear. Wind damage will occur, particular with trees and branches, but the winds will by no means be catastrophic. Power outages will likely be widespread. Inland flooding will be a big, big deal. 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 assume the 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 — and to the extent the media is pretending otherwise, it needs 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.

(Emphasis mine.)

[John Florida]

I believe that some of it is hype but you still have some idiots out there that don't get out when they should.If it isn't made clrear enough for them. What happens here is you get a bunch of idiots that do nothing for themselves to get ready and when it's at it's worst they call for help and fully expect somebody to come get them out of it putting others in danger.


  For the most part this isn't going to be as bad as advertised but all you need is an older roof with those nice brittle shingles and one gust of wind ripping them off and you have razorblades flying all over and they are enough to open gashes in you in a second.

 Stay in stay safe. and stay away from unprotected windows.

[AlanS]

Down here, if it's a Cat 1 or lower, we just stock up on alcohol and ride it out.