Hurricane Milton (not entirely OT)

[Philsmania]

Looks like this might be the Tampa Bay Area's "Big One". Clearwater, where the Phillies complex is, might be in the path for a direct hit.

[bkeich]

Looks like this might be the Tampa Bay Area's "Big One". Clearwater, where the Phillies complex is, might be in the path for a direct hit.

Yea, this looks like it might be horrible. Glad Les isn’t there anymore, not sure if we have others in the path. Not often that a Cat 3/4 hits a city.

I lived on Pensacola Beach when Ivan hit there, it was horrendous damage. Took years to get power back on the beach, which is an island. Pensacola Beach was actually somewhat saved by being 30 feet underwater when the 85 foot wave hit, however the first few blocks in Pensacola were completely destroyed (in some cases even the foundation of buildings washed away). Our 50m concrete swimming pool at the building I lived in is somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Luckily I had the good sense to at least go 10 miles inland for the storm, I hope people in Tampa have the same sense.

The geography of Tampa - St. Pete is really bad for water damage as it is bays inside bays and no high ground anywhere. Things are going to be wiped out.

[bkox]

Its already a cat 4 with 150 MPH winds.. Has 2 more days over open water.. this could be a significant cat 5.

The National Hurricane Center said in an 11 a.m. ET update that it anticipates Milton will intensify into a Category 5 hurricane later today.

[phillychuck]

NHC also is predicting the intensity will lessen to a 4 before hitting FL due to upper level shear. Hope they are right!

[bkeich]

Its already a cat 4 with 150 MPH winds.. Has 2 more days over open water.. this could be a significant cat 5.

Luckily it is going over cooler water as it goes North (although it is traveling mostly East), I think it is predicted to go back down to a Cat 3 before it hits, hopefully.

Could be it goes up as you say, but I really hope not. I have a lot of friends in that area that were just wiped out last week in Perry, this is just piling on.

[julio]

Even if the wind speeds diminish to Cat 3 (which would be "good," I guess), the storm surge that's building isn't expected to diminish much if that happens.

If we have any members in the region (or non-member lurkers reading this): Leave now! Get out ahead of the rush.

[Aquapong]

A lot of Flordians not on the coast don’t even pay attention unless a hurricane gets to a category 4. At present, it does look like it's going straight through the complex, but the track is always a prediction. A lot of times it winds up hitting somewhere completely different.

My wife has a cousin in the Tampa area and they aren’t leaving.

[bkox]

The tracts have been getting better..Helene's was pretty on point.. with just a slight wiggle to the east toward the end

[schillingfan]

Storm surge and flooding kills and causes more damage than wind. Ground in Florida is already soaked. Where does the water go? I hope they have evacuated the complex in Clearwater.

[dcsman]

Protect Jesse Biddle at all costs!

In all seriousness though, everyone please be careful. It is so scary how bad our weather is getting.

[Austinfan]

It may decline to a Category 3, but it's also expanding so the area of damage will be larger.

[Philsmania]

Have the Phillies done anything to evacuate the Complex staff, like charter a flight for them? Or, have they removed sensitive equipment from there? Although the Complex is not on the water, it is in a low lying area (former swampland, if I am correct) and some models show that it would be submerged in up to three feet of water in with a category four surge.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/203f772571cb48b1b8b50fdcc3272e2c/page/Category-3/

Tropical Storm Debby flooded it back in 2012.

It also means that the Phillies may not have the Complex at their disposal to stash taxi squad guys and keep them sharp during this Postseason run.

Note: this is all just-saying, not trying to fail to keep things in perspective, vis-a-vis the potential human toll.

[phillychuck]

I know people won't really care about this, but the image below (from NOAA) is a plot of 3-year running sums of global hurricane activity over the last 4 decades:

Perception of "bad" weather events is increasing, largely due to reporting and social media. Actual "bad" weather events are relatively flat. Atlantic basin has been active over the last decade, but it's still pretty flat historically, and Pacific and Indian Ocean activity is down a bit.
Keep in mind counts prior to ~1960 miss some storms that were not well reported or measured before satellites. Some services try to account for missed storms, but there is no general agreement on how to do that. (NHC image below)

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/Atlantic_Storm_Count.jpg

[Austinfan]

The better measure is the intensity of storms, it's not the numbers that have increased, but the energy of storms.

A Force of Nature: Hurricanes in a Changing Climate - NASA Science

If this is true, things are going to get a lot worse the next few decades.
For the first few decades of global warming, the oceans have absorbed most of the excess heat, now oceans are close to carrying capacity.

The problem isn't just the surface temperatures, but the temperatures below the surface - hurricanes churn the ocean, pulling up colder water that reduces hurricane strength, as warming goes deeper into the oceans, this will have less moderating effect on hurricanes.

Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content

The Ocean Has a Fever

Climate Change Indicators: Sea Surface Temperature | US EPA

[phillychuck]

I'm not arguing about climate change.

I'm showing data that is not disputed. The ACE index measures cyclone energy each season. It is also relatively flat over the late 20th/early 21st century, much flatter than most people think:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Accumulated_Cyclone_Energy_of_North_Atlantic_hurricanes,_OWID_multilingual.svg

24-hour news networks that spend a week reporting each major hurricane and two or three days on minor hurricanes distort public perception. The data is fairly flat. No one in the meteorology field disputes that.

In term of severe storms, the ten worst landfalling hurricanes in US history were (in roughly increasing order of devastation/death toll):

1853 Last Island Storm
1935 Florida Labor Day Hurricane
1957 Hurricane Audrey (Texas/LA)
1881 Georgia/SC Storm
1893 Sea Islands Storm
1893 LA Caminada Storm
2005 Hurricane Katrina
1928 Okeechobee Hurricane
2017 Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico)
1900 Great Galveston Storm

Let's hope Milton doesn't make the list.

[Squire]

Currently at the Orlando Airport. Taking off in a little under 5 hours.

[Austinfan]

I'd say from 1980-2020 there's a pretty strong trend.
You could say the same for 1850-1890, but we don't know what causes long cycles.

We do know the latest trend tracks global warming.
And it's what you'd expect as oceans warm.
More energy and moisture available should lead to more intense storms.

[phillychuck]

Good luck, Squire. You should be early enough to have a pretty routine flight. Why did you get to the airport so far in advance of your flight?

[Squire]

I figured it would be off the hook crowded and MCO security is pretty slow on a normal day. Turns out I really didn’t need to be here that early. Also someone in my traveling party is on an earlier flight to Dallas

[phillychuck]

My granddaughter lives in Melbourne (on the East coast) but right in the center of the predicted path, and is driving up to SC for the duration. Left a couple of hours ago and said the traffic wasn't too bad.