MY MISERABLE STORY ......Hurricane Wilma

To borrow that well-traveled title.


The electricity is back on! My area was in the first ten
percent restored.

There's something 3 million South Florida residents without power
would like to say to the National Hurricane Center.
Getting the track right is NOT a successful effort when the
intensity is completely botched.

I don't care how many qualifying statements or disclaimers
they made. During the critical time period, about two days
before landfall, when the decisions are made on what to
expect. They were telling us the shear would weaken it
to a cat 1, then weaken further after landfall. To us down
here in Florida a poorly organized cat 1 that is dissipating
is no big deal. Barely miss a day or two of work.

But a TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILE WIDE
Category 3 is something entirely completely.... a couple
order of magnitudes.... BIGGER.

We were only one category away from a hundred billion
dollar catastrophe. Everyone down here was completely
taken by surprise on the intensity and especially the
scale of this storm.

There's another thing I'd like to say to the NHC. I know
their political leaders disdain any talk of global warming.
But there's an important trend that must be discussed even
if it leads to their taboo subject.

Wilma was a super-massive vortex.

Last year saw an unprecedented number of land-falling
hurricanes. No one could imagine a season worse, as
last year saw about as many hurricanes as you can fit
into one season. But all that energy has to go somewhere
so the hurricanes are simply getting BIGGER in size.
Forget the intensity for now, they are growing larger
in scale.

Much larger. We saw the incredible size of Katrina when
it was a cat 5 in the gulf. And now Wilma. The large size
of the eye usually indicates a weak hurricane, as they
strengthen the eye tightens. So the NHC sees the large
eye which shouldn't have time to tighten before landfall.
And with the shear of the turn all computer projections
show weakening. Wrong.

It spun up without the eye tightening much.. That NEVER happens.
It had an eye half the size of the Montana for chrissakes.
This is an unprecedented and significant change in hurricane behavior.
It's almost hundred mile wide southern stream of air feeding
the vortex was a most impressive event to witness. You could almost
set your watch by the timing of the lulls and explosive gusts. It had a
symmetry and mass to it that boggles the imagination. For crying
out loud the gusts literally shook the ground. No kidding, the ground
was swaying back and forth under my feet.

But the NHC will not want to talk about it. Why? Because
someone might then ask why are they bigger. Their 20 year
hurricane cycle won't explain it, were they bigger the last
few cycles? Being near a peak solar cycle won't fully explain
it either. We've had both those cycles operating for ages.

But if you add a new variable, global warming, on top of those
other two causes, then you get a more complete answer.
So the NHC won't go down that road since it leads to
somewhere their political leaders wish to avoid.

Meanwhile, the NHC pops a few corks over their accurate
track, while completely missing the true story.


Jonathan

s

In article ,
"jonathan" wrote:

But if you add a new variable, global warming, on top of those
other two causes, then you get a more complete answer.
So the NHC won't go down that road since it leads to
somewhere their political leaders wish to avoid.

And the Bush administration has a long, well-established history of
firing scientists and administrators who don't say exactly what they are
told to say (or don't refrain from saying what they are told not to say).

I don't blame the folks at the NHC; I blame the evil *******s trying to
suppress science and spread mistruth with an iron fist. I know what:
let's teach intelligent design while we're at it, too! Then people will
grow up really misunderstanding even the basics of science, and we'll be
able to pull the wool over their eyes much more effectively down the
road. Nothing like an ignorant population to swallow whatever BS their
leaders feed them, to keep those leaders in power.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

Category four and five storms often blow up like that in size, after
they go over land. The classic example was Michelle in 2001, an
intense, compact category four storm, moving retrograde, blasted right
through central Cuba late in the season, and then blew up to a very
large oblong category three eye, that literally engulfed the entire
chain of the Exuma Cays in the Bahamas, causing a massive amount of
damage.

You guys had plenty of warning. That was the most intense hurricane on
record. Anytime a hurricane that intense forms, it's going to take
quite a while for it to dissapate. You were lucky it was moving so
fast, otherwise it would have been a lot worse.

Remember your hard earned lesson, and use it to your advantage the next
time.

http://webpages.charter.net/tsiolkovsky/rocket.htm

While it's still fresh, I'd like to type out a few of the
more interesting observations of Hurricane Wilma.


"I've got these things down pat"

I proudly thought as I sat down to my last warm meal
before the power went out. Managed to finish cooking
breakfast just a couple of minutes before it went dark.
Had to finish eating by candlelight. Been there, done that
I crowed.

At that point the gusts were hitting maybe fifty knots or so.
Which meant I had just enough time to set up a bunker
in the bathtub. Get the parrot in there, titles to car etc
and get comfy. Being fascinated by these things I decided
to stay out and watch as long as it was safe.

But once the gusts starting kicking up it became clear
the windows were teetering on blowing out, or in, as
the case may be. The sliding glass window was bellowing
in and out by a couple of inches depending on the
pressure at the time. A gust at the glass would want to
blow it in, while one that's at a different angle would
want to suck it out. It appeared having one break would
be a bit like decompressing, there'd be glass and objects
suddenly flying about, so I retreated to the only safe place
from flying glass, to the tub at about 8 am.


In the bathroom sound became the only way to observe.

As the storm approached, a very interesting trend of highly
consistent lulls and peaks of wind intensity set in. The lulls
became shorter, and the peaks stronger with each passing
cycle. With each being very consistent in changing duration and
intensity. The most common period was a lull of maybe
twenty seconds with a following gust twice that long.
This trend lasted for about an hour and a half while
the storm approached, and the same amount of time, but
a mirror image, as it moved off.

In an eastward storm the southern half provides the main
pipeline of air feeding the vortex. In this massive hurricane the
feeding sea of air was almost a hundred miles across. It became clear
it had separated into adjacent bands of differing velocities
as it spiraled in. Analogous to a ring system around a planet.

I've witnessed the same effect during Hurricane Andrew and
Katrina, but it was more like a few successive squall lines.
The massive size of Wilma, almost 250 miles across, produced
this effect in far greater number and symmetry.

I couldn't really count them, but once the storm reached
hurricane force, this cycle of lulls and peaks numbered at least
twenty or thirty on each side, building up then down.

I'll try to describe one cycle as best I can.

With each lull came a prayer. "Is that the eye?" "Please Lord
let that be the eye". The last pic of the storm before the power
went out showed it was jogging a bit south and the eye might
pass overhead. Which would be good news, if my building could
take the leading edge it could make it through the trailing edge too
and it'd be over. Having the eye pass north meant the dreaded
southern eye wall would be sweeping by instead. Which means
a very long storm.

With each gust came another prayer. "Please Lord let this gust
be less, not more, than the last." Which would mean the storm
was finally retreating and it'd be over.

Each lull the wind would die off to maybe 30 knots or so. A significant
reduction. Each gust was preceded by a rather ominous roar.
When it hit, the first noise was the banging of the interior doors
for about ten seconds. Even though the windows were still sealed, the
shaking of the building caused the doors to bang as if someone
was knocking furiously to get in. All four doors together made
it rather noisy. The bathroom vent would howl and the toilet
would gurgle surprisingly loudly as the water was being sucked
out. Only the strongest gusts made the toiled 'sing' which
provided a nice barometer. If the toilet stays quiet I can relax.

At this point I noticed something rather odd. I was laying on my
back in the tub rather nicely, and after the doors stopped
banging, my shoulders would begin gently bouncing off each side
of the tub. Many times this happened, and for about five to ten seconds
I could feel a side to side movement of the building.
Which seemed unlikely for a rigid three story concrete block
building. Shaking and shuddering yes. But this was different.
It was a slow buttery-smooth movement from side to side lasting
up to ten seconds. With each period being a second or two.
This was during the very peak of the storm.

I couldn't fathom wind gusts causing earthquake-like motion
and assumed the building was coming apart instead. That is
until I decided I just couldn't sit there the whole time and
not take a peek outside during the height of the hurricane.
I just had to see what it looked like at the strongest point
of such a rare massive hurricane

So I waited for a lull and quickly ran to the sliding glass
window and opened it up just enough to stick my head out.
I planned to look for two things. One was the structural
condition of the building next door. And the other was
the wind direction to see if the eye was coming or the
southern eye wall.

The building was mostly ok, and the wind unfortunately from the west.
I looked up at the clouds, rather low while clouds in the
distinctive shape of a large semi-circle. Curved somewhat
away from me from one horizon to the other and banded along
it's length. I've never seen that before.

Then I saw something I'll never forget.

It was a gust. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a wall of water and wind
reaching to the clouds that looked more like the spray at the end of a
water hose. Except is was moving faster than you could watch.
It was the edge, a wall, of one of those bands sweeping across
from left to right while moving towards the complex at shock wave
like speeds. I spotted just a glimpse of it at about a hundred yards
and only had time to duck and run before it hit.

Now I could understand the movement of the ground.
Such a dense wall of water-soaked wind hitting numerous
buildings almost simultaneously could certainly impart
enough energy to make the ground sway. If a few hundred
pounds of explosives blasting out foundations nearby could shake
my building and make it sway, so could such dense and
explosive gusts.

I ran back into the bathroom rather flustered at that point and said out loud
"I'm convinced now, I'm staying in here till it's over"

I went back to listening to the cacophony of noises wax and wane
as they had. Constant roaring, banging, whistling, gurgling and
the occasional bang that sounded like someone had just
bowled a strike on the roof. Something would hit the roof and
the large ceramic shingles would flutter away in the wind.
It sounded like a bowling alley up there.

Then something rather dramatic happened after that.
A lull set in, except the wind didn't go from it's usual
100 knots to 30'ish. It went to completely ZERO in
a couple of seconds. Two hours of constant noise
and it became completely and suddenly silent for about
five to ten seconds.

I lifted my head up and "what the f " I could hear a pin drop
at the peak of the hurricane. Then just as suddenly came the
roar, bangs and back to normal.

The tornadoes form in the lulls I think. It happened exactly
the same way five or ten minutes later. The gusts
just before and after these two 'moments of silence'
were a bit less then the norm at the time. So I would suspect
these two tornadoes were fairly weak f zero or f one
in strength. I'm guessing they were 80 knot tornadoes
but larger in diameter than normal tornadoes of that
strength. I think these hurricane tornadoes spin up
in the eddies between the concentric bands of wind
spiraling into the eye.

Anyways, fix a couple of windows, a little water damage
and I'm ready for the next one. After this one South Florida
is almost hurricane proof. All the older buildings have
been culled over the years, and only post-Andrew code
buildings are left.





Jonathan

s

"jonathan" wrote in message
...

It spun up without the eye tightening much.. That NEVER happens.

Umm, When Wilma was a Cat 5 hurricane, it's eye shrank to a mere four miles
in diameter. It didn't spin up after that. It spun down. It's behavior
was predictable.

It had an eye half the size of the Montana for chrissakes.
This is an unprecedented and significant change in hurricane behavior.

You don't know much about other hurricanes, do you?

It's almost hundred mile wide southern stream of air feeding
the vortex was a most impressive event to witness. You could almost
set your watch by the timing of the lulls and explosive gusts. It had a
symmetry and mass to it that boggles the imagination.

Symmetry? When it was over the Gulf headed for Florida, it had a most
pronounced asymmetry. It was elongated from the northeast to the southwest
because of the jetstream it ran into over the Gulf. That jetstream was
steering the hurricane straight towards Florida. Its presence is why the
NHC forcast before it even left the Yucatan that it would strike Florida .
The timing of the lulls and explosive gusts you mention is typical of all
hurricanes. They are called feeder bands, and all hurricanes have them.

For crying
out loud the gusts literally shook the ground. No kidding, the ground
was swaying back and forth under my feet.

Hurricanes often do that. Welcome to Earth.

But the NHC will not want to talk about it. Why? Because
someone might then ask why are they bigger. Their 20 year
hurricane cycle won't explain it, were they bigger the last
few cycles? Being near a peak solar cycle won't fully explain
it either. We've had both those cycles operating for ages.

No doubt the cycle has operated for ages. But the fact remains that we have
very little long-term data on the formation and growth of hurricanes. Most
of the data has been collected in the last 100 years. Geologically
speaking, that is a very short period of time. It is very risky to make
long-term predictions based on such a small database.

Sounds prety miserable, ok. Mother nature can sometimes suck. We have
quakes, you have canes. But you can forget about the global warming having
created the series of storms, the national weather service has published
their research showing that these storms happen on frequency, and this is
just the beginning of the next period of numberous storms in the
caribbean/gulf area. And, no GWB does not tell the scientists what to say,
GWB can not spell science.

Surely, the canes are spent for the year, so until next season, you should
be wind free, hopefully.



"jonathan" wrote in message
...

To borrow that well-traveled title.


The electricity is back on! My area was in the first ten
percent restored.

There's something 3 million South Florida residents without power
would like to say to the National Hurricane Center.
Getting the track right is NOT a successful effort when the
intensity is completely botched.

I don't care how many qualifying statements or disclaimers
they made. During the critical time period, about two days
before landfall, when the decisions are made on what to
expect. They were telling us the shear would weaken it
to a cat 1, then weaken further after landfall. To us down
here in Florida a poorly organized cat 1 that is dissipating
is no big deal. Barely miss a day or two of work.

But a TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILE WIDE
Category 3 is something entirely completely.... a couple
order of magnitudes.... BIGGER.

We were only one category away from a hundred billion
dollar catastrophe. Everyone down here was completely
taken by surprise on the intensity and especially the
scale of this storm.

There's another thing I'd like to say to the NHC. I know
their political leaders disdain any talk of global warming.
But there's an important trend that must be discussed even
if it leads to their taboo subject.

Wilma was a super-massive vortex.

Last year saw an unprecedented number of land-falling
hurricanes. No one could imagine a season worse, as
last year saw about as many hurricanes as you can fit
into one season. But all that energy has to go somewhere
so the hurricanes are simply getting BIGGER in size.
Forget the intensity for now, they are growing larger
in scale.

Much larger. We saw the incredible size of Katrina when
it was a cat 5 in the gulf. And now Wilma. The large size
of the eye usually indicates a weak hurricane, as they
strengthen the eye tightens. So the NHC sees the large
eye which shouldn't have time to tighten before landfall.
And with the shear of the turn all computer projections
show weakening. Wrong.

It spun up without the eye tightening much.. That NEVER happens.
It had an eye half the size of the Montana for chrissakes.
This is an unprecedented and significant change in hurricane behavior.
It's almost hundred mile wide southern stream of air feeding
the vortex was a most impressive event to witness. You could almost
set your watch by the timing of the lulls and explosive gusts. It had a
symmetry and mass to it that boggles the imagination. For crying
out loud the gusts literally shook the ground. No kidding, the ground
was swaying back and forth under my feet.

But the NHC will not want to talk about it. Why? Because
someone might then ask why are they bigger. Their 20 year
hurricane cycle won't explain it, were they bigger the last
few cycles? Being near a peak solar cycle won't fully explain
it either. We've had both those cycles operating for ages.

But if you add a new variable, global warming, on top of those
other two causes, then you get a more complete answer.
So the NHC won't go down that road since it leads to
somewhere their political leaders wish to avoid.

Meanwhile, the NHC pops a few corks over their accurate
track, while completely missing the true story.


Jonathan

s

Good report. Thanks Jonathan.

Sorry, wrong again, on all counts.

Three strikes and you're out.

Several comments:

Hey, if you chose to stay, great. But shouldn't you have prepared a bit
beforehand, in terms of squirreling water/gasoline/food and so forth?
How about Parrot food?

People in earthquake areas have supplies, and houses reinforced.
People in flood zones have a plan, and usually a small boat. They know
which roads flood easily and which stay dry. They know when to stay and
when to go.
People in tornado alley have basements and storm cellars.
People who live in ice and snow winterize their cars, carry a sleeping
bag, a change of clothes, and usually some snacks in the winer.

What is it about hurricane "victims"? All I ever see them on TV doing is
hammering plywood over windows. That is a good start, of course. When
the storm is over, the first thing which happens is the appeal to
charities and the feds."Oh, pity me, I'm stupid..."

Just came back from a town whose downtown a mile wide was levelled two
years ago from a 4-5 strength tornado in SW Missouri. You can't tell
now---the town only lost two businesses permanently (people on the verge
of retirement) and Main Street is back in business. Yeah, the town dealt
with FEMA and SEMA, but mostly the town put itself back together, with
local contractors doing cost-share labor. No people screaming "we need
jobs and health care." Hey, if everything's broke, there is plenty of
work that needs doing, and you don't need to be a journeyman carpenter
to know how to hammer a nail straight.

The *Government" doesn't help. It seems to harass self-sufficient
people, while abandoning the clueless.

I really don't understand this. Of course, I am of an age where civil
defense training and preparedness were part of our science/health
classes...we expected nuclear attack any day, so we were taught and
learned tricks for living on one's own, with little external
infrastructure for weeks on end. Things like purifying water/wilderness
medicine/what you needed on hand to 'get along' for some time until
things got back to normal. Even something as simple as keeping two
week's worth of canned/boxed food in the house at all times--and even
how to use your refrigerator as an 'icebox'. Of course, there was no
way to mitigate radiation...except burrowing underground.

I'm just tagging here on Jonathan's experience...but there is something
seriously wrong with a culture which does not teach its children how to
find water, food, and shelter without a supermarket and a big brother
government to assist you. Or, even, to "know when to hold 'em and know
when to fold 'em" in dealing with a natural disaster. Sometimes,
running to safety temporarily is a *good* idea...

In article ,
jonathan wrote:
Last year saw an unprecedented number of land-falling
hurricanes. No one could imagine a season worse, as
last year saw about as many hurricanes as you can fit
into one season. But all that energy has to go somewhere
so the hurricanes are simply getting BIGGER in size...

Do remember that, aside from suspected long-term cycles, there is a *lot*
of random variation in number and size of hurricanes. That means there
will sometimes be years that have a most unusual number of them; sometimes
you'll even get two or more such years in a row. This doesn't necessarily
imply deep and sinister causes -- pure random chance will do that now and
then. A smooth, uniform distribution of hurricanes over time would be
very suspicious; clustering is to be *expected* if they are truly random.

There were two "once in a hundred years" storms in the North Sea in the
1980s... within three months of each other in 1987.
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