Friday, August 26, 2011

How Will Hurricane Irene Affect Minnesota?

Misleading headline. It won't. But keeping with our mission of evaluating weather forecasters, this can be a space for comments about forecasting for Hurricane Irene.

20 comments:

  1. RE: Bill on it weakening.

    It really doesn't matter. Rain and surge are the threats.

    Its the major weakness of the safir-simpson scale. Hurricanes have three threats: Rain, wind, and surge. The scale only covers wind.

    Irene is a large storm which means it will have very large surge. We saw it with Ike in 2008. It was "only" a category 2 but it had a surge similar to what you see with a category 5.

    There is a scale called IKE (Ironic since Ike brought it to fame) that rates wind and surge individually on a scale of 1-6.

    Right now Irene has a wind of 3.0 and a surge of 5.1

    ftp://ftp.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/pub/hwind/2011/AL092011/0826/1330/AL092011_0826_1330_contour02.png

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  2. Irene's track hasn't shifted much... I think it is set in stone that it will remain just off the coast... mabye sraping it's eyewall on the coastline.

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  3. Good point... there should be at the least three seperate scales, and at most one combined scale to highlight these threats.

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  4. @CWY2190 That's really interesting stuff! Definitely an opportunity for improved communication to the public.

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  5. NHC/NWS tries. They put in in their advisories what the rain and surge. The local NWS offices try to inform emergency manamagment but in the end what the media will say today is "Irene has weakened some and is no longer forecasted to become a category 3 again"

    Saw it a few days ago. Irene weakened from 85 knots to 80 knots. The first means its a cat 2 and the later means its a cat 1. You can't tell the difference between those winds, but all people hear is "weakened to category 1".

    Also, its worth noting that the 28th (I think) is perigee where the moon is closest to earth causing slightly higher then normal tides.

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  6. The eye is virtually gone. What's causing the weakening? Cooler water?

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  7. Eyewall replacement cycle. Having a hell of a time finishing.

    Crazy enough its exactly what happened to Ike. Make landfall in Cuba right after starting a replacement cycle and could never finish it before hitting Texas.

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  8. It must not be working with a very reputable contractor given the amount of time finishing the replacement. :-)

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  9. I wonder if the new eye will be larger or smaller... It could be the difference of the strongest winds for the east coast, orthe strongest winds remaining offshore.

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  10. Where can you go to find the updated wind/surge scale?

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  11. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/irene2011/wind.html

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  12. You can see on the microwave image how that inner eyewall just never disappeared and didn't allow the 2nd one to take over.

    Crazy how the exact same thing happened to Ike. Maybe its a trait of very large moderate strength storms.

    http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/5126/201108262324f16x91h1deg.jpg

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  13. I guessed 60-69 mph for Laguardia, but my guess would be 80-89 at JFK

    I didn't get much of a chance to look at it yesterday, last I saw was mid morning and it looked like some dry air was working into the western side, I think that is why It couldn't hold cat 3 status, although the central pressure did support it when compared to some past storms.

    So a question for CWY2190...would the shear size of Irene require a central pressure of say 920 mb or less in order to get it spinning fast enough to generate or sustain cat 3 or 4?

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  14. wow radar estimates from the Morehead City NC Radar.

    http://i960.photobucket.com/albums/ae84/arpetersonembaqcom/Irenerainfallat115pm.png

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  15. A definitely interesting storm meteorologically to media-coverage wise. Some networks/stations have done well and not over-hyped while others have done a disservice -- typical of any weather event. Did find it funny (and hypocritical) of one certain Twin Cities-based meteorologist to make comments on the hype aimed at weather channel. Nothing like the pot calling the kettle black if you ask many who have seen his tweets. Lets think back to numerous winter storms, heat waves and t-storm outbreaks well-over done/hyped by the same individual. Kinda funny. ;-)

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  16. A few facts.

    NYC was in the cone since 11am Tuesday. The impacted area of North Carolina was in the cone since 5pm Monday.

    Overall it took the models a bit of time to lock down the track but they did about 4 days in advance.

    Intensity was off a bit, especially for North Carolina but thats to be expected. Its still above our abilities.

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  17. Anyone see Paul Douglas's latest tweet:
    Hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but European (ECMWF) model prints out another hurricane ("Katia" or "Lee") over New York City on 9/11

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  18. Anonymous @ 1:32

    way to early yet, but yes it does, however the GFS takes it up to the Canadian Maritime, and as of yet, I don't see the EMCWF ensembles picking it up. Lets hope the GFS out preforms the Euro this time around

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  19. @Randy Interestingly, according to Jeff Masters: http://classic.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1907, the highest wind gust was at LaGuardia with 67 mph, while JFK had a high gust of 59 mph.

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  20. Hmmm interesting indeed Bill

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