Category 4 Giovanna battering Madagascar
Earth's most dangerous storm of 2012 is Tropical Cyclone Giovanna, which is bearing down on Madagascar as a powerful Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds. Giovanna is predicted to hit a heavily populated portion of the east coast of the island near 22 GMT tonight as a Category 3 storm, then move inland, passing near the capital of Antananarivo as a Category 1 storm on Tuesday morning. The outer spiral bands of the storm have already moved over the island, bringing heavy rains and gusty winds.
Figure 1. Visible image from NASA's Terra satellite of Tropical Cyclone Giovanna approaching Madagascar, taken at 6:35 UTC Monday February 13, 2012. At the time, Giovanna was a Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds. Image credit: NASA.
Figure 2. Webcam view of the skies over the Andila Beach Hotel in northwest Madagascar, taken at 6:15pm local time on Monday February 13, 2012. Image credit: Andilana Beach Hotel.
The forecast: not good
Recent microwave satellite imagery (Figure 3) shows that Giovanna has concentric eyewalls, and it likely that the inner eyewall will collapse today as the storm undergoes an eyewall replacement cycle. This process should gradually weaken the storm, and I expect Giovanna will weaken slightly to a still very dangerous Category 3 storm with 125 - 130 mph winds at landfall. However, the eyewall replacement cycle will spread out the storm's hurricane-force winds over a larger area, increasing the storm surge. A 70-mile long swath of the coast that is heavily populated will receive sustained hurricane-force winds tonight. Rainfall amounts in excess of eight inches in a 24-hour period are expected along the center of Giovanna's path. These rains will cause extensive flooding and major damage to the country, and the storm is likely to be one of the top three most expensive disasters in Malagasy history. The damage potential is higher than for previous storms of similar intensity, due to the considerable deforestation Madagascar has experienced over the past 30 years. Madagascar lost 8.3% of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010 and is now just 22% forested, according to mongabay.com. Flood waters run off quicker from deforested land, reach higher heights, and cause greater damage.
Figure 3. Microwave satellite image of Tropical Cyclone Giovanna taken at 12:30 UTC (7:30 am EST) Monday, February 13, 2012. The echo-free eye is surrounded by two concentric eyewalls, the sign of a storm undergoing an eyewall replacement cycle. Image credit: Navy Research Lab, Monterrey.
Madagascar's tropical cyclone history
The strongest and deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded in Madagascar was Tropical Cyclone Gafilo, which hit the northern end of the island on March 7, 2004, as a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds. Galfilo dumped up to 20 inches of rain on the island, and its winds and flooding rains killed 363 people and did $250 million in damage, making it the deadliest and second most expensive storm in Madagascar's history. Gafilo's central pressure of 895 mb made it the second strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, behind the 890 mb central pressure of Tropical Cyclone Zoe of December 2002, which affected Fiji and the Solomon Islands. With a central pressure of 937 mb, Giovanna is a much less intense storm than Gafilo was.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 — Blog Index
The landfall is expected within a 80 km radius from Andovoranto. Weather conditions are expected to worsen rapidly within the next hours between Sainte-Marie island and Mananjary with intensifying rains progressing inland this night. Winds will increase, mainly over the coast within a 150 km radius from landfall where gusts should exceed 100 km/h. Gusts should exceed 180 km/h within a 70 km radius, mainly south from landfall. Storm surge between 2.5 to 3.0 meters are expected south from landfall area. All inhabitants of this sectors are invited to closely follow the arrival of this dangerous cyclone.
Latest Image
TCHP
The U.S. is headed for a rude awakening too.
The baby boomers, etc, most especially.
Back when Social Security was invented, the plan was basicly that each generation would live off the backs of the future generations, but back then, the population growth rate was more like 4 or more children per woman.
Example: I actually have 16 great aunts and uncles on just one quarter of my family tree (most of whom have been retired for 30 or more years now,) and several of them had 4 or 5 kids each.
So you can see how gramps could be confident that the contribution of his 4 to 10 kids was going to pay for SS at the end of his life.
Even retirement plans such as stocks and mutual funds still basicly work(ed) on the same principle: live off the future population growth, and rely on each generation being twice as big as the previous.
In the past 30 years, population growth dropped to 2.1 children per woman, and in the past several years it has dropped to less than 2, I think.
Additionally, educated people wait until they are 25 or 30 to have children. If not for the "unwanted pregnancies" and such from teens experimenting, then the population curve would be even slower.
So what this means is that for every 2 retirees, drawing SS and pensions, including state and federal retirements, there will be only 1 worker in the nation.
Additionally, many government retirement plans are paying as much as 90% of income in retirement...for life! With life expectancy increasing 1 year per decade, this means the cost of government wages and salaries is effectively doubled, if not a bit more than that.
Not only will it not work, but they basicly cannot retire....ever...nor can anyone else.
In fact, most people on retirement now need to get off it and go back to work.
In some cases, it's not legal, and they'll never get the votes to do it, but the governments need to abolish, even retroactively, the entire retirement system.
But that's not going to happen until all hell breaks loose.
Plus there isn't any work anyway, because automation and IT has replaced so many jobs.
Its capital is only forecasted to receive CAT 1 type effects, but it should be noted that with the abrupt increase elevation of Antananarivo which sits around 4000 ft. elevation they will see 100 winds easily locally higher. Then you have all the treeless hills in the background that will compound flash flooding and mudslides.
Antananarivo
Everything is fine in the good ol USA
12,844.97
+43.74
How much longer can they manipulate this....as the brick wall is rapidly approaching
Social Security is not the problem, health care at the federal, state, local and private levels is. If nothing is done to SS it will still pay 75% starting in the mid 2030's. Solve the health care cost problem and you solve our long term deficit.
Just wait till they have androbots that'll replace all our jobs!
Arctic sea ice recovering nicely:
However, since a good portion of the ice is only 1 or 2 years old, expect this to be another record melt season. At the very least in the top 5.
Heavy Snow/Sleet in North Arkansas
2012 will almost certainly go down in the top three--that is, tied with both 2010 and 2007--if it doesn't take first place all by itself.
Of minor interest on this blog at this time but I find it interesting that the width of the spread for the maximum winter ice coverage is considerably less than for the summer coverage.
IE. Winter coverage has dropped by about 2 million sq. kilometers, whereas, summer coverage has dropped by about 3 million sq.kilometers over the same period.
This ratio seems to be more or less consistent over the plotted years.
Hazarding a guess; I would say down to almost 2 million sq. kilometers this summer, might not be unrealistic, though we will have to wait until September!
Interesting! Thanks for posting this graph but we are on day 44 of this year. That graph says day 35.
If I'm correct, it doesn't include the little upward surge of this past week that the ice extent map has shown.
Nonetheless, this has little significance if any. Just look at 2010. The ice area/extent was at normal at the end of march/early April but in no way has that stopped the ice from melting close to the record low that year.
Link
Enhanced Infrared (IR) Imagery (4 km Mercator)
Has anybody got any webcam images of this level of pollution?
It seems hardly possible that this much pollution is being produced and so uniformly consistent, its more like an intentional smoke screen.
This area is a significant proportion of the earths land surface.For that matter any area is I suppose if you are living on it!
2: Prayers for Madagascar...
3: Giovanna only has 250 miles to cross before getting over more warm SST's before hitting a region of park reserves is Southern Mozambique.. I would hate to be on safari and have my tent blow away!
China's fossil fuel consumption is increasing at a ridiculous rate, even though they are also one of the leading nations in wind and solar.
Washington times article, 2009
"if China’s energy usage structure remains unchanged, its emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming would reach 17 billion tons a year by 2050. That would represent 60 percent of total global emissions and three times China’s current production,"
At that rate, China alone would be contributing almost 3.4PPM co2 to the atmosphere, since we currently make 30 billion tons world wide, and half to 2/3rds of that is absorbed by the oceans and plants.
So just by themselves they would nearly double the net annual CO2 increase by 2050...
That's not even counting other developing nations and 3rd world nations.
The slope of the keeling curve would likely be 6 or 7 by 2050 at this rate.
What is the total lag roughly of Temperature reaction to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere...20 years?
These things will continue as we are responsible for treating our own Life Giving Bio-sphere like a Mardi Gras Port-o-Let during Fat Tuesday.
They are consequences, and they will continue to increase exponentially.
Atmospheric CO2 for January 2012
Preliminary data released February 6, 2012
(Mauna Loa Observatory: NOAA-ESRL)
You realize the first 2 trillion of that is three things:
Military, Interest payments, and Social security
Now the military is 600 billion annually, and the interest is about the same.
And MOST of the interest is actually due to prior military spending.
Now if our government operated with some common sense as it requires war, and required a reprisal from rogue states such as Iraq and Afghanistan, then much of the debt would not exist. Iraq should be paying the U.S., Kuwait, and Israel a 10% reprisal on oil from the original Gulf War. Afghanistan should be too since 2001.
Instead, we spend our money in their nations buidling schools, roads, and infrastructure for them, like morons.
It's all connected, friend.
PC and multi-culturalism is a big part of the problem.
And I'm not talking about the democrats either. This all actually went wrong under Reagan and George Bush senior, and then Junior screwed it up even worse.
When somebody wrongs you and your allies, for an unprovoked attack and power grab, then they owe you a reprisal, you don't owe them anything.
Works for me. Probably hit it after sunset but before the outdoor lights came on. Anyway, HotelAndilanaBeach sends its images through meteosystem for the NorthNorthWestward view
and meteosystem for the SouthSouthEastward view.
Right now, there ain't much to see except what's lit by the resort lights.
Speaking of Nuclear...
Nuclear Event
Event date: 13.02.2012 04:16:21
Country: United States
State: State of Tennessee
Location:- [Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant]
N 35%uFFFD 13.580, W 85%uFFFD 5.496
Just a minor event
When I first studied nuclear power in science class, there was 132 nuclear power in the U.S. - Illinois had the most with 15...These are the incidences we have had since 1979.. Plant Location Description Cost
(in millions
2006 $)
Nuclear power plant accidents in the U.S. with more than US$140 million in property damage[50][51] March 28, 1979 Three Mile Island Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania Loss of coolant and partial core meltdown, see Three Mile Island accident and Three Mile Island accident health effects US$2,400
March 9, 1985 Browns Ferry Athens, Alabama Instrumentation systems malfunction during startup, which led to suspension of operations at all three Units US$1,830
April 11, 1986 Pilgrim Plymouth, Massachusetts Recurring equipment problems force emergency shutdown of Boston Edison%u2019s plant US$1,001
March 31, 1987 Peach Bottom Delta, Pennsylvania Units 2 and 3 shutdown due to cooling malfunctions and unexplained equipment problems US$400
December 19, 1987 Nine Mile Point Scriba, New York Malfunctions force Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation to shut down Unit 1 US$150
February 20, 1996 Millstone Waterford, Connecticut Leaking valve forces shutdown of Units 1 and 2, multiple equipment failures found US$254
September 2, 1996 Crystal River Crystal River, Florida Balance-of-plant equipment malfunction forces shutdown and extensive repairs US$384
February 16, 2002 Davis-Besse Oak Harbor, Ohio Severe corrosion of control rod forces 24-month outage US$143
February 1, 2010 Vermont Yankee Vernon, Vermont Deteriorating underground pipes leak radioactive tritium into groundwater supplies US$700--Wiki/
It's very likely that ice area will shoot up over the next several days as the AO has flip-flopped. However, there's the matter of insolation; there's a lot of ice in parts of the Bering Sea that haven't seen as much in other years. That ice is pretty far south, so it will obviously start picking up the sun's rays first. Too, it's been relatively warm across parts of the Arctic, so scientists don't expect to see a whole lot more ice growth before the melt starts in earnest. My own guess is for another 400K-600K before next month's maximum. And I'll put money on it that 2012 will see a new low minimum. Area-wise, for now I'd go with 2.7-2.9 million km2 in September...
Why are we buying so much from other countries, when we "should" have so much here already?
Is it teh same old, "Consume everyone else's resources, then sit on our own," strategy?
How long will nuclear fuel last?
"Two technologies could greatly extend the uranium supply itself. Neither is economical now, but both could be in the future if the price of uranium increases substantially. First, the extraction of uranium from seawater would make available 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium%u2014a 60,000-year supply at present rates. Second, fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors, which generate more fuel than they consume, would use less than 1 percent of the uranium needed for current LWRs. Breeder reactors could match today's nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies."
Great, so we know of a way of using nuclear reactors that are roughly 150 times more fuel efficient, but this is the U.S. that would make sense, so we shan't do that...NEVAAAAR!
Viewing: 1 - 51
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 — Blog Index