Hurricane Irene of 2011 now rated history's 6th most damaging hurricane
New damage estimates released last month by NOAA now place the damage from 2011's Hurricane Irene at $15.8 billion, making the storm the 6th costliest hurricane and 10th costliest weather-related disaster in U.S. history. Irene hit North Carolina on August 27, 2011, as a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds, and made landfalls the next day in New Jersey and New York City as a tropical storm. Most of the damage from Irene occurred because of the tremendous fresh water flooding the storm's rains brought to much of New England. Irene is now rated as the most expensive Category 1 hurricane to hit the U.S. The previous record was held by Hurricane Agnes of 1972, whose floods did $11.8 billion in damage in the Northeast. NOAA also announced that the name Irene had been retired from the list of active hurricane names. Irene was the only named retired in 2011, and was the 76th name to be retired since 1954. The name Irene was replaced with Irma, which is next scheduled be used in 2017.
Figure 1. True-color MODIS image of Hurricane Irene over North Carolina taken at 11:35 am EDT August 27, 2011. At the time, Irene was a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds. Image credit: NASA.
At last month's 30th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology of the American Meteorological Society, Paul Ruscher of Florida State University explained how Irene's storm surge came within 8 inches of flooding New York City's subway system, which would have caused devastating damage. At the current global rate of sea level rise of 3.1 mm/year, a repeat of Irene 65 years from now would be capable of flooding the subway system, if no action is taken. Since sea level rise is expected to accelerate as the planet warms in coming decades, an Irene-type storm surge would likely be capable of flooding the NYC subway system much sooner than that. To read more about New York City's vulnerability, see Andrew Freedman's analysis at Climate Central, Climate Change Could Cripple New York’s Transportation, or my November 2011 blog post, Hurricane Irene: New York City dodges a potential storm surge mega-disaster.
Jeff Masters
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The Central Atlantic. In case some of you aren't sure, the image above is of Florida.
So, yeah, I really hope the pattern change will come soon and the rainy season will kick into gear. If it doesn't, we may be looking at a scenario that we had back in 1998 around these parts when wildfires destroyed homes and many areas of acreage across this area.
Yes, i see that.. very interesting!
I thought it was California. ;)
Very wet in the eastern Caribbean and northern south America
Looks to me like Texas.....
lol
Eh, not really. If you look at the RGB loop, you will see the low clouds on the west side aren't showing any kind of movement east or south, but rather slowly drifting off to the west. Also, when watching the loop, I couldn't help but to notice the frequent outflow boundaries getting pushed off, especially to the SW. As long as this system is pushing off outflow boundaries... it has exactly zero chance of developing.
nah, Texas has a neon sign over it saying "please rain here".
Give us time.... we will too in about 3 days...
FL has a sign that says the next desert.
You know it's bad when the palm trees are wilting....
Are we in store for another hot summer?
Updated: May 03, 2012 9:51 AM CDT
By Grant Dade
EAST TEXAS (KLTV) -
Are in store for another hot summer? Well, of course we are. This is East Texas. But those worrying about the upcoming summer and if it will be as hot as last year, it still looks as though it will not. The mild winter and warm start to spring have many concerned what we could be in store for heat wise this summer. So let's take a look at what has occurred so far this year and how it compared to last year's start to the excessive heat.
The winter of 2011 was close to what we normally see across East Texas. There were three very cold outbreaks that made the winter seem much colder than normal but when you look at the overall temperatures for the winter months, things began to average out. Now this winter we were much above normal thanks in part to an abnormal jet stream pattern that kept the arctic air looked up in Europe and mild temperatures across the United States. This pattern also sent numerous storm systems across the South Central United States allowing for above normal rainfall helping the drought conditions across East Texas. This is why as of right now this summer looks to be closer to normal, but more on that later.
April 2012 was warm across the area but no 90s were reported except for one 90 degree day in Crockett. April 2011 saw around ten 90°F degree days at most reporting stations in East Texas with many spots hitting 94°F. So even though it appears warm across the area, which it is, we are off to a much better start than we were last spring and summer.
As we head into the first weekend of May, temperatures will approach the 90 degree mark. Although this is above normal it is not unheard of to see 90 degree temperatures during the first half of May. Last year most of East Texas saw the middle 90s before May 10th. The one thing that is still on our side for not having an extremely hot summer is soil moisture. The above normal rainfall previously mentioned in the winter of 2012 has allowed soil moisture to reach near normal levels again across East Texas. This time last year we had less than 20% of normal soil moisture and with the higher sun angle and evaporation rates, the ground baked in late May. By July 2011 the soils moisture across East Texas was less than 1% of normal. This turned our climate to what you would normally see across southwest Texas with lows in the 60s and highs between 105°F and 110°F every afternoon for nearly 90 days.
As long as we periodically receive rain, the soil moisture will not become that low again this upcoming summer. Even if we see a strong ridge of high pressure sit over East Texas like we did last July, without an extremely dry ground we will not see a prolonged 105°F to 110°F high temperature period. When we have soil moisture, much of the sun's energy is used to try and evaporate that moisture before heating the ground which in turn heats the air.
So we will continue to watch what unfolds over the next month or two but so far, a repeat of last summer seems highly unlikely. The summer of 2011 was a combination of events that hopefully only happens every 100 years or so that most of us will never see again.
Is that a cold front coming from the East Coast?
A new development that you might have not yet seen. Researchers have been able to recover a blood sample from Oetzi. And have been able to determine that he lived for a while after being shot in the back with an arrow rather than dying soon after as was thought...
"The Oetzi DNA analysis presented in February also revealed that Oetzi had brown eyes and hair and was allergic to milk products...."
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/1206943 0-photo-worlds-oldest-blood-found-in-5300yearold-i ceman-mummy-oetzi?utm_source=stormpost&utm_medium= email&utm_campaign=Allvoices%20Newsletter
Yeah the NWS in Melbourne says that we can expect a chance of rain everyday starting Saturday. Could be the rainy season setting in but I will believe it once rain starts falling at my place of residence.
NEXT WEEK...AMPLIFIED RIDGE DEVELOPING OVER THE CENTRAL GULF COAST WILL
INDUCE DOWNSTREAM HGHT FALLS OVER THE SE US COAST. A BACKDOOR SFC FRONT
IS ADVERTISED TO DROP SWD ACROSS THE GA/NE FL COAST ON SUN...BRINGING
FAVORABLE WLY STEERING AND INCREASED MOISTURE/INSTABILITY LOCALLY.
GFS APPEARS MOST BULLISH WITH FEATURE AND WL COMPROMISE WITH A SCENARIO
OF GENERAL HGHT FALLS AND PERHAPS A WEAK LOW EAST OF THE STATE SUN/MON.
HIGHEST RAIN CHC CURRENTLY SUN WITH SCT POPS AREAWIDE AND THUNDER.
WL KEEP A RATHER UNSETTLED SYNOPTIC PATTERN ACROSS THE AREA
PERSISTING INTO MIDWEEK. ATLC RIDGE APPEARS TO BEGIN A TEMPORARY
RE-DEVELOPMENT AROUND MIDWEEK...HWVR POPS LOOK MENTIONABLE DUE TO
WEAK AT BEST RIDGE AND SUITABLE MOISTURE.
Lol. :)
Warnings posted in the next 3 hours....
Run for your lives!!!
The animation shows a little blip in the Gulf wind patterns but nothing more....
I know it sounds crazy but the Sabal Palms in our yard are doing the same thing....
Here is the link - I think Grothar knew this guy?
Wait...was that a wobble??
It's a slow death and just kills everything
Yeah, it was a wobble to the west
The drought is taking a toll on the pine trees around here as they are dying left and right due to the pine beatle invasion.
Our colors will start showing up here in MS too if we don't start getting some real rain soon! We has slightly above average rain for March, but April finished out 4-8" below average for the month! Looks like we are heading into another drought ridden summer!
Lower level clouds look like they are rotating on the loop...
Those are fine it's the Oaks and Pine Trees by me that are starting to take a beating.
This how the pine trees die by drought. They begin to secrete their sap that oozes out trying to catch any moisture there is, but what that does is attract the insects or beetles, then they feed on the sap that is coming out and literally suck the tree dry killing the pine tree quickly to dead brown.
A "pinhole" eye. :-)
Hey WxGeekVA. What's up?
pressure at 945 mb and falling rapidly.....
Visible
I think it may be developing a pinhole eye, and it may be becoming Annular?
Bottom number is 50M resolution
Thanks
I was just looking at it too. Don't think it will do anything, but quite interesting to watch none the less! Link
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