Hurricane Michael

Remarkable video of it just demolishing buildings here:

https://twitter.com/blkahn/status/1050094351790034944

Some horrendous damage being shown on weather channel right now from Panama City, looks like a few embedded tornadoes ripped through there

How come Hurricanes are never portrayed as such on the bog standard GFS runs? Looking at the N.America view and Michael is measly when compared to big atlantic storms.

Is it a resolution/pressure thing or something else?

17-pdr wrote: »

Size basically. The most destructive wind-field of a hurricane along with the associated pressure changes represented by tightly packed isobars might be only 20 or 30 miles across (the eye wall) while a similar wind-field of a mid-latitude depression may extend for a couple of hundred miles or more. This is why on a continental sized model chart you see them as tiny features. Here is tomorrow's ECM. Callum to the NW of Ireland with Leslie down at the bottom. Leslie looks insignificant on that chart, but the NHC is predicting winds of 85 mph for it.

It's got a lot to do with the projection of the map. The further polewars from the equator you go the larger more distorted area becomes. Draw a horizontal line 1110 km (10 degrees) long on both the 10 ° and 70 ° lines of latitude and you'll find that the 70 ° line appears much longer on the map. If a hurricane is 10 degrees wide it will therefore appear much smaller than one of our storms 10 degrees wide.

The GFS currently has Leslie making a landfall in southern Portugal on Saturday night into Sunday morning (at tropical storm intensity, possibly extra-tropical, at that point), about 50 miles south of Lisbon. The model has been wavering between that kind of track and a loop back to the west for yet another tour of the North Atlantic but it seems that the rapid progress of Michael is locking in the ridge between the two systems and pushing Leslie on to the east. The same model run (12z) takes Michael rather harmlessly south of Ireland on Sunday night and into the Biscay region where it is supposed to disintegrate with remnants reaching the north coast of Spain. Meanwhile what is left of Leslie would cross southern Spain and die out in the western Med.

A frontal system expected in Ireland by late Monday is from a separate weather system that moved into the Atlantic from northeast Canada and Greenland.

Hurricanes can be upgraded in category based on the destruction they do. If the destruction is at Cat 5 level then Michael could get upgraded as having been a cat 5 at landfall.
Hurricane Andrew was upgraded to a category 5 hurricane 10 years after it had hit Florida.

The destruction in Mexico Beach is horrendous. I don't know how they are going to rebuild. Even the few buildings left standing are badly damaged and had their foundations flooded by the sea. The people living there have basically lost everything.

I don't see some of these coastal communities recovering (- same for Puerto Rico tbh, especially if they get another one within the next couple of years.) The Panhandle right by the sea and the Florida keys just aren't safe to live on in hurricane season. Maybe this was a 1-100 years event, but those seem to be more common lately.

Rhineshark wrote: »

The destruction in Mexico Beach is horrendous. I don't know how they are going to rebuild. Even the few buildings left standing are badly damaged and had their foundations flooded by the sea. The people living there have basically lost everything.

I don't see some of these coastal communities recovering (- same for Puerto Rico tbh, especially if they get another one within the next couple of years.) The Panhandle right by the sea and the Florida keys just aren't safe to live on in hurricane season. Maybe this was a 1-100 years event, but those seem to be more common lately.

PR will take decades to recover but places like Panama and Mexico beach cleanup and rebuild will start immediately. Florida and California coasts might not be safe to live in for different reasons but they are still some of the most prime real-estate in the world.

Biloxi and the surrounding area took full hit from Katrina and was devastated in 2005. I was there in 2014 just over 8 years later and while there was still evidence something had happened you would really have to go looking.

Mount Vesuvius wrote: »

Satellite view of the damage. Not much was left unfortunately.

https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/michael/index.html#18/29.93373/-85.39831

For comparison:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mexico+Beach,+FL+32456,+USA/@29.9416192,-85.4042413,1625m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x889497c51c040927:0x12dfe414858b6e1c!8m2!3d29.9479833!4d-85.4179766

Came across this today and thought I would share

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/why-scientists-had-trouble-predicting-hurricane-michael-s-rapid-intensification?utm_campaign=news_daily_2018-10-16&et_rid=399746071&et_cid=2433027


not a whole lot in it but for a non techy weather watcher (read that as clueless) it sheds some light on things