A former NOAA meteorologist and 40-year veteran of hurricane predictions believes Irma will continue to move move west toward Florida and reach near the southern tip of the Florida Peninsula around Sunday, September 11th, as a major category 4 hurricane.

Irma eerily similar to Hurricane Donna’s (1960) track. Public Domain image.

Both David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations and the National Hurricane Center now believe Irma will make landfall near the southern tip of Florida, from near or just west of Miami to just west or near Jacksonville and then run up the coast into eastern Georgia.

Dilley adds: “It all depends on exactly when it makes the turn to the north – just 20 miles makes a big difference. Historical tracks favor a landfall near or south of Miami.”

Predictions based on natural cycles

Dilley had predicted a harsh hurricane season already back in early February, long before most forecasters were ready to go public with their forecasts.

In his February forecast, he predicted that the USA’s record 12-year run without a major hurricane hit would end in a big way.

He also predicted that the southern tip of Florida would be hit by a major hurricane, one that would move northward through the state after making landfall, and that this southern Florida zone overall would enter the strongest and most active hurricane cycle since the period from 1945 to 1950 (65 to 70 years ago).

Dilley wrote in an e-mail that during this 6-year active period, five out of the 6 years had hurricanes, and some years had multiple landfalls, adding:

There were a total of 8 hurricanes during this 6-year period, and 6 of the 8 hurricanes were major Category 3 to 5 hurricanes.”

So far his predictions for the current season have been impressively accurate. Dilley says he is tracking 4 historical analog years that are like the 2017 season, noting that hurricane patterns have a strong tendency to repeat in cycles.

He reminds us that three of the 6 landfalls from 1945 to 1950 were major hurricanes, with 2 of them being strong Category 4 hurricanes. There were also two category 3 hurricanes – and only one hurricane was a Category 1.

The analog years he used for forecasting the current season go back to 1910.

The bottom line, says Dilley: “This Southern Florida zone has entered the most active and dangerous cycle in 65 to 70 years. About 70% of the hurricanes that strike this zone are major hurricanes.” This year mostly likely will not be any luckier.

No global warming – “all using natural cycles”

On what’s behind the hurricanes, the 40-year veteran does not believe it has anything to do with manmade global warming and higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations. According to Dilley: “I nailed it 8 months in advance and the likely Texas hurricane – all using natural cycles of the earth-moon-sun interactions – and No Global Warming.”

While most models predict little danger from now forming José, Dilley wrote that it will develop into a hurricane and that there’s a chance José “could pose a New England threat near the 21st“.

A New England hurricane hit was also among Dilley’s predictions from earlier this year.

 

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September 6, 2017 at 07:38AM

By Paul Homewood

This is the latest news from ABC on Hurricane Irma:

Hurricane Irma passed over Barbuda during the early morning hours on Wednesday as Floridians prepared for the worst ahead of the record-breaking storm.

The monster storm maintained winds of 185 mph — with gusts topping 200 mph — even as it made landfall in Barbuda at about 2 a.m. on Wednesday. The storm was moving west-northwest at about 15 mph with St. Martin in its crosshairs as of 5 a.m. on Wednesday.

There was a hint of good news for Floridians in Wednesday’s 5 a.m. update from the National Weather Service. The hurricane’s path is now forecast to ride up the middle of Florida, keeping the worst side of the storm in the Atlantic Ocean. But many projections for the storm now show it could move east of Florida and make landfall near Georgia or the Carolinas.

Irma is the strongest hurricane ever in the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. But the storm is closing in on the record set by Hurricane Allen in 1980, which reached maximum sustained winds of 190 mph.

FORECAST

The "potentially catastrophic" storm, as described by the NWS, is expected to skirt the northern parts of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba over the next three days. New hurricane warnings were issued for the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos on Wednesday morning, with the storm expected to move over Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon.

Preparations are already underway in Florida, where landfall is expected in south Florida on Sunday afternoon. The shifting projections of the storm, as of 5 a.m. on Wednesday, show Irma will travel up the middle of Florida and even possibly to the east.

So-called "spaghetti models," which project possible paths for the storm, show Irma could threaten the Carolinas and East Coast of the United States.

http://ift.tt/2wH83Yo

 

There is still a lot of uncertainty about where Irma will head next, but it is slightly encouraging that it will gradually weaken as it heads towards the US.

 

There will time for proper analysis later, But there have been claims that Irma is now the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history, for instance here, with sustained winds of 185 mph.

But, as Fox News reports, this is slightly misleading:

Four other storms have had winds as strong in the overall Atlantic region but they were in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, which are usually home to warmer waters that fuel cyclones.

Hurricane Allen hit 190 mph in 1980, while 2005’s Wilma, 1988’s Gilbert and a 1935 great Florida Key storm all had 185 mph winds.

There is also the issue of “recorded history”. Over the years, methods of measuring hurricane strength have changed radically.

Nowadays of course we have comprehensive satellite coverage, backed up in the Atlantic particularly with modern hurricane hunter aircraft.

Leading hurricane expert Chris Landsea, of the National Hurricane Center, published a study in 2012, “On the Classification of Extreme Atlantic Hurricanes Utilizing Mid-Twentieth-Century Monitoring Capabilities”.

His report included this chart, illustrating how much things have changed.

http://ift.tt/2vLEHLy

 

Even though the US began using hurricane hunters in 1944, they often did not fly into the centre of the strongest storms, as Landsea explained:

“The analyses indicate that all of the hurricanes in the study that did not reach Category 5 strength would have been classified as a Category 4. The reader is reminded that the methodology employed is somewhat conservative. For example, many times during the late 1940s the aircraft often did not penetrate the center of hurricanes with central pressures in the 950s or even the 960s. If this criteria of, say, a 960-mb threshold were utilized, many of these cyclones would have been listed with a peak intensity of only Category 3 strength.”

 

Landsea concluded that

An investigation is conducted to determine how improvements in observing capabilities and technology may have affected scientists’ ability to detect and monitor Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean basin during the mid-twentieth century. Previous studies state that there has been an increase in the number of intense hurricanes and attribute this increase to anthropogenic global warming. Other studies claim that the apparent increased hurricane activity is an artifact of better observational capabilities and improved technology for detecting these intense hurricanes. The present study focuses on the 10 most recent Category 5 hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic, from Hurricane Andrew (1992) through Hurricane Felix (2007). These 10 hurricanes are placed into the context of the technology available in the period of 1944–53, the first decade of aircraft reconnaissance. A methodology is created to determine how many of these 10 recent Category 5 hurricanes likely would have been recorded as Category 5 if they had occurred during this period using only the observations that likely would have been available with existing technology and observational networks. Late-1940s and early-1950s best-track intensities are determined for the entire lifetime of these 10 recent Category 5 hurricanes. It is found that likely only 2 of these 10—both Category 5 landfalling hurricanes—would have been recorded as Category 5 hurricanes if they had occurred during the late-1940s period. The results suggest that intensity estimates for extreme tropical cyclones prior to the satellite era are unreliable for trend and variability analysis.

Below are the hurricanes he reanalysed. we can see, as an example, that Hurricane Wilma, which peaked at 160 kt in 2005, (185 mph – the same as Irma), would likely have been recorded as only a Cat 4 storm in the 1940s and 50s, with sustained winds of 125 kt or 144 mph.

Meanwhile, the official report into Hurricane Camille found that wind speeds reached 201 mph.

 

So any claims about “most powerful hurricane” need to be regarded with extreme suspicion.

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September 6, 2017 at 06:42AM

Britain must plough billions of pounds into new power plants, grid networks and electric vehicle charging points if it is to avoid local power shortages when a planned ban on new diesel and petrol cars begins.

Supporting millions more battery-powered vehicles over the next two decades is technically feasible, and if drivers can be persuaded to recharge them overnight – when spare power capacity is abundant – the huge infrastructure cost could be kept down.

Local networks particularly face problems, so the country will need a range of technologies for managing consumption to meet an estimated rise of up to 15 percent in overall demand and prevent spikes of up to 40 percent at peak times.

“It will be a challenge and a lot of investment is required – in generation capacity, strengthening the distribution grid and charging infrastructure,” said Johannes Wetzel, energy markets analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

In July, the government said it would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040. The aim is to reduce air pollution, a source of growing public health concerns, and help Britain to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels – the target it has set itself.

Although some conventional cars will remain on the road, numbers of electric vehicles (EVs) could balloon to 20 million by 2040 from around 90,000 today, experts estimate. Charging them all will require additional electricity.

Britain already faces a power supply crunch in the early 2020s as old nuclear reactors come to the end of their lives and remaining coal-fired plants are phased out by 2025.

Four years ago, well before the conventional car ban was raised, the government said over 100 billion pounds ($130 billion) in investment would be needed to ensure clean, secure electricity supplies and to reduce demand.

That looks optimistic. The cost of Hinkley Point C alone, the only nuclear power station now under construction in Britain, is estimated at 19.6 billion pounds.

Gas plants are cheaper and faster to build but investment in new ones is flat, and they still produce carbon emissions. Renewable energy presents problems of matching supply and demand; solar panels for instance produce no power in the night when drivers would ideally recharge their electric cars.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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September 6, 2017 at 06:08AM

Hoping for the best for everyone affected. At the moment this one is a monster and on the way to Florida by Sunday.

On twitter the hastag: #Irma

h/t Ben Pile @clim8resistance

Ryan Maue: Hurricane expert, skeptic, estimates Irma is so fast, it ought to be called a Cat #6. “Simple physical arg for Category 6 at 170-knots (Haiyan) is power or destructiveness is v³ in knots = 2-times v³ at 140-knots.”

In an update Maue predicts 190mph: “Based on near perfect environment for #IrmaHurricane to intensify, expecting a peak of 900 mb central pressure & 190 mph in next 24-36 hrs.”

Radar simulation from NOAA’s flagship hurricane model (HWRF) for Category 5 Hurricane #Irma for next 5-days. http://pic.twitter.com/MUtYybVjHV

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) September 5, 2017

…

Oh my … Hurricane #Irma just entered “beast mode” … incredible convection flaring. Satellite estimates now > T 7.0 and Category 5. http://pic.twitter.com/nk5U2r5QsO

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) September 5, 2017

I see there’s quite a lot of coverage on WattsUp:  Hurricane expert: ‘#Irma should reach 200 mph winds’

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote […]

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September 6, 2017 at 05:51AM