From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

We have now got most of the data in for Hurricane Helene, so it is time for a proper recap:

Hurricane Helene intensified as it approached Florida’s Big Bend in fall 2024, ultimately making landfall as a Category 4 storm at 11:10 p.m. Eastern Time on September 27. Even while its center was still over the Gulf of Mexico, the hurricane had begun producing devastating outcomes on land. A predecessor rain event and then the main storm system brought heavy precipitation to southern Appalachia starting on September 25. Deadly and destructive flooding occurred as a result in eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, and North Carolina, among other areas.

This map shows rainfall accumulation over the three-day period ending at 7:59 p.m. Eastern Time (23:59 Universal Time) on September 27, 2024. These data are remotely sensed estimates that come from IMERG (the Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM), a product of the GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) mission, and may differ from ground-based measurements. For instance, IMERG data are averaged across each pixel, meaning that rain-gauge measurements within a given pixel can be significantly higher or lower than the average.

In Asheville, North Carolina, a total of 13.98 inches (35.52 centimeters) of rain fell from September 25 to 27, according to National Weather Service records. The storm swamped neighborhoods, damaged roads, caused landslides, knocked out electricity and cell service, and forced many residents to evacuate to temporary shelters. Record flood crests were observed on multiple rivers in the state. Flooding was widespread across the southern Appalachians; preliminary rainfall totals neared or exceeded 10 inches (25 centimeters) in parts of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

On the coast of Florida, the heaviest rainfall was concentrated west of the storm’s center, in and around the town of Apalachicola. For hurricanes in the gulf, heavy rainfall typically occurs east of the storm’s center, where counterclockwise rotation brings in the most moisture from the water body. In the case of Helene, a frontal boundary over the Florida Panhandle interacted with the circulation to concentrate the highest totals west of the center, noted Steve Lang, a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Parts of the Florida coast receiving less rain were not spared from flooding, however. Several Gulf Coast cities and towns, including Cedar Key and Tampa, were affected by storm surge.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153387/devastating-rainfall-from-hurricane-helene

Asheville and the surrounding region took the brunt of the flooding, and nearly 14” of rain in three days is certainly unprecedented in Asheville since records began. But the NWS shows that this was actually spready evenly over all three days:

https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=gsp

As can happen, atmospheric blocking meant the storm was trapped over the Asheville area for all three days. Daily totals of four or five inches are unusual but not unheard of. It was the duration of the rain that really caused the problems.

.

But that has not stopped the usual suspects blaming the floods on climate change.

NWS have also published the wind speed data. In Florida peak gusts hit 99 mph (not sustained), a long way below the claimed Cat 4 levels.

140 mph sustained winds may have occurred somewhere out over the sea, but never got anywhere near that on land, at least where there was any measuring equipment.

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/nfdscc4.html

By H. Sterling Burnett

The venerable American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recently held its 51st annual convention in Denver, Colorado.

ALEC is a nonprofit founded to promote Jeffersonian limited-government policies. It works with state legislators and the private sector to produce solutions for myriad issues facing state governments and their residents.

I have worked with ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Taskforce (EEA) for nearly 30 years. Among other things, it develops model legislation that states can adapt to their own needs.

This year’s EEA meetings saw the introduction of a number of impressive model bills. Two written by my organization, the Heartland Institute, would shore up the electric power grid in states trying to attract Big Tech/AI hubs. The bills aim to ensure that the electricity these power-hungry facilities require is paid for by the companies demanding it and is supplied on a reliable basis by traditional sources.

Ensuring that the power grid is not compromised by the added demand coming from Big Tech and AI will prevent socializing the cost of new demand onto ratepayers. And it will secure the power grid for residents and small businesses.

One model bill adopted by ALEC is long overdue: legislation requiring that state utility regulators set aside a position on their boards for a ratepayer advocate. That person would be dedicated solely to ensuring that utility plans brought before the commission minimize the cost of monopoly utilities’ new construction and rate plans, while firming up reliability.

Another model bill that ALEC adopted requires that sources of electric power be labeled to account for the full range of environmental and economic impacts. This allows for an apples-to-apples comparison of proposed and existing energy sources.

Yet another model bill adopted by ALEC that should prove particularly valuable to state residents is the Affordable, Reliable and Clean Energy Security Act. The bill is based on an unassailable premise: that “energy security is paramount to economic growth,” and, accordingly, that affordable, reliable electric power from clean sources is fundamental to our families’ and communities’ future prosperity.

The “security” portion of the bill is twofold:

• To establish the security of the electric power grid and supply, it requires that fuel sources “must be primarily produced domestically within the United States” and that “the infrastructure necessary to deliver energy to the customer should minimize reliance on foreign nations for critical materials or manufacturing.”
• To establish security for people dependent on electricity for their daily lives, it defines acceptable energy sources as those “readily available 24/7.” So, power sources dependent upon the vagaries of the weather (wind) or the time of day (solar) need not apply.

Affordability is secured by provisions in the bill that examine the stability of prices over time, and the cost-effectiveness of providing heating, cooking, and generating electricity.

The legislation enshrines the need for reliability by requiring a minimum capacity factor of 50%, with the power supplied being dispatchable on demand.

The only quibble I have with the model bill comes in its definition of “clean” energy. The proposal says that a clean energy source “releases reduced air pollutants,” and then goes on to specify that nuclear and natural gas meet the definition. They do—but so do modern, state-of-the-art, coal-fueled power plants, which produce much lower emissions than older plants.

Coal also meets all the requirements of reliability, security, and affordability defined in the legislation. We have more coal than any fuel source, and the price of coal is less volatile than that of competing fuels. For America’s long-term well-being, coal needs to stay in our energy mix.

Having said this, I’m pleased that the bill was adopted. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good—or, in this case, the very good.

ALEC advanced some good model legislation this year, and there’s more in the hopper. All the bills advance the interests of states and their residents. Now it’s time for legislators to do right by their constituents and their economies by adopting versions of bills that fit their respective states’ unique requirements.

These pieces of model legislation are good for U.S. energy security, for electric power grid reliability, and for residents’ pocketbooks and businesses’ bottom lines.

What patriotic American would object to that?

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. (hsburnett@heartland.org) is the director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.