Climate Change

[Nick]

Originally Posted by chalsall

There were no reported injuries.

We're all thanking our deities; this could have been a LOT worse.
.

Glad to hear it! The Dutch Caribbean islands had the same experience.

[Nick]

Hurricane Matthew leads to evacuation of Guantanamo Bay:
http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=96983

This is not a total evacuation ...

[chalsall]

Gods, please spare those who didn't take this seriously.

Or not.

Evolution in action is pretty catchy as well....

[kladner]

I don't see how anyone who lives in a coastal or island location adjoining the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, or the corresponding parts of the Atlantic, can be dismissive of large tropical cyclones. I have ridden through two such, at thirty and sixty miles from the Texas coast. I also lost a beach house to Ike, though I was safely in Chicago at the time.

Maybe you have to experience the storms, and see the results to really appreciate the threats.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by kladner

Maybe you have to experience the storms, and see the results to really appreciate the threats.

Most likely.

A friend of mine said that Miami was ready for a Cat 5, but then during a Cat 3 mother nature picked up a bus and threw it through the front of a building...

[kladner]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Carla
I wonder if Carla's Intensity Rating has been surpassed, or soon will be. Wiki still has it as the max intensity storm.

Hurricane Carla ranks as the most intense U.S. tropical cyclone landfall on the Hurricane Severity Index.[1] The third named storm and first Category 5 hurricane of the 1961 Atlantic hurricane season, Carla developed from an area of squally weather in the southwestern Caribbean Sea on September 3. Initially a tropical depression, it strengthened slowly while heading northwestward, and by September 5, the system was upgraded to Tropical Storm Carla. About 24 hours later, Carla was upgraded to a hurricane. Shortly thereafter, the storm curved northward while approaching the Yucatán Channel. Late on September 7, Carla entered the Gulf of Mexico while passing just northeast of the Yucatán Peninsula. By early on the following day, the storm became a major hurricane after reaching Category 3 intensity. Resuming its northwestward course, Carla continued intensification and on September 11, it was upgraded to a Category 5 hurricane. Later that day, Carla weakened slightly, but was still a large and intense hurricane when the storm made landfall near Port O'Connor, Texas. It weakened quickly inland and was reduced to a tropical storm on September 12. Heading generally northward, Carla transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on September 13, while centered over southern Oklahoma. Rapidly moving northeastward, Carla's remnants reached the Labrador Sea, Canada and dissipated on September 17, 1961.

For this one, my family left the small town between Houston and Galveston, and went to my uncle's house, in Houston. Our house was relatively undamaged, while neighbors' houses took on water with severe damage. We saw many homes where the owners had to chop out the hardwood floors, before they swelled enough to push the walls out.

My parents' view was that the old carpenter/contractor who built our house, had put the "ship lap" siding on so tightly fitted that when the flood rose above floor level, the siding swelled and became even tighter. We had a bit of water in the furnace plenum chamber, which extended down into the slab, but none in the living areas.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by kladner

My parents' view was that the old carpenter/contractor who built our house, had put the "ship lap" siding on so tightly fitted that when the flood rose above floor level, the siding swelled and became even tighter. We had a bit of water in the furnace plenum chamber, which extended down into the slab, but none in the living areas.

Even the engineers make mistakes. During a recent flood the generators were below the pumps. WTF?

[Dubslow]

My dad on the east coast of FL and my mom on the coast in SC have both evacuated. At least one of them was under mandatory evacuation, though they would have no doubt evacuated anyways.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Even the engineers make mistakes. During a recent flood the generators were below the pumps. WTF?

This kind of thing happened when Houston got drowned by a piss-ant tropical storm, which happened to circle northeast of the city, dip back into the Gulf, and return to dump even more. Northeast neighborhoods got as much as 24" rather rapidly. People ended up perched on tables, and headboards, and window ledges.

During this event, it became obvious that the World Renowned Houston Medical Center had a very serious flaw: the emergency generators were underground. When the nearby bayou overflowed, from heavy rain upstream, it merrily drenched the Med Center, and flooded out the generators, at the same time that power grid went down for an extended period. There were diesel pumps running in the district for a month or more.

This has very little difference from what happened at Fukushima.

A much older story, from my father from his pre-WWII days in the Army, is of his unit going on bivouac in Louisiana. The brilliant officers sited the latrines uphill from the tent sites. It rained all night. My Dad soon found a way to transfer to the Army Air Corps.

[ewmayer]

Best wishes to any forumites who live or have loved ones in Florida - it looks like it's going to be very bad, the combination of Matthew's storm-strength and its projected track right up the heavily populated E Florida coast appear to be (human-recorded-)historically unprecedented.

[wombatman]

Yeah, this one is strong. They're predicted storm surges along the South Carolina coast larger than those seen with Hurricane Hugo, a category 4 hurricane that hit in 1989. I remember that one so well because I was 6, and the eye passed over my hometown of Columbia. Going outside while the eye slowed moved over is one of my first clear memories. It was incredible.