Hurricane Irma did something the models did not predict: Strengthen to category 5, with winds at 185 miles per hour. It is still on track to clobber Puerto Rico and Florida.
Vox reports Hurricane Irma is one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes ever.
On Tuesday, the National Weather Service reported the storm had become a Category 5 with sustained winds of 185 miles per hour. That means Irma now ranks among the most powerful hurricanes (as measured by windspeed) ever recorded.
According to the NWS, Irma is the strongest storm ever in the Atlantic (not counting those that reached the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico). And it’s not far off from the all-time record hurricane wind speed of 190 mph.
Expected Arrivals
Hurricane Scale
Irma Tracker
The above image from Cyclocane.
The chance of direct impacts from Irma later this week and this weekend is increasing in the Florida Keys and portions of the Florida Peninsula. However, it is too soon to specify the timing and magnitude of the impacts. Elsewhere, it is too early to determine what direct impacts Irma might have on the continental United States. Everyone in hurricane-prone areas should ensure that they have their hurricane plan in place.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Turn north, Irma! NORTH!!!!
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Meanwhile, Hurricane Jose Expected To Form By Friday, Follow In Irma’s Footsteps
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jose can you see…
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I was 25 miles inland when Hurricane Hugo (cat 4) hit SC. The eye went right over us. Winds were still 120 mph there. Don’t ride this one out if you are in the path. This is like Camille. It will destroy bluildings right down to the foundation. If you can, leave.
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Last year I planned to ride out Matthew (which turned out to be a relative nothing in Florida). Stocked up the pantry, put up a lot of water, had plenty of batteries and power generation. We were on the third floor, so flooding would be no biggie.
Then I thought about the fact that I was planning to subject my wife, who had never been in a major tropical storm, much less a cat 2 or 3 hurricane, to a day or two of constant wind noise and things slamming into the side of the building, and possibly to several days of no power and no restaurants or stores to buy something other than the canned goods. At the end of the day, it wasn’t the possible (low-risk) loss of life that caused us to bug out and go visit my mom up north … it was a desire to keep my sanity. Happy wife, happy life.
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fed will come to the rescue (control p)they will print a few extra trillion and bail out insurers,states,feds,fema,red cross,yellen will buy up all flood damaged homes and cars and wait for it the fed is in the process of buyin………HURRICANES,FLOODS,RISING SEA LEVELS.Fed economic model everything has a price and everything can be bought
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yup
kiss tax reform goodbye
kiss draining the swamp goodbye
kiss balanced budget goodbye
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HAHAHAHA “balanced budget..” ????? BOY! You ARE an old guy…..
or perhaps a young one with a great new idea…….:-)
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Balanced budget? Is that even possible. I was taught in school in the 1970s that balanced budgets led to severe recessions every time they were achieved.
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We should know a higher confidence path by tomorrow late afternoon. Hopefully the steering flows will be definitive by then and unveil the turning point. The model spreads are still all over the place.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/905150854780608512
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It’s the climate !!
If only the climate would change – this thing would head more northerly – missing the East Coast completely. C’mon CHANGE !!
(Just trying to ahead of the upcoming mantra…….)
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Word Press will not count my like votes. I can comment using Face Book. Here on the hot & dry West Coast no monsoon as of yet.
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Don’t joke. The media, in the coming weeks, is going to be full of clowns making a connection between the severity of the hurricane and climate change. These idiots are a class apart.
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They already are – including The Intercept
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Yes they have, are, and will be.
That’s the reason for my post……to remind us of the BS that’s gonna’ be front page and MSM for weeks….
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Be ready for the NORKS to pile on with more missile launches folks….stay focused and fear not…
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So I’m sitting in Central Florida as I type this. I live across the intra-coastal from Kennedy Space Center on the East coast. I bought plywood to board up my house and a couple of neighbors this morning. Tonight I’ll be cutting the wood and I’ll be boarding up later this week.
Here’s the problem with evacuating: The only place to go is north. And the only two roads are I-95 and I-75. Starting tomorrow, we will start to see South Florida evacuating. That’s about 4 million people. A couple of accidents and the evacuation comes to a standstill for a couple of hundred miles. Scary to be in your car with your kids in the middle of I-95 in a major hurricane. We also have very elderly parents who probably can’t sit in a car for 20 hours.
But a Cat 5 will rip roofs off of houses. It’ll rip trees out of the ground and blow them for a hundred yards. Very, very dangerous. So, if we are highly likely to get a close hit by a Cat 5 hurricane, we will evacuate. Probably down back roads to the west coast of Florida. Otherwise, we will stay put and hope for the best. My mother refuses to evacuate because she can’t bear to leave her 3 dogs behind. One is a Great Dane. We’ve got some tough calls to make.
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Go now, Jon. Once the evac ‘window’ closes, that’s it. You have ~12 hours to start moving.
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Best wishes and prayers JS…My wife wants to relocate to Charleston, S.C…Low country and only Interstate 26 for high speed exit…Not much safety factor in a crisis…I have family in Leesburg…central state, north of Orlando…It’s about the safest spot in Fla. if you can’t get out…
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Jon, evacuating costs WAY WAY less than staying where the building may collapse……
and heading west….to what? Where would you go that wouldn’t have severe damage if it continues west. Gonna’ stay in your car…???
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C’mon folks, someone in Albany or Atlanta going to offer Jon a few days shelter with his pets.
Jon… you can sedate them for the journey if need be.
http://petfriendlytravel.com/pet_shelters
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If you want to try to survive a cat 5 hurricane, call a local contractor who builds bridges, and find out who makes prestressed concrete.
Then call them, and find out what prestressed concrete structures are in your area.
PS concrete buildings survive direct hits by moderately severe tornados… it might stand a chance in a hurricane.
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Not a criticism of you, but I’ve always wondered why when someone in hurricane country buys a house without roll-down shutters, they don’t immediately go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and buy enough 7/8-inch marine grade plywood and 1 x 3 lumber for perimeter and diagonal reinforcement. And lag bolts, lag bolt anchors, and big-ass washers. Make your window covers (once and done), paint them, then store then until needed. Buy them their own garden shed if you must. Store your empty gas cans, water barrel, and a big-ass tarp in there too. If you sell the house having never used them, they convey with the property and increase its value. If you do use them, you’re not the dope at the store trying to buy OSB (or particle board) in the rain because everything else is gone, and you’re on the road 36 hours earlier. And why don’t you have a plan for the dogs already? Okay, this has turned into a criticism of you. I’m kinda sorry.
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Get the heck out if you can.
However, I can see your point about sitting in your car in stalled traffic. That sounds maybe even worse. Cat 5 is a tremendous hazard. Good luck to you and your family, Jon.
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Oddly enough, during Matthew last year (and we waited until the last day to go), the traffic on 95 north was relatively light until well past Jax. Then i decided to take US1 north through GA to avoid the jam on I-10, and it was solid traffic jam on US1 and I-75 pretty much the whole way through Atlanta to Knoxville with everyone spilling ou of the Carolinasl. Going late might work to your advantage in Florida, but you will be backed up, albeit high and dry, in GA.
You might want to make a hotel reservation or two in your preferred route of travel now if you think you might be bugging out, or you will not have a place to stay.
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C’mon Cuba!!!
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C’mon The Clingon Foundation (not).
If Irma stays over the ocean as plotted it has a lot of heat to suck up…peak wind speed is already 220 mph… that is touching on an F4 tornado… just don’t want to be anywhere around that if you can help it.
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Level to the foundation saves demolition costs.
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As they say, it’s an ill wind that blows no good.
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All the Floridians are in my prayers.
For the love of God don’t be stupid and hunker down at home.With a direct hit that monster will blow your house clean off it’s foundation. And you with it. Grab your important documents and whatever’s in your safe, a change of clothes, some cash, the kids and the dog and boogey north ASAP. Don’t wait too long. The human hysteria at the 11th hour will be as dangerous as Irma. Don’t get stuck in the panic congestion.
Hope for the best but plan for the worst. My hope is that she turns north away from the land mass. But history is not on our side.
Hals und Beinbruch!
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Early on I watched this one. Hearing the strength it reached already and going to hit the Keys, well it’s a bit scary to an inlander to think anyone would stick around for this. Possible to likely that the Hemingway House and it’s weird cat population might not survive even this one.
I am slightly ashamed to say that when I saw forecasted models, there was one that ran up the coast and would make a direct hit to DC and I had hoped it would go there instead.
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I was just preparing some forecasts to take the edge off … not good to be tooooo hyped up either… saying goes something like 9/10 of preparation is thinking through properly.
Here is an 18th Century forecast.
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And modern version.
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I hope Governor Scott gets all 20 million Floridians into traffic jams before Monday. Bodies in cars are an easy clean.
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actually the models DID predict the strengthening to 180+ . Forecasters discounted it a bit .
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I think global warming is real. What I don’t agree with are those who guess at how it will effect the weather. We’ve had a period of 12 years where no major hurricane has hit the US. While higher temperatures in of themselves should increase the number of hurricanes and their intensity, it doesn’t appear to have done this. Whether or not a hurricane forms is far more dependent on winds than temperatures. My guess is global warming is causing more wind shear in the tropical Atlantic which is hindering hurricane development. It’s not completely eliminating hurricanes, but it’s decreasing the number.
Irma is strong primarily because it has had ideal wind conditions. I think global warming has made it slightly stronger. Global warming will generally make hurricanes stronger under conditions of little to no wind shear. So it will make storms that otherwise would be super strong into storms that are slightly stronger. We also saw this same thing with the rapid development of Harvey.
I don’t think Global Warming caused these hurricanes. I think it made them slightly stronger. The trade off on the good side is I expect we’ll see fewer hurricanes going forward. At least in the Atlantic.
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Al Gore invented global warming because he wanted to raise taxes.
All the academic ‘research’ related to his tax hike has been refuted. A combination of bad data and deliberately falsified data (see Oxford hooligan “research” group omitting data, and Aussi teams deliberately excluding colder readings).
Global warming is a hoax (as was the global ice age warning the same people submitted to UN in the 1970s). Stop trying to sell a hoax.
Hurricanes have been hitting the US coast for centuries… at least three other Cat 5 storms hit the US, and they were followed by LESS huricanes in subsequent years. Not because globe was cooling or warming — and certainly not because Gore wants to raise taxes.
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Al Gore didn’t invent global warming. He just made a movie about it. And it was made after he left office so there was no incentive for him to raise taxes.
There are some unscrupulous scientists on the side of global warming, but the vast majority are not. There is temperature data collected from numerous independent entities around the world that have drawn the same conclusions. The earth is slowly warming.
I know data can be faked but it would take a herculean amount of coordination to pull this off. And how do explain the melting glaciers? Almost all the worlds glaciers are shrinking. How do you explain the melting permafrost?
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“The iceman” found in Switzerland had green vegetation in his stomach, and wasn’t wearing fur clothing — which means it wasn’t ice covered when he died. Green vegetation doesn’t grow in ice, and putting on warm clothing is so easy even a cave man can do it.
The northern passage (seaway north of canada) has opened up and frozen over several times in the last 500 years. Its not a new thing. Ice coverage over antartica has been increasing, which again isn’t a new thing.
Weather data and collection in G7 developed countries is fairly advanced, but most of the globe is poorly covered. And it doesn’t take any fancy coordination for the authors of a hoax to exclude data that refutes their scam. Once again, that sort of hoaxing is also not new.
Al Gore invented global warming — he blamed political opposition (entities that generally supported Gore’s opponents), and then he immediately proposed a carbon tax (as if sending more money to Washington would change the weather!!!)… Global warming was always a political scam, not science
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Key Kid: I don’t think anyone claims that the climate doesn’t ever change over the eons. I believe lots of us are asking a bonafide question: HOW MUCH does MANKIND have to do with it? And , it seems in order to ‘PROVE’ that, several unscrupulous ‘scientists’ and other political agenda-ees are skewing the data. If ‘it’ were for real – ALL data could be out there and HONEST.
As they said in the movie: SHOW ME THE DATA!””
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Walmart, Target and Home Depot all selling bottled water in Florida for same price as several weeks ago.
Amazon is raising prices, even for “prime” customers
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-irma-amazon-complaints-of-price-gouging/
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We will see if the next run continues the Easterly shift. This is good for Florida, but not the Carolina’s or Bahama’s.
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