Everything destroyed after Andrew was rebuilt to more stringent codes. I'm not sure the stricter codes will stand up to a Category 4 direct hit, but it has to be better than what we saw after Andrew...I'm hoping beyond hope...
OT: Official Hurricane Irma Thread
- Thread starter RU4Real
- Start date
That picture is of a trailer park, though.
Codes or not, trailer park gon' trailer park.
Codes or not, trailer park gon' trailer park.
Folks were told in the 43rd that they were on their own if they stayed. Not much you can due when your territory is under water.
Wow - recall damage along the Bayshore from Donna as a kid.
Was an evacuee for the 92 Nor'easter.
most "new" construction in Florida is block construction - so the structure is stronger unlike stick built in the northeast.
Exterior doors open out so they do not get blown in along with roof designs to mitigate wind damage
Exterior doors open out so they do not get blown in along with roof designs to mitigate wind damage
Towns in NJ are numbered by county, more or less alphabetically. In Monmouth County, Sea Bright is 43. Manalapan is 26. Marlboro, 28. Etc.
Fire companies are then generally designated as, for example, 26-1, 26-2. First aid squads are 26-21, 28-23, etc.
That is correct. Was trying to be a little cryptic. The Dept moved all apparatus to higher ground during the storm. We did a few water rescues at the tail end of the storm as the tide was going out.
The one where the pigs lived in a trailer, a brick garden apartments and an F16 - respectively?
The second picture he posted shows what used to be wood-framed, sheathed houses in rubble amidst houses with standing brick walls.
Roofs are tough in a big hurricane. Any wind over 100 mph for a sustained period of time is gonna take your roof. But properly done, a solid set of walls will survive. If you look at some of the early pictures from the Leewards you see that the poured concrete houses are still standing, albeit roofless. The lesser structures are gone.
Ah. I see. I liked mine better, where the 3 pigs had all upgraded. The poor house of sticks pig finally got his brick house, but even that couldn't keep a roof over his head. And the talk about the rich getting richer....brick house pig had upgraded to a fighter jet.
My parents are in Jupiter FL, just north of West Palm Beach. Last month, they moved out of their manufactured home and into a senior living complex/apartment building that was only built 5 years ago, so is up on the latest codes. I am expecting their old house to be a total loss if Irma tracks along the east coast, so I am so thankful they moved.
Here in Greenville we are expected to get Hurricane force winds which is unheard of for this neck of the woods. I will be nowcasting next week for you fine people.
The latest official NHC track has been bumped in a more westerly direction after landfall just southwest of Miami. This would take Irma basically right up I-95 into southern Georgia before transitioning and bearing off a bit more to the left, into eastern Tennessee as a tropical storm.
This track, if it were to verify, is calamitous. Hurricane force winds up the entire coast of Florida east of I-95, with onshore winds piling up the water.
Mine was a "whoa" upon seeing that.
And as for this...
(I'M KIDDING!!!!!:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye
But in all honesty not happy with the western update from @knightfan7 and @RU4Real's explanation of what that means. Naples in danger now?
Just catching up today. A couple of points:
1- most Florida construction is not block but still stick. There is much more block but not close to a majority. However roof straps are critical in holding buildings together and have been required for a while. Hurricane windows are a great help also.
2- for those that wonder, when you evacuate most people go about 10 miles inland. Stay in a hotel which is fairly new and you are more than safe.
3- what do you do to prepare? I live 100 feet from the ocean. hard to prepare for wind. With Andrew I found 3 places where 100 plus mile an hour winds blew water up the walls of my exterior and came in areas like under window cills. I have caulked the hell out of the house.
4- flooding is something you can't prepare for. Very hard.
5- storm surge is interesting. In Jacksonville beach the waves breached the dunes. We were expecting 22 feet surges and we got 5 which saved my ***. I really think that Florida storm surge is frequently overstated. The storm pushes the water north not east and west except where the hurricane hits.
6- if the hurricane hits south Florida and goes up 95 then I believe it wii die quick. If it bounces off the south Florida coast then great. If it stays less than 50 mikes off shore than we have a mess.
1- most Florida construction is not block but still stick. There is much more block but not close to a majority. However roof straps are critical in holding buildings together and have been required for a while. Hurricane windows are a great help also.
2- for those that wonder, when you evacuate most people go about 10 miles inland. Stay in a hotel which is fairly new and you are more than safe.
3- what do you do to prepare? I live 100 feet from the ocean. hard to prepare for wind. With Andrew I found 3 places where 100 plus mile an hour winds blew water up the walls of my exterior and came in areas like under window cills. I have caulked the hell out of the house.
4- flooding is something you can't prepare for. Very hard.
5- storm surge is interesting. In Jacksonville beach the waves breached the dunes. We were expecting 22 feet surges and we got 5 which saved my ***. I really think that Florida storm surge is frequently overstated. The storm pushes the water north not east and west except where the hurricane hits.
6- if the hurricane hits south Florida and goes up 95 then I believe it wii die quick. If it bounces off the south Florida coast then great. If it stays less than 50 mikes off shore than we have a mess.
What stops Irma from going between Fl & Cuba into the gulf, it looks like the most direct path. In othewr words what is making Irma take a sharp turn toward Miami
im no genius but I think there's a front behind which is colder air to the north and west but that front is moving towards Irma. When it gets closer to that, Irma will want to stay in the nice warm waters and hot/humid conditions so she'll turn right....towards the warm water and more favorable hurricane conditions.
No... that's not how it works. Storms are steered by upper air features. In this case, there's a ridge of high pressure sitting north of Irma that's keeping it moving westward. That ridge is lifting toward the northeast, the timing of which will allow Irma to turn northward into the area of lower pressure behind the ridge.
Simplified a bit, but that's the general idea. If you look at the 500 mb and 200 mb maps you can clearly see the steering features which define the path the storm can take.
Not even close, actually. It's all about steering currents resulting from various low/high pressure systems in the vicinity of Irma. First, there's the large, very strong WAR (Western Atlantic Ridge, often known as a Bermuda High) anchored in the western Atlantic and featuring clockwise rotation, such that on its SW periphery, near Irma, the steering currents want to send Irma to the W or maybe WNW, which it has been doing for days.
However, the change in steering currents being modeled is due to two players coming from the NW/West, i.e., a significant "trough" (low pressure) approaching the east coast, and an upper level low approaching the SE US - both of these features have counterclockwise rotations to the N/NW of Irma, which will tend to steer Irma to the NNW or North in a day or two, as those features become stronger and as the WAR loses its punch, as Irma keeps moving away from it.
The absolute key to the movement of Irma is the relative strength of each of these systems over the next 2-3 days in reality vs. how they're being modeled now and when that turn from the current WNW path changes to NW then NNW and maybe close to N, as the storm gets to South Florida's longitude. If the turn happens 50 miles sooner than the NHC is predicting, the storm goes up the east coast; if the turn happens as forecast, the storm goes right up the center of the peninsula; if the turn happens 50 miles later than the NHC is predicting, then the storm goes up the Gulf Coast.
And +/- 50 mile errors in the track at the point of the turn is a very small error, vs. the overall track and is very difficult to get exactly correct, which is why the experts have been reluctant to focus too much on one track and have been focusing more on the envelope of potential tracks.
The NHC and Jeff Masters links I've been providing can help explain these factors, but probably the best explanation of the steering factors I've seen is the link I posted yesterday by Levi Cowan, as it's a video showing the players involved very nicely. Worth a watch.
Had the wrong link - try this one at about the 6:30 mark.
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Yeah what he said ^^^
I knew you'd clean that up
Yeah, but I lost the word count battle to @RU848789 again! lol
lol, sometimes you need Jellyman and 10,000 words, sometimes you need rtw and one sentence...
Absolutely, this track would be just brutal, probably the worst imaginable, as it puts Miami and other cities on the east coast on the NE, strong side of the storm, experiencing a direct hit from the eastern part of the eyewall with the worst winds for direct damage and they'd be coming onshore during Irma's approach as you noted. Both wind damage and storm surge would be catastrophic for the east coast of Florida. Plus, it would also be closer to the populated Gulf Coast to do major damage there too, although not as much.
So with this new data you and @RU4Real think Naples could be in trouble? Parent's community is in East Naples along Collier Blvd.
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Hurricane Irma? Caulk? Oh then you should be fine.
(I'm kidding. Just made me laugh. Seriously good luck and be safe)
It's a touchy question. Here's my take.
The models have been more or less oscillating between a common easternmost track and a common westernmost track. The current guidance is very near the westernmost track. While the "cone of uncertainty" would, at this time, extend out west of Naples there hasn't been a track from any of the operational GFS or Euro that actually puts it out there.
So I'm going to say, for now, that it's not likely to happen.
But time is your friend with hurricane forecasting. We'll know more in 24 hours. When you get to 48 hours out and the track at that time is still up toward the east coast then Naples would be outside the margin of error. Figure the current track misses Naples by about 70 miles. The winds at ground level 70 miles to the west of the center would probably be solid tropical storm for several hours but flooding wouldn't be an issue because the wind is blowing offshore.
That's what I'm going with, for now.
I foresee some very difficult questions about how the city of Miami was allowed to grow in the manner that it has, in the last 20 years.
Agreeing again. One of my best friends from HS lives in Naples and they want to stay. I recommended that they at least keep watching the forecasts and if the forecast track moves within 30-40 miles of them by early Saturday, 24 hours before things go really south, that they should then get out of Dodge.
Similarly, if the track by Friday night or maybe Saturday morning is still showing the storm to be 75+ miles to their east, i.e., within 25-30 miles of Miami and the east coast, then they should likely be fine. By Saturday, there will also be contraflow, which ought to mean people should be able to move relatively quickly, easily outrunning Irma, moving at 15 mph or so.
I've also been trying to convince my dad in Vero Beach, who says he can't get a hotel room anywhere on the west coast to simply look at the track on Saturday morning - and if Irma will truly head up the east coast to then just hightail it over to Tampa and get to a shelter. I asked him if he'd rather live through 8 hours of abject fear of his house collapsing again (he lost part of his roof in Jeanne in 2004 with 120 mph winds at its worst) or have the inconvenience of sleeping in a shelter for a couple of nights. Problem is, he's 84 and has bowel problems and needs to stop frequently when driving and he's deathly afraid of getting stuck in traffic - but he knows SR-60 which would take him over to Tampa will likely not be that bad on Saturday, as most will have left by then. Tough to convince him, though.
Soooo I might not have a boring calm day in St. Pete?
My hospital has already said they're going to initiate that disaster plan either Saturday at 6pm or Sunday morning... meaning me and half the staff go in and stay until it's over. With this western shift, it just got a little more scary. All we can do is be as prepared as possible. Hoping our block construction, double paned windows and newish roof can handle it. All the updates are awesome! Y'all were the best with blizzard predictions up north, thanks for now doing great hurricane predictions as well! A few days ago when my husband and I were trying to figure Irma out my husband said "just go on the message board."
My hospital has already said they're going to initiate that disaster plan either Saturday at 6pm or Sunday morning... meaning me and half the staff go in and stay until it's over. With this western shift, it just got a little more scary. All we can do is be as prepared as possible. Hoping our block construction, double paned windows and newish roof can handle it. All the updates are awesome! Y'all were the best with blizzard predictions up north, thanks for now doing great hurricane predictions as well! A few days ago when my husband and I were trying to figure Irma out my husband said "just go on the message board."