Tag Archives: Hurricane Idalia

Hurricane Idalia is a classic case of weaponization of weather

 From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi 

Every single event that is normal for a season is being weaponized in the phony climate war (heat waves are normal for summer. Hurricanes are normal for hurricane season. Droughts and Floods are normal events, etc.) THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NORMAL AND AVERAGE. The average is a product of all events, extreme one way or the other and anything in between. IT IS NORMAL TO HAVE NATURE PUSH THE LIMITS OF ITS VARIABILITY and then return to a centering position, only to start the process over again. It is the eternal process of chaos, then control, that is a fact of life be it with the weather or in your own life.

For instance for much for much of Texas, this is the hottest summer on record, But that has been taken and pushed on people as if the rest of the country boiled. Yet there are the facts:

Most of the summer for the country is at or below average. Look closely. The max deviation and min deviation are almost equal.

They are both extreme, but that is what can happen to produce the average, which was above average due to the amount of warmth in the southern US. But while they suffered, close to 75% of the country’s population had temperatures near or below average.

The heat in the south pushed the limit a bit further on a regional level. But nature is capable of testing limits and creating new ones.

Look at this:

May 1911,1977

These are two of the warmest Mays on record.

But look what happened the following winters:

There are places that had the greatest reversal of temperature from May to the winter on record. This has not been equaled since. My dad used to say I had no idea of how bad the weather can get and then would tell me about growing up in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. It is obvious today that this is the case, with many gullible people buying into this.

The fundamental denial of a higher power is evident whenever someone weaponizes an event. How so? Well, you have to throw out (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Ecclesiastes 1:9, and a host of other verses to even believe that man can control the majesty of the atmosphere. So you have to deny that higher power, which, of course, can make you the higher power. I suspect a lot of this has a fundamental root, the belief that a group of men are now Gods that should be in control of the rest of mankind. I wrote a piece called ” The Glory of God vs the Folly of Man in the Climate Debate”, and it was on Facebook but not here, So I will go no further here with this thought but will leave it for you to think about this aspect.

I will deal with the President’s and others’ weaponization of Idalia.

First of all, for those who follow me, how many of these rapid intensification storms in close has weatherbell.com picked out for all to see? All the calls have been as many as three days off, several and a week, and in the case of Ian, nine days, and it was on here. Why? Because there are two ways you see this. In the case of the “in close” ones, a certain phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is observed. The storm intensifies, coming to the coast almost perpendicular as it tightens the convergence in the path of a storm. A storm parallelling the coast will weaken. But the movement with these cases is more north than west, as it is influenced by a trough of low pressure. The configuration of the Upper air pattern means that, as it heads toward the trough, it encounters a region of the jet that PULLS AIR OUT OF THE STORM AT THE TOP, which means low-level inflow increases. This is known as ventilation. This was taught at Penn State in the 1970s. I showed the public on Twitter what we were showing on Weatherbell.com, specifically to set the trap for them since I know Joe Biden has no idea about this, and neither do his advisers.  If they did, why do they say what they say unless it’s a case of deception?  So we showed why each of these “in close” majors that have hit the coast were going to deepen rapidly. Example: On August 21, 2017, when everyone was staring at the eclipse, my company was telling our Texas clients Harvey would be a major while coming to the coast. I CAN’T HELP IT THAT INITIAL INTENSITY FORECASTS FROM OTHERS CLAIM IT WILL BE LESS, and then when the textbook case develops, the storms do what they are supposed to do.

The other way is a storm breaking through a trough and then turning back to the west. Dorian, for instance. Andrew, and a host of others. But the point is my tropical professor in 1976, who was an FSU Ph.D., taught this stuff 50 years ago.

I rather doubt our President knows this.

I also doubt he looked at the max WINDS, which only reached cat 1 strength.

The storm rapidly intensified until the last few hours, then it rapidly weakened. This process means the strong winds do not get down to the surface. This is why our power and impact scale has a pressure tendency factor. I have been in arguments for years over this; if a storm is weakening there is some kind of collapse of the structure that makes the low-level winds not respond. When it intensifies, the strong winds get right down to the surface. There were no reports of sustained winds of even cat 2. It’s likely there, were in small streaks, but even at Keaton Beach, where landfall was made, the peak was 77 mph. Here are the max winds out of the Tallahassee NWS office.

https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=PNS&issuedby=TAE

THERE IS NOTHING OVER CAT 1 HERE

A cat 1 or 2 hurricane causes a lot of damage. But entire neighborhoods were not bulldozed as a storm with 125 gusts to 145 would have done.

Generously, this was a cat 2.

So, was the rapid weakening climate change. While it is called eyewall replacement, there is a reason why no MAJOR HURRICANES have hit in there. Saying this was a major with the data is like saying I won Mr. Olympia because I am a bodybuilder. Neither is supported by the facts. Doppler winds, recon, etc., are all great if the perfect processes are occurring, But when there is a collapse, that is not the case.

This also makes my point about seeding strong storms as they are coming to the coast to induce eyewall fluctuations. This collapse was as dramatic as Lili ( maybe more so) in 2002, which went from a 4 to, generously, a 2, as it came to the coast. It also shows why the power and impact scale should replace Saffir Simpson.

Do you think Joe Biden knows or even cares about any of this?

So, let me ask the president this question. Which is more frequent, seven major hits on FLA in six years or two in six years? If you want to make Idalia a major, it’s three in six years.

So what was the reason for this?

I am still including Idalia as a major, though I believe it will not happen. But, even allowing for that, how is this worse than the 1940s?

What’s more, Weaponizing Weather for something that has been taught for 50 years, is plumbing the depths of dumb and deception. For with each explanation, there are obvious counters that show they are intellectually bankrupt.

How about this little ditty? Explain this: two long-tracked major hurricanes hit the US within an 18-hour on Sept 14, 1933. I still have trouble believing that could happen.

The need to completely overhaul the way we rate hurricanes is front and center not only because the size of the storm matters, but also BECAUSE OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE AGENDA. When people are saying it is getting worse, it is nonsense. THE AMOUNT OF KINETIC ENERGY WITH A LONG-TRACKED LARGE STORM, BLOWS AWAY WHAT THIS IN CLOSE STORMS DO. The Current scale is based on what is basically a spot wind. What happens when a storm is huge? I showed this example many times with storms of the past that are in the same category but are much larger and, if occurring today, would cause more widespread damage.

So we had the collapse at the end here. Though perpendicular at the hit, I suspect the track into the coast did parallel the part of Florida to its west in the big bend. But for whatever reason, IT COLLAPSED. The intensification was textbook. But once in close, if you want to plumb the depths of dumb blaming climate change for the intensification, then let us blame it for the weakening.

Or how about Irma reaching the Florida mainland as a 2 after being a 4 . Or Irene, Matthew, Dorian, and Florence all weakening when coming to the coast, hitting well under what they reached before? Is that climate change?

Actually, it is. But it’s not man-made. It’s a product of what I have been trying to show the public for years. A distortion is taking place, which means this whole thing is a wash.

I’ll close with a line from Bill O’Reilly’s column on Sunday.

https://www.billoreilly.com/b/Beyond-Belief/-532683136001373902.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=staff_column

“If a person succumbs to false beliefs and rejects accepting verifiable truth, they live in a delusional state.”

And there is no better example than the weaponization of weather.

Author


Joe Bastardi

Joe Bastardi is a pioneer in extreme weather and long-range forecasting.

He is the author of “The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear From Al Gore — and Others” which you can purchase at the CFACT bookstore. His new book The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate war can be found here. phonyclimatewar.com

Hurricane Idalia could be US’s costliest climate disaster this year – Independent

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Does anybody actually believe the Independent?

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/hurricane-idalia-costliest-climate-disaster-b2402898.html

Given that Idalia turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, the Independent is rather shooting itself in the foot. It rather proves that the cost of US “climate disasters”, (I assume they mean weather disasters), have actually been pretty low this year!

The simple reality, that even the simpletons who read the Independent must know, is that by definition hurricanes tend to be much more costly than most other weather events. That is the nature of the beast.

Electric vehicles catch fire after being exposed to saltwater from Hurricane Idalia

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h/t James Stagg; The Idalia vehicles were apparently flooded with salt water. My question – could salt spray from a windy day at the beach also trigger a deadly battery fire?

Electric vehicles catch fire after being exposed to saltwater from Hurricane Idalia

“Saltwater exposure can trigger combustion in lithium-ion batteries. If possible, transfer your vehicle to higher ground,” the Palm Beach fire department wrote in a Facebook post. 

Two electric vehicles in Palm Beach, Florida caught fire after being exposed to saltwater from Hurricane Idalia, according to reports.

Officials from the fire department said that both cars were Teslas and stated that the rechargeable car batteries might combust if exposed to saltwater. 

“If you own a hybrid or electric vehicle that has come into contact with saltwater due to recent flooding within the last 24 hours, it is crucial to relocate the vehicle from your garage without delay,” the department wrote in a Facebook post. “Saltwater exposure can trigger combustion in lithium-ion batteries. If possible, transfer your vehicle to higher ground.” 

The warning also extended to other vehicles with lithium-ion batteries such as electric golf carts, scooters and bicycles.

Read more: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/transportation/electric-vehicles-catch-fire-after-being-exposed-saltwater-hurricane

Obviously the lesson in the case of hurricanes, if you live somewhere which might be flooded, is move the electric vehicles outdoors, away from anything you care about. Of course, putting your vehicle in harms way might affect your insurance claim, so please get professional advice before acting on this suggestion.

What about lesser exposure to salt spray? For example, occasionally in Australia windy weather kicks up salt foam, which covers the foreshore, without the need for an actual hurricane or cyclone.

Even when you don’t have something as obvious as salt foam, anything parked near the sea on a windy day gets exposed to a continuous, penetrating, near invisible spray of salt. On windy days, after parking by the sea, you usually have to use the windscreen washer to clean off the layer of salt before driving the vehicle.

I don’t know if that penetrating salt spray can wreak the same damage as floodwater. Maybe it just takes longer. But this is certainly a question I would be asking myself, if I owned an electric vehicle.

Even away from the ocean there are weather phenomena which could cause an accumulation of salt on vital engine components. A lot of desert environments, the dust contains significant amounts of salt. That dust gets in everywhere.

Salt buildup could be an explanation for some of the spontaneous combustion electric vehicle disasters we’ve seen over the years. The salt could slowly accumulate in layers on critical electrical components of the vehicle, until one day, when atmospheric conditions are just right, moisture causes the salt layer coating the vehicle components to become electrically conducting, a short circuit forms, and the electric vehicle catches fire and explodes.

For more information about some of the bad things which can happen to electric vehicles, and why they are bad for the environment, click here.

Did Idalia Really Have 125 MPH Winds?

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Regular readers will know that I have often queried the windspeeds claimed nowadays for hurricanes.

The problem stems from the fact that in the past windspeeds were estimated on the basis of central pressure. Certainly anemometers would never have been able to withstand the strongest winds; nor would they have been likely to have been in the exact location where winds were strongest.

In recent years however winds are estimated using satellite and aircraft dropsonde data.

The problem, however, is that consistently we find that windspeeds and central pressure do not reconcile in the same way as they did in the past.

Idalia came ashore with sustained winds, so we are told, of 125 mph, and a central pressure of 949 MB.

The chart below plots the windspeeds of all US landfalling hurricanes with central pressure of 948, 949 and 950 MB at landfall:

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html

As is instantly obvious, nearly all those historical hurricanes had estimated winds of between 100 and 115 mph. The oddity is the 1926 hurricane which was said to be only 75 mph, but had central pressure of 949 MB.

But sticking out like a sore thumb is Idalia, with winds of at least 10 mph higher than any others. This clearly cannot be right.

If it is true that Idalia really did have 125 mph winds, then clearly all of those hurricanes in the past have been grossly underestimated.

The figure of 125 mph came in this instance from a Hurricane Hunter aircraft, but it is worth noting that Keaton Beach, where landfall was made, the weather station there only recorded 61 mph:

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2023/al10/al102023.update.08301145.shtml?

I’ll leave you with one last thought.

Two hurricanes in the 1920s utterly devastated Florida:

  • The 1926 Great Miami Hurricane

This storm razed much of  Miami to the ground, and is reckoned to be the costliest Atlantic hurricane of all time, at current prices, even more so than Katrina.

But according to the US National Hurricane Center, it also made landfall with winds of 125 mph just like Idalia, despite much lower central pressure of 930 MB.

  • 1928 Lake Okechobee
http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1920s/Okeechobee/

Two years later, Florida was hit by another catastrophic hurricane, which had already decimated Guadeloupe, destroying nearly every building there and killing over 1000 people.

Coastal South Florida saw catastrophic damage as well, the heaviest in Palm Beach County. Towns greatly affected were Jupiter, Delray, Lake Worth, Pompano, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, all of which were impacted by the hurricane’s 3 m (10 ft) storm surge. In West Palm Beach, 1,711 homes were destroyed and 6,363 more were damaged. The greatest devastation occurred, however, along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee. There, the 3 m (10 ft) surge washed over the lake’s 1.5-2.4 m (5-8 ft) dikes and flooded an area 120 km (75 mi) wide. At Belle Glade, one of the hardest hit areas, the floodwaters rose to a height of 2.1 meters (7 ft) at a rate of about 25 mm (1 in) per minute. In all, between 2,500 and 3,000 people died making this hurricane the second deadliest hurricane in U.S. History after the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. Total damages from the storm amounted to $100 million (1928 USD) across the Caribbean and the US.

It is interesting that at the time windspeeds at landfall were estimated at 150 mph. But since this has been downgraded by the National Hurricane Center to 125 mph, despite central pressure of 929 MB.

Was Idalia truly as strong as these two storms? Did they all have 125 mph winds?

It is clear that the damage wrought by Idalia was not on the same scale as the 1926 and 1928 ones. Indeed most resulted from the storm surge, which we know was much lower. There’s a CBS video from Cedar Key, which was hit hardest by Idalia, and which shows may buildings barely damaged at all.

This together with the central pressure data tells us that it is absurd to claim that Idalia was as strong.

Weather Girl Does Not Understand Hurricanes!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Weather Girl Laura Tobin apparently thinks there is some significance in the fact that Idalia was the first major hurricane to hit Apalachee Bay in Florida:

Given that Florida’s coastline is 1350 miles long, and that the strongest winds in any hurricane usually don’t extend more than a few miles from the centre, most of the State’s coast can also claim to have never experienced a major hurricane.

There is therefore significance in her remarks. I pointed this out to her, but she has declined to respond!

Idalia Update

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Hurricane Idalia

There have been suggestions that the rapid intensification of Idalia was somehow unprecedented.

This is nonsense.

Idalia went from a tropical storm, with winds of 60 kts (69 mph), to a Cat 3 hurricane at landfall, with winds of 125 mph, in the space of about 32 hours.

http://rammb-data.cira.colostate.edu/tc_realtime/storm.asp?storm_identifier=al102023

But that was nothing compared to the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, by far the strongest to hit the US. This went from a tropical storm to a Cat 5 , with winds of 185 mph, all in the space of less than two days.

We must also remember, of course, that we now have satellite updates every six hours, plus frequent hurricane hunter flights, to give us almost hourly data for these bigger storms.

In 1935, they had little idea what was happening out at sea, and so often had no idea how quickly storms intensified.

http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1930s/LaborDay/

Trail of Destruction

Even the weakest hurricanes can be devastating to anybody in their path. But as the impacts from Idalia become clear, it seems that it was much less catastrophic than forecast, and certainly not in the same league as Ian last year.

Storm surge, according to Fox, never seems to have got much above 6 ft, much less than the 15 ft forecast before landfall. That however is still enough to inundate places like Cedar Key, a group of low lying islands which took the brunt of Idalia, and which are now more than a few feet above sea level for the most part.

Rainfall was not excessive either by hurricane standards. And as the storm tracked across Georgia, the expected catastrophic rainfall did not materialise – totals of up to in Georgia for example.

Fortunately it also appears that there have been no deaths identified so far, as a direct result of the storm.

We can’t change the weather, but can end the hysteria

1 Comment

From CFACT

By Larry Bell

Hurricane Idalia barreled across the southeast coast of the United States.

With no intent to make light of the foreboding trauma this brings to those in its path — after all, this writer resides in Houston — let’s nevertheless recognize that this is hardly a rare or more frequent occurrence throughout U.S. history.

Nevertheless, we’ve all heard it before: more evidence that climate change is the greatest existential threat … we’re causing it through unfair excess prosperity.

The solution is to “transition” from fossil sources that supply more than 80% of U.S. and global energy to intermittent sunbeams and windy breezes that provide a total of about 3% along with highly subsidized electric vehicles that depend upon rare earth minerals mined by slave and child labor in China and the Congo which is prohibited here because it pollutes the environment.

Why?

Because we’re not only dangerously changing the climate, but the weather, and thereby also causing more frequent and severe forest fires as well.

But actually … not really.

First let’s recognize that global temperatures were as warm or warmer 2,000 years ago during the Roman Warm Period, 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, and even a smidgen over 100 years ago in the 1930s.

That was followed by three decades of cooling which began in the mid-1940s despite World War II weapons industries having released massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and had leading scientific and news organizations predicting the onset of a next Ice Age by the late ’70s.

We’re also supposed to believe that a global two-degree Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) temperature increase since the pre-industrial era (1880-1900) has produced alarmingly more frequent and severe weather and related wildfire events.

Recorded evidence indicates otherwise as well.

As noted by The Weather Channel a year ago, “It’s The Atlantic Hurricane Season’s Least Active Start In 30 Years” since 1992.

Whereas Hurricane Ian which had devasted large areas of Florida last year was indisputably a monster storm, a basic review of history reveals that media hype connecting it to evidence of a recent “climate change disaster” is entirely unfounded since such occurrences have been experienced with far greater frequency and damaging — sometimes fatal — consequences over the past century and before.

For a larger historical perspective, consider that North Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane patterns fail to reveal any worsening trend over more than a century.

Cat 3-4 Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey and Cat 4 Hurricane Irma back in 2017 ended an almost 12-year drought of U.S. landfall Cat 3-5 hurricanes since Wilma in 2005, whereas 14 even stronger Cat 4-5 monsters occurred between 1926 and 1969.

Many intense Atlantic storms formed between 1870 and 1899, 19 in the 1887 season alone, but then became infrequent again between 1900 and 1925. The number of destructive hurricanes ramped up between 1926 and 1960, including many major New England events.

As for more recent hurricanes, the 2005 and 1961 seasons shared records for their seven major U.S. landfalls since 1946, whereas 1983 set the record for the least number, with only one.

Twenty-one Atlantic tropical storms formed in 1933 alone, a record only most recently exceeded in 2005, which saw 28 storms.

Tropical cyclone Amelia dumped 48 inches on Texas in 1978; tropical storm Claudette inundated the town of Alvin, Texas, with 54 inches in 1979, emptying 43 inches in just 24 hours; and Hurricane Easy deluged Florida with 45.2 inches in 1950.

In terms of U.S. fatalities, “Superstorm Sandy” in 2012 which ravaged the northern East Coast, resulted in more than 100 deaths; the San Felipe Segundo Hurricane which struck Florida in 1928 produced an estimated 2,500 casualties; and the Galveston hurricane of August 29, 1900, may have killed up to 12,000 people.

Katrina had reached a Cat 5 hurricane level packing 175 mph wind speeds with a 20-foot storm surge in 2005 before hitting the Louisiana coast as a tropical storm which resulted in about 1,800 deaths.

Regarding alarmist tropes about global warming setting the world on fire, well-known climate writer Bjorn Lomborg points out, “It turns out the percentage of the globe that burns each year has been declining since 2001.”

Global Wildfire Information System records this year up to July 29 show that while more land has burned in the Americas than usual, much of the world — Africa and Europe in particular —  have seen less, slightly below the total global average between 2012 and 2022 that previously saw some of the lowest forest losses.

Lomborg blames bad land management failures to clear dead trees and other vegetative tinder for the most expansive American fires. Even so, he notes that U.S. fires burned less than one-fifth the acreage of the 1930s, and only one-tenth as much of the early 20th century.

In any case, whether fewer or more prevalent, there’s no factual basis for attributing severe weather or wildfire occurrences to smoke stacks and SUVs.

Nevertheless, whereas we can’t change the weather, it truly is in our best interest to anticipate those bad-case circumstances and prepare our communities and households to mitigate against the outcomes.

Whether or not one such event gets hyped on the media as the “biggest ever,” “strongest ever,” “deadliest ever,” or “costliest ever,” it may qualify as the worst ever for you.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to forget to prepare for this on nice sunny days.

This article originally appeared at NewsMax

Author


Larry Bell

CFACT Advisor Larry Bell heads the graduate program in space architecture at the University of Houston.

He founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. He is also the author of “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax.”