I hate weather.com. Way to general for me. I love the NHC site. I'll definitely check out wunderground and intellecast. Just got the 11amEST update and the track has shifted pretty significantly to the northwest taking it towards the northern Florida coastline. One model even has it skirting the coast line and, if it were to make landfall, has it showin up in the Carolinas. Seems like since the morning forecast models, all but one have started to make the northwest turn earlier than predicted before. Interesting to note that some of the very first models a couple days ago had Francis on a very similar track towards northern Florida. If it does in fact make that move, I'm impressed.
OH, should have mentioned a couple of sites I like: http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/tropical.html http://www.hurricane.com/ The NHC site is still the best. God bless forecasters Stewart and Davila!
Oh damn, didn't know that. College Football on a Monday? I swear it wont be long before we have football 7 days a week.
is the game in miami or tallahassee?? looks like this thing shouldn't affect either too much...but my bet is there will be rain, though.
They are facinating and dangerous. Hurricane Carla put a tree into my bedroom. My Grandmother (who lived to be 97) was old enough to remember the Great Hurricane of 1900, the worst in our history. She lived in the Heights as a kid, in a wood frame house on blocks. She said she sat on a bed as the wind howled and the water swirled on the floor, some inches deep. It was filled with relatives and some neighbors. The house left it's foundations and floated about a block and a half down the street. I still have a book, published shortly after, that she inherited, that is full of photos of the truly unbelievable devastation that pretty much destroyed Galveston, and the barges full of bodies that were towed out into the Gulf, and dumped into it. Sadly, many of them washed to shore. Many don't realize that they never had a real accounting of the number of dead, which could have been even higher than was estimated, and probably was. Or that it had a big affect on Houston and the area. Houston, as bad as Alison and Carla were, hasn't been hit directly by a savage hurricane in ages. We are way, way overdue. And heaven help us when it happens.
Hurricane Alicia is the most memorable storm of my lifetime. 1983. A high category 2/low category 3 storm. A tornado spun off and took the roof off my family's home. We were in a hotel for 7 weeks. Since then, I've been fascinated by these things.
Have you guys seen the film at the museum dedicated to the Great Storm of 1900 down near the Strand. It's off a pier near the Strand. Has those pictures already mentioned which show the devastation to Galveston. Houston would be a much lesser place had that not happened.
I saw it. It was OK, but could have been done a lot better. That's why I'm looking forward to "Isaac's Storm".
Well - None of our family members in Ft Myers have phone service back from Charlie. We still haven't heard from some friends there as their phone service is out too. The family in Orlando is still cleaning up as they got hit much harder than expected. To add insult to injury, my brother-in-law had his store robbed in the middle of the hurricane. This on top of having his fence blown over, trees down, vehicles damaged, roof shingles blown off. And he just found out that he has an $8K+ deductable on his home owners for hurricanes. We have more family members on the other side of the coast in Ft Pierce. He's in the orange grove business and 1/3 of the crop got wipped out already - though most of his stuff is ok - so far.
The odds of a hurricane hitting reset every season. We aren't any more overdue than anyone else along the Gulf Coast. If you want to discuss who is overdue and who is not, just look at New Orleans or Jackson, Mississippi. There are parts of the Texas coastline that have had only a few disturbances over the past century. Category 4/5 hurricanes are extremely rare in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, out of an average of 15 or so storms a year, only about 2 are "major" hurricanes (4 or 5) and only 1 every 4 to 5 years actually hits the US coastline. Because major storms are often tightly packed, it takes a direct hit by an eye that is almost always less than 50 miles in diameter to feel the direct hit. With the thousands of miles of coastline along the Gulf and Atlantic, it is hard to say anyone is overdue considering the odds.
Keep thinking that way, Jeff, and hope Houston stays lucky. Considering the gigantic increase in Houston's population, the huge numbers of people living in areas that could flood, who didn't use to, and the subsidence that has put large areas of Houston closer to sea level than it used to be, the consequences of an "unlucky break" could be catastrophic. And the mere fact that we haven't had what you described as a "direct hit" from a really powerful storm in so long tends to make some people complacent. Hey, with all the relatives and friends I have who live in Houston, many on the southeast side, and in the Clear Lake area, I have no desire for a category 4 or 5 storm to come straight at us in the worst possible way. It's just that you can't dismiss the possiblity. In my opinion, it will happen, sooner or later. I just hope that the massive flooding by Allison was a wakeup call for the city, and the surrounding local governments, to take whatever steps they can to mitigate the damage such a storm could cause. The new survey of the flood plains isn't a bad start. Oh, and I've seen the movie about the 1900 storm in Galveston. It's very interesting, and worth seeing, but they left a lot out.
Possibility? Absolutely. Likely? Not really. This isn't to say it won't happen again. I will eventually, but only 7 major hurricanes have hit the Texas coastline since 1900 (pressure below 950MB and winds in excess of 115mph). Out of those seven, 2 hit the Galveston/Houston area. Of the category 3 (or better) storms in the gulf since 1900, only 14 have hit Texas and 4 of those hit Houston including Alicia. So, in over a century, we've gotten four major hurricanes that have made a direct hit on Houston and only yet, other than the 1900 storm, which is one of the largest on record in the gulf, a tropical storm - Allison - has been responsible for the worst damage, not a hurricane. I'm not saying people shouldn't be prepared or pay attention. I'm saying that the odds are very long that we suffer a catastrophic hurricane. Even if we do and with the population increase and flooding problems, we also have greater warning systems, much sturdier building codes and better means of transportation for escape from a storm. So, as bad as it COULD be, it can never rival the impact of a storm like the one in 1900 that completely blindsided the island and the area with little or no warning, no major transportation and no seawall.
There was at least one game on every day of the week last season. The Miami-FSU game being on Monday is really not unusual as you have to remember that the Monday is Labor Day and college football has always had a game on Labor Day as long as I can remember. Thursday has become pretty popular in the last couple of years as it seems there is a Thursday game on every week. Tuesdays came along about 2 seasons ago as the 2nd favorite non-Saturday. The really weird days to see college football games, IMO, are Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. However, the BYU-Utah State game used to be played for years on a Friday night (there was a reason for that but I can't remember - something like a local holiday thing). Also, you will usually see at least one game on a Sunday during the Labor Day weekend. The game will be in Miami, by the way, for those that are curious. Here is some trivia for you - Miami had a game scheduled in 1998 with a team that had to be rescheduled because of a hurricane and was played at the end of the season. This game wound up having a huge impact on the national championship race for that season and in my opinion was a catalyst for Miami's resurgence as a college football power. Who was it that Miami played and what was the final score?
