Sunday September 1st… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Tracking Dorian Day Five…Will Catastrophic Dorian Recurve As Projected?
Well that is the $25,000…no make that the 250 billion dollar question if now, at this writing, 185 mph Hurricane Doria were to deviate just 50 miles to the west of its projected path and bodily make a landfall, paralleling the heavily populated east coast of Florida. Should Dorian move through the core of Florida a near quarter of a trillion dollar price tag would literally have to be eventually paid. Can I, your trusted meteorological servant, answer this question now? Of course not. The only thing I can do during the course of today is put updates on this blog is show trends.
What unnerves me is that back in 2004 I attended a beach wedding in Tampa the day before Hurricane Joan paid an unwelcome visit. Joan tracked much farther west than expected just 24 hours out giving the Tampa area gusts to hurricane force. The National Hurricane Center made a poor forecast due to fairly bad model guidance, tracking Joan up Florida’s east coast instead of moving the system towards Tampa. Models have gotten better since then, but this life experience is always in the back of my mind.
ATTM Dorian is beginning to strafe the northern Bahamas with devastating winds. Superlatives can’t describe what is going on in those islands now. Dorian is now the strongest hurricane to ever make landfall in the Bahamas and among the strongest to ever develop in the Atlantic Basin.
As I am writing this post the central pressure of Dorian is fluctuating just above 910 millibars on dropsonde observations. Dorian has already way overachieved from its state of the art model pressure forecast. Hurricane Wilma back in 2005 has the top spot at 882 millibars. Has Dorian checked off my climate change low pressure signature box already? You bet!
Here is more as quoted from the Washington Post:
Storm is 2nd-strongest on record for the Atlantic, will move close to Florida, Southeast coast
By Andrew Freedman and Jason Samenow September 1 at 1:51 PM
“With peak winds of 185 mph, Hurricane Dorian is the strongest storm on record to strike the Bahamas, and threatens to bring hurricane force winds, coastal flooding and other impacts to the east coast of Florida and Southeast U.S.”
“It also ranks as tied for the 2nd-strongest storm (as judged by its maximum sustained winds) ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, behind Hurricane Allen of 1980.”
“The storm’s peak sustained winds are the strongest so far north in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida on record. Its pressure, down to 911 millibars, is significantly lower than Hurricane Andrew’s when it made landfall in south Florida in 1992 (the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm), and data taken by Hurricane Hunter aircraft flying inside the storm show that Dorian may still be intensifying.”
A “catastrophic” scenario is unfolding in the northwestern Bahamas, where the storm’s eyewall, the ring of destructive winds around the center, struck Sunday. The storm made landfall at 12:40 p.m. ET in Elbow Cay, Abacos. At 2 p.m., the center reported the storm is “Heading with all its fury toward Grand Bahama.”
These are wow! messages:
This is the IBM model that terrorized me when I was trying to sleep overnight, and I can imagine many others:
So, without further ado here are many more notes on Dorian that will be saved for posterity. I’ll be constantly updating these as the day progresses. As usual, newest notes and videos will be listed first:
Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”