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Irma's Coming!

It looks like widespread power outages that will take a long time to fix are going to be the major story of Irma's impact. Except on the Keys, where we don't know yet what the impacts have been.

(I've been fooled before in the first 48 hours after tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and so forth in thinking "it must not have been so bad," because it takes at least that long for news of the worst impacts to come to light.)

There will be some backlash against the evacuations. I've already heard some people predicting that some future hurricane will have more casualties, because people will remember being "unnecessarily" stuck on highways, having to abandon their cars, etc. due to the uncertainty of the forecast, and stay put instead.

However, I think nowadays, so many people have no clue about how to meet their basic needs without electricity that the power outages alone will make most of the evacuations worthwhile in the balance.

I hope meteorologists will carefully study why the various models were so consistently off in the same direction, and learn from that. I understand that input data is uncertain and incomplete, and the granularity of the models and the inherent chaotic nature of weather systems introduces more uncertainty. But in this case the models were in agreement with each other, but wrong, over and over, even about what was going to happen in the next six hours. It seems as though some significant variable is being overlooked.
 
Myriad said:
It looks like widespread power outages that will take a long time to fix are going to be the major story of Irma's impact. Except on the Keys, where we don't know yet what the impacts have been.

(I've been fooled before in the first 48 hours after tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and so forth in thinking "it must not have been so bad," because it takes at least that long for news of the worst impacts to come to light.)

There will be some backlash against the evacuations. I've already heard some people predicting that some future hurricane will have more casualties, because people will remember being "unnecessarily" stuck on highways, having to abandon their cars, etc. due to the uncertainty of the forecast, and stay put instead.

However, I think nowadays, so many people have no clue about how to meet their basic needs without electricity that the power outages alone will make most of the evacuations worthwhile in the balance.

I hope meteorologists will carefully study why the various models were so consistently off in the same direction, and learn from that. I understand that input data is uncertain and incomplete, and the granularity of the models and the inherent chaotic nature of weather systems introduces more uncertainty. But in this case the models were in agreement with each other, but wrong, over and over, even about what was going to happen in the next six hours. It seems as though some significant variable is being overlooked.
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Not all models were wrong. ECMWF: European global model got it right.

Links:
US forecast models have been pretty terrible during Hurricane Irma
Here’s what the world’s most accurate weather model predicts for Irma
Now, you may be wondering, "Why is the official forecast so far to the left, when all of the other models had moved east?" The answer is the European model. This forecast system has superior hardware to run its calculations. But more importantly, it has a method by which it better assimilates real-world data—observations from weather networks around the world, atmospheric soundings, reconnaissance aircraft, and much more—into its calculations.
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I am very happy that ISF members appear to have weathered Irma in comparatively fair shape (and I do realize coastal areas may yet experience the full storm surge).

Oddly I am now expecting (and perhaps it has already happened) the inevitable whining by many others that Irma was not as deadly in the major metropolitan areas of Florida as the warnings indicated it might be. That they bought all those supplies, or even evacuated their homes, only to find that they are still alive and their homes, although damaged, are still standing. Those damn wimpy scientists- what do they know- just frightening everyone... Cue Rush again, right?

It must be tremendously disappointing to find out that that you were relatively lucky and although hit by a massive storm with major wind and flooding damage, you didn't wake up dead, or to find that the hurricane didn't wipe your community out to the bare ground, as it did parts of the Caribbean (and I imagine) in the Florida Keys.

Obviously predicting paths of hurricanes in detail is famously difficult to do. Nonetheless prior to improved methods of prediction, many thousands of people died in hurricanes that they could not adequately anticipate nor plan for.


People are funny creatures. The reverse recently happened in Italy where scientists were convicted of manslaughter because they failed to predict an earthquake and their statements (at least as quoted by politicians) were viewed as too reassuring. Since overturned.
 
Craig4 said:
There was a lot of damage done to the screen on my pool cage by the debris.
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Just heard from my neighbors. We lost a few screens and a fence gate - nothing else obvious. Power is already restored in our neighborhood.

My sister has a condo near the water in Naples though. That could be bad.
 
Trebuchet said:
I'm becoming more and more annoyed with the lack of reporting (on CNN, because that's what my wife has on) of what has happened in the keys.
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CNN had a reporter on Key Largo saying everything is gone (it won't be) and that a restaurant he ate at two nights prior is demolished. The video should still be there. Then they had video from Big Pine Key with seawater everywhere. There is probably even some footage from Key West where I think was the worst hit.

As you probably know, Key Largo is the furthest Key from Key West and yet still was heavily damaged. All of those islands are only a few feet above sea level.

Pretty soon Florida is going to smell horrible. I was in Homestead a couple weeks after Andrew and everywhere stank of rotting vegetation. The hurricane scours all the leaves from trees and kills lots of them and other foliage and then it all starts to decompose.
 
CNN is streaming live from an aircraft flying over the Overseas Highway. Looks like the state troopers are letting people who live there back in. They've shows a couple of overturned semi trailers and some boats that got washed up onto land. Haven't seen any of the actual Keys yet.
 
Fury at the Keys as residents denied access

12:00 p.m.: Tensions ran high at the entrance to the Florida Keys late Monday morning as families waited in the heat to return home. Some still hadn't heard from friends and relatives who had stayed behind.

Officials from the Monroe County Sheriffs Office said they were only letting utilities companies and a few contractors from the Department of Transportation pass. But after two unmarked cars went through the checkpoint, Keys residents waiting at a RaceTrac gas station erupted in protest.

"That's ********!" a bearded Keys resident, who refused to give his name, shouted at the police. "Those people are tourists!"

When a deputy sheriff approached him, the man put his hands behind his back and dared the official to arrest him.

"People are dying in there. They're thirsty, they're hungry," he told the official.

"I say we all just get in the car and drive. What are they going to do? Shoot us?" another man yelled to the others waiting at the gas station.

"This stuff right here is the reason why next storm they aren't going to get people out of the Keys," said the man, who identified himself as a Cudjoe Key resident but did not want to give his name. "I've been in the Keys for 40 years. This is the first time I ever evacuated and it'll be my last."
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Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article172537476.html

IIRC, Cudjoe Key is where Irma made landfall as a cat 4.
 
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I read that the staff at the Hemingway house were staying put as they didn't think it was possible to evacuate so many cats safely. I haven't heard how they fared though.

ETA: I just googled. Multiple news articles saying they're safe, all nine lives intact.
 
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Every time I read the title of this thread, I hear it in my head like someone from "The Wire"..


Irma's coming, yo!
 
"This stuff right here is the reason why next storm they aren't going to get people out of the Keys," said the man, who identified himself as a Cudjoe Key resident but did not want to give his name. "I've been in the Keys for 40 years. This is the first time I ever evacuated and it'll be my last."
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What a damn tool.

There's actual rescues and a hell of a lot of work going on to make the Keys safe for residents to return right now. You can wait just a little longer to get back to your house with no electricity or running water that's technically uninhabitable by human standards.
 
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The highway might be impassable in places preventing anyone from going far. You don't have roadway options in the Keys.
 
Trebuchet said:
Oh, the huge manatee!

I do understand that the keys have been evacuated and it's tough to get the news out. I'd just like to know more. What's become of Hemingway's polydactyl cats?
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They survived. The house was unscathed.

It was wonderful, too, to see the endangered Key deer who survived, still skipping about along the highway. They were almost extinct in 1951 with just 25 of them, so have been carefully monitored since.

There is a video of them. See it here:

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/09/11/key-deer-florida-hurricane-irma/
 
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