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José is Coming!

Sherkeu said:
I see from the link that TS Lee and TS 15 (Maria) are heading in as well.
Buckle up!

eta:
Lee expected to fizzle to depression by Wednesday
Maria expected to be a Hurricane by Tuesday
Click to expand...

Moron on CNN this morning: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"
Now I've had that as an earworm all day.
 
She moves like she don't care
Smooth as silk, cool as air
Ooh it makes you wanna cry...

Maria, you've gotta see her
Go insane and out of your mind...
 
So now Maria is a Category5 Hurricane bearing down on Puerto Rica and Dominica, its first Cat 5 in 100 years.

https://youtu.be/VpdB6CN7jww

Wilma holds the record in going to Cat 5 within 12 hours. Maria had done it in 14.

I doubt the residents have had any time to be prepared or a had a chance to get away.
 
Making landfall right around now on Dominica. Expected to remain cat 5 and cross PR as cat 4 or 5 on Wednesday.

There's time for people to get away, not off the islands of course but to safe locations and safe structures. Puerto Rico (and even Dominica) aren't exactly sandbars with groves of palm trees in the middle. They've got mountains.

But, catastrophic coastal damage looks very likely.
 
Myriad said:
Making landfall right around now on Dominica. Expected to remain cat 5 and cross PR as cat 4 or 5 on Wednesday.

There's time for people to get away, not off the islands of course but to safe locations and safe structures. Puerto Rico (and even Dominica) aren't exactly sandbars with groves of palm trees in the middle. They've got mountains.

But, catastrophic coastal damage looks very likely.
Click to expand...

Hopefully the mountains will have the effect of breaking it up a bit.
 
Vixen said:
Hopefully the mountains will have the effect of breaking it up a bit.
Click to expand...


Dominica (and Guadeloupe and Martinique that it passed near) didn't have that effect. Their mountains are high enough but not spread out over a large enough area.

If the center crosses Puerto Rico as expected, that will probably slow down its winds but only by about 10 mph or so. More slowing will result from its passage into cooler waters.
 
Not a lot of coverage of Maria on U.S. news channels.

I think the reason isn't (or isn't only) "it's not hitting the U.S. so who cares?" It's that there's not much actual information to convey. Current status of the storm, where it's headed, where the range of the uncertainty is, what kind of damage it could maybe cause (with plenty of hedging due to the forecast track uncertainties).

When it's headed for the U.S. they can fill hour after hour with boilerplate preparation warnings, footage of gas lines and sold-out stores, live video ("well, it was live the first of the 97 times we showed it") of rain falling into a puddle and a sidewalk cafe umbrella being knocked over by the mild winds a safe distance away from the storm, and so forth. Experts can come on and have interviews like:

"Jake, I was just on the phone with a local resident who says he's going to ride out the storm doing a handstand on the top of a billboard with cats glued to his torso. Is that a good plan, in your opinion?"

"No it's not, Marcia, and here's why..."

But when their vans and reporters aren't there, the people affected aren't tuned in to their network to hear their warnings, and footage of the actual damage won't be available for days, they're pretty much reduced to a three minute segment once per hourly cycle.

They have to figure out how to get politicians to come on and argue about where the storm should have gone instead and whose fault it is that it didn't.
 
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