Re: Alarmism thwarted. In final hours before landfall, Hurricane Idalia stopped intensifying and turned from Tallahassee

[byte detective]

On 07 Jun 2023, Rightwing Drug Addicts <now...@protonmail.com> posted
some news:u5qdve$16f3s$1...@dont-email.me:

> Democrats tried to make this into a globalwarming bullshit story and
> it simply shit all over them.

ATLANTA (AP) — In the final hours before Hurricane Idalia struck Florida
the storm had grown into a Category 4 beast lurking off the state’s west
coast, and the forecast called for it to continue intensifying up until
landfall.

An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft had recorded winds up to
130 mph (215 kph), the National Hurricane Center said in an ominous
bulletin at 6 a.m. Wednesday.

As the sun rose an hour later, however, there was evidence the hurricane
began replacing the wall around its eye — a phenomenon that experts say
kept it from further intensifying. Maximum winds had dropped to near 125
mph (205 kph), the Hurricane Center said in a 7 a.m. update.

Then came another surprising twist: A last-minute turn sparing the
state’s capital city of Tallahassee from far more serious damage.

“Eyewall replacement cycles are common in major hurricanes, and so when
you see that, it does lead to some temporary weakening,” said Kelly
Godsey, one of the meteorologists tracking the storm at the National
Weather Service in Tallahassee, where his colleagues slept inside the
weather office so they could be at work in case the city was devastated.

The eyewall essentially begins collapsing, and that “was beneficial from
a timing perspective,” said Donald Jones, a National Weather Service
meteorologist in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Several hours after the
process begins, a new eyewall forms and the hurricane can then quickly
intensify — which didn’t happen to Idalia as there wasn’t enough time
before landfall, Jones said.

“Like a figure skater pulling in her arms versus holding her arms out,
the hurricane spins with a lot more energy, power, and ferocity when it
has a tighter eye,” said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and former chief
scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

After a successful completion of an eyewall replacement cycle, the
hurricane has a larger eye and overall expanded wind field, extending
the potential for damage over a larger area. Instead, Idalia tracked
over land where friction immediately reduced the wind speeds near the
surface.

Then, after the eyewall replacement had begun, the hurricane took a
last-minute turn away from Tallahassee, home to about 200,000 people,
Florida State University and thousands more people in the metro area.
Instead of striking the capital city, it wobbled to the north-northeast
and made landfall near Keaton Beach, Florida, the Hurricane Center
announced at 7:45 a.m.

“Had that turn not occurred, there would have been much more devastating
impacts here in Tallahassee,” Godsey said.

Despite the eyewall replacement cycle's effects, Idalia was still a
major hurricane threatening storm surges of up to 15 feet (4.6 meters)
along some parts of Florida’s coast.

"All of that energy has already been transferred to the water surface
and the devastating storm surge is already on its way,” Godsey said.

A hurricane undergoing an eyewall replacement cycle can also see an
expansion of its wind field, meaning that a larger area could be struck
with hurricane-force winds, said Allison Michaelis, an assistant
professor in the Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Environment at
Northern Illinois University.

During the eyewall replacement, there isn’t much difference in the
amount of thunderstorms or tornadoes the hurricane generates because
that type of weather occurs in the storm's outer bands hundreds of miles
from the eye, Maue said.

Farther south in Tampa, the mood was intense as forecasters tracked the
storm while it moved up the coast and took aim at the Big Bend region,
said Christianne Pearce, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service
office in Tampa.

“The stress level is definitely elevated, but everyone is very alert and
very attentive,” she said. “You know, what you’re putting out there is
about making decisions to help people save lives.”

One of the hurricane hunter airplanes — a P-3 turboprop plane that flies
directly into hurricanes to collect data — typically flies out of
Lakeland, Florida, when it investigates Gulf of Mexico storms. But with
Lakeland near Idalia's potential path, those operations moved to Fort
Lauderdale, said Michael Fischer, a University of Miami associate
scientist.

“That aircraft data is really important in helping understand the
structure of the storm,” said Fischer, who helps to ensure the
airplane’s data is transmitted in real time to the National Hurricane
Center and emergency managers.

As Idalia advanced toward Florida, Fischer said he was impressed by some
of the high-resolution hurricane models used by meteorologists. They
have advanced over the years and now give scientists a better picture of
the processes taking place inside hurricanes — including signs an
eyewall replacement cycle might begin, he said.

Once the storm made landfall, it was moving fast with a forward speed of
around 18 mph (30 kph), the National Hurricane Center said.

The fast forward speed "was good and bad at the same time,” Pearce said.
It didn't linger long enough to drop copious amounts of rain on the
region, but it was fast enough that it could maintain much of its
intensity and remained a hurricane as it moved across south Georgia.

Idalia’s inland track was fairly straightforward for a storm moving near
the coast across the Southeast U.S., said Bob Henson, a meteorologist
and journalist with Yale Climate Connections.

“The most unusual aspect was the especially high water recorded at
Charleston, South Carolina, and other places along the Southeast coast,"
he said. “These high waters were a combination of a ‘supermoon’ high
tide, the storm-surge effects of Idalia, and a long-term component from
sea level rise associated with human-produced climate change. ”

There are several aspects of Idalia that have weather experts intrigued,
Michaelis noted.

“It’s interesting that we had a drought of major hurricanes making
landfall from 2006 to 2016, but since the 2017 season, we’ve had six
major hurricanes make landfall across the Gulf Coast,” said Michaelis,
who added that the location where Idalia made landfall in Big Bend
Coast, Florida, rarely sees a direct hit from hurricanes.

“To me, this underscores the main message we try to communicate before
and during every hurricane season: It only takes one," he said. “Aside
from how quiet or active a season is, aside from how quiet or active
previous seasons have been, and aside from where we traditionally see
major landfalls, it only takes one storm to make an impact.”

https://news.yahoo.com/final-hours-landfall-hurricane-idalia-043839322.ht
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