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Thursday, September 13, 2007

Hurricane Humberto:

I, like pretty much everybody, including the experts, was surprised that Humberto reached hurricane strength before landfall. However, I'm glad that, although it made landfall as a hurricane, at least it did so as only a Category 1, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph. As part of the reasoning behind my calm over this storm, I cite Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground when he made this chilling statement, "If Humberto had had another 12-24 hours over water, it could have been a major hurricane that would have hit without enough time to evacuate those at risk." As it is, Humberto is mainly a rain event, with my area getting the outermost rain bands and some thunderstorms. In this type of storm, the wind damage, while a potential problem, is not the greatest risk. I forget which storm it was, but a similar storm hit my area and washed out some small bridges in my area, not from wind, but from the rain. Also, there was a fair amount of flood damage in low-lying areas, again, due more to the rain than the wind. I've even been on the roads and gone to work at an office building during a storm of Humberto's size and strength, and I've been in thunderstorms even worse. So while it's a bad day for those affected, I'm just glad it wasn't worse. For those who are surprised by my lack of rancor in this post, I can only say that I don't joke about hurricanes. I may panic or behave somewhat neurotically, but I don't joke.

Enjoy the music. I chose "Rain" by The Cult.

6 comments:

Candace said...

This article refers to it as an "instant hurricane."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5irKcqdj8rLQwx8zZ5vYaO9PzLlKw

Guess we'd better get used to this.

Mandelbrot's Chaos said...

Yeah. Have you seen the Gulf/Caribbean ocean temperatures? While it's cooler than by about 8-10 degrees Fahrenheit than the region maxed out in 2005, the water is hot. So while I'm surprised, there's a part of me that says I shouldn't've been.

Candace said...

You read The Coming Global Superstorm, yes? What is your opinion? It scared the bejeebus outta me!

Mandelbrot's Chaos said...

No, but what I've read about hypercanes and what I've observed during the last few hurricane seasons, which is a time I've always watched very closely for obvious reasons, is more than enough to get me worried.

Snave said...

I think I have an idea about what you mean about the winds only being 85 mph instead of what could have been (much worse)!

Nobody needs to have that kind of damage, needless to say repeatedly.

Mandelbrot's Chaos said...

Absolutely. You probably understand about as well as anyone not from the Gulf Coast/Caribbean can, but I remember some of the trips back from evacuating... trees snapped in half like toothpicks 100+ miles inland. I think that was probably the Ivan evacuation, or maybe Dennis. I believe Katrina's damage was a bit to the west of where I was traveling on the way back, although when I made it home... So a Cat. 1, even a low Cat. 2, I'm not going to complain much.