crimsone

Oh yes. Those trees are SCOURED.

Realtime wind speeds... http://ds.weatherflow.com/storm/michael#30.047,-85.032,10,8,!180980,1 (actually, perhaps not as realtime as I first thought)... but interesting.

Barring a miracle, Panama City is pretty much getting devastated over the next few hours. Even if the buildings survive, a hell of a lot of infrastructure won't.

Gotta love storm chaser mentality...

Even if it went that extra few MPH to Cat 5 now (156, iirc?), I doubt the NHC would upgrade it - there'd be no point other than to just increase any panic out there. They'd probably wait until the post-cyclone analysis to make the call.

I'll give it a go. I reckon that, with Florence, the warning was early, and the threat was clearer earlier. With Michael, I just don't think they've properly caught up and realised the implications. That, or nobody much cares about the Panhandle for some reason.

Haven't seen it personally, but could just be a wobble? The strong ones (especially the RI ones) do that sometimes.

Given its track, I'm not so sure that's an "if".

It is unlikely to strengthen.... but never say never.

Apparently there was an upper level low near florida feeding it dry air, or so Brendan says. In any case, the sheer size of this storm, as well as a very unusual direction for landfall in this area, still makes this a very very dangerous hurricane. People tend to forget that the wind difference between Cat 3 and Cat 5 is primarily the intensity of a comparatively small area in the middle of the storm (and of course, potentially a difference in size, surge, etc....). If you're in the path of the eye, that's a pretty important difference... but for the vast majority of those affected by a hurricane falling onto a large landmass, it's the wider winfield that matters, and this thing is huge. In addition, it's huge, which means that, as it's coming towards the land directly from the sea (not skirting land at an oblique angle as per usual), it's pushing a considerable surge with it. It's also taking all that rain, and dumping it over land...so not only do you get 20 inches under the area of the CDO, but you get 15 inches around that area, and 10 inches further out from that.... basically, it dumps a biblical amount of rain, and then a slightly less biblical amount of rain just beyond that, saturating the ground, giving it nowhere to drain, and filling rivers from both ends. Even as a Category 2, Florence is pretty darned nasty.

This is a pretty fantastic storm surge visualisation....

20 inches. 20 INCHES! That's in the realm of talking about rainfall not in inches but in feet! Dammit.... that's HALF A METER of rain!

So, it's looking like Isaac might be about to attempt to thread the yucatan/cuban eye of the needle into the GoM in around 6 or 7 days time. Not an overabundance of surface heat on the florida side of that, but on the texas/mexico side it's looking quite warm right now.

Apparently an ULL off Florida has been feeding her dry air. Still... of equal importance...

WTF!? Isn't that base (just down-river of Jacksonville) pretty much exactly where Florence is expected to make landfall? (Well, possibly slightly north of the north/northwestern eyewall)? I can only presume that the marines have storm-suitable fortifications that the rest of the population don't?

The layers in those clouds are beautiful. Why does the oncoming doom always have to be so damned pretty?

If they know the risks, then they are inviting death, and putting at risk those good people who would try to save them. Simple as that. That's not brave. There is no world in which that is brave. It's idiotic. The risks are in the graphics above.... they have a major hurricane bearing down on them, and they've basically been warned (if they've even bothered listening), that their island is likely going to be forcefully overwashed by sea, and battered by air. If they think "I know better so I'm not listening" then they're idiots. If they think "Well, it's only a chance that might happen" then they're idiots. If they think "If we're wrong, someone will save us and it'll be OK" then they're idiots. The information we have is out there for a reason.

A cat 4 produces a storm surge of "greater than 6 feet above ground" for most of Ocracoke. Ocracoke is 3 feet asl. The word for when the sea does that to an island is "overwashing". Even a category 2 storm carries some pretty serious risks with it on Ocracoke.... Nobody loves severe weather so much that they actively choose to be killed by it... but to put the lives of those good people who would try to save them at risk too... well, that's selfishness of the highest degree. We're not talking about people that know all the risks, understand them, realise what the margin of error is, and have the knowledge and experience to mitigate that risk in order to stay safe. We're talking selfish idiots.

500 year storms (or 100 year storms) are so-called for the probability of their occurrence, so technically, if you wait long enough, 50 in 5 years is possible. I was just commenting that Harvey really wasn't all that long ago, with respect to biblical volumes of rainfall.

How many 500 year storms can you even have in half a decade?

There's your '3'. Yellow circle. 20% chance of cyclogenesis within 5 days.

I've been watching these things since about 2004/2005.... not so long in the grand scheme, but after some 14 years I feel confident in saying... ... you don't see a graphical outlook like this every day!

Beware, the triangle of doom.

If that eye shrinks, the storm intensifies. If that eye shrinks too much, an outer eyewall can develop. If an outer eyewall develops, she undergoes an EWRC and de-intensifies... but does so at the cost of becoming a larger storm. After EWRC, it's then a question of whether she has the time and environmental conditions to reintensify. The bigger she is and the more intense she is, the worse it gets for the Carolinas.... not to mention Pittsburgh down the line (all that moisture has to be dumped somewhere once the storm's not intense enough to support it aloft, after all). Basically, there's no scenario in which this ends well as things stand.

Continues to look as if the environment in the Caribbean just isn't favourable for this one... not that the Antilles get to be much pleased about that fact.