Thursday August 29th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Dorian and Andrew…Similarities and Differences With Climate Change Connections
How many of you are old enough to remember Hurricane Andrew from 1992, which devastated Homestead, Florida as one of the few CAT 5 storms to ever hit the United States? For a quick review here is a Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew
Hurricane Andrew was a powerful and destructive Category 5Atlantic hurricane that struck the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana in August 1992. It was the costliest hurricane to ever hit Florida until Hurricane Irma surpassed it 25 years later. It was the strongest landfalling hurricane in decades and the costliest hurricane to make landfall anywhere in the United States, until it was surpassed by Katrina in 2005.
Andrew caused major damage in the Bahamas and Louisiana, but the greatest impact was felt in South Florida, where the storm made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane, with 1-minute sustained wind speeds as high as 165 mph (270 km/h). Passing directly through the city of Homestead in Dade County (now known as Miami-Dade County), Andrew stripped many homes of all but their concrete foundations. In total, Andrew destroyed more than 63,500 houses, damaged more than 124,000 others, caused $27.3 billion in damage, and left 65 people dead.
Here was a sat photo on its approach to Florida:
Hurricane Andrew approaching peak intensity over the Bahamas on August 23rd, 1992 (Photo credit Wikipedia).
Now here was Andrew’s path:
Map plotting the track and the intensity of the storm, according to the Saffir–Simpson scale (Image credit: Wikipedia)
Notice that Andrew went through extreme southern Florida leaving most of Miami and the bulk of points northward unscathed. Andrew did move into Gulf coastal areas producing more damage but in a weakened state. I remember the landfalls of Andrew vividly as a forecaster at The Weather Channel when this event occurred 27 years ago.
As far as recent major hurricanes that hit south and central Florida go, don’t forget that Irma in 2017, which got a historic retired name, skirted the east coast of Florida only giving a glancing blow to Miami. Irma moved through the Keys and diminished some before moving inland across southwest Florida. Dorian could be much different, and not in a good way.
*At this time keep in mind that there is a slight chance that Dorian will miss Florida entirely.*
I sent out these social media notes yesterday and this morning:
Some individual model ensembles coming in as of 12Z Thursday paint an extremely frightening picture, moving at least a CAT 3/4 Dorian through the bulk of Florida then perhaps up the Eastern Seaboard as far north as the eastern Carolinas.
As far as a climate connection goes the overall envelope of atmospheric warmth and sea surface temperatures could turn Dorian into a true monster. It hasn’t helped that since the 1990s Florida’s population has continued to increase.
Will Florida dodge another big bullet? We will see.
We will be blogging on Dorian for the foreseeable future, keeping in mind that no matter what happens the Amazon fires are a worse climatological hazard (as posted yesterday).
Here are many more notes on Dorian. As usual, newest notes will be listed first:
Here is more climate and weather news from Thursday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”