Saturday August 31st… 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).😉
Tracking Dorian Day Four
*No matter what happens with Dorian tropical rainforest fires are more of a concern for the long term health of the planet.*
What a difference a day makes! The great news is that Dorian will probably not hit Florida directly, and the system’s eyewall may not move inland at all into any place across the Southeast with more fortunate luck. The bad news is that Dorian is “overachieving” as far as top winds go as I am writing this post, being about on the cusp of a CAT 5 hurricane. Also, the northern Bahamas are expected to see brutal CAT 3-4 force winds for better than 24 hours starting on Sunday.
Still, there are no guaranties that Dorian won’t make it to Florida, and if the system stays offshore swells and storm surge will produce significant beach erosion in that state. The situation is even more dicey from Georgia into the Carolinas where there is less model agreement, obviously, since their forecast is more than three days out in time. Let’s say that the chances for a direct hit from Dorian are way down to about 20% for Florida, 25% for Georgia, and 40% for the Carolinas after looking at the full spread of 12Z Saturday met models, including the ever reliable European model.
So, can we begin to check off any climate change related items mentioned on yesterday’s post? So far looking at the path and projected turn north, no. But, yes the system “bombed” last night down to a 140 mph storm in just a few hours, something we would expect over relatively warmer waters. ATTM Dorian is about as healthy a tropical system as you can see on satellite loops with winds of 150 mph. Another box to check off would be duration of being a CAT 4/5 hurricane. This beast will probably rack up many hours with winds above 140 mph looking at its forecast overall environment through the Labor Day weekend.
We hopefully won’t see a “second” historic Labor Day storm, the first occurring during 1935 in the Keys. Dorian should serve as a warning shot to central and south Floridians that what they have built is unsustainable in the long run even if people laugh at some “bad forecasts crying wolf” from the National Hurricane Center (and yours truly). The western Florida Panhandle dwellers via Michael in 2018 already know that climate change has led to a crisis of proverbial epic proportion.
Here are many more notes on Dorian that will be saved for posterity. As usual, newest notes will be listed first:
Here is more climate and weather news from Saturday:
(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.)
Here is an “ET” from Canada from Saturday:
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”