The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary 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).😉
Main Topic: We Should Start to Retreat from the Coast…Case in Point: St. Petersburg Florida
Dear Diary. Hurricane Ian is now in the rear-view mirror, so all that is left to do is pick up the pieces and start rebuilding, or should we? Extreme CAT4/5 systems are becoming more common for landfalls across the Gulf Coast the last few years. It stands to reason that there will be more decimating our vulnerable coasts in the near future.:
Some residents of Sanibel Island that got the brunt of Ian will undoubtedly want to build back on that barrier island. I doubt that any insurers will give them a contract. It’s sketchy whether or not insurers will give contracts to Fort Myers or Naples, the two cities that also got the brunt of Ian, unless reconstructed buildings can withstand CAT4 winds with an associated high storm surge.
If Ian had made landfall across the Tampa St Petersburg area, we would have seen far worse effects and probably many more deaths. I already wrote a post involving an October 1921 hurricane that devastated that area in anticipation of Hurricane Ian’s forecast path. Thank goodness Ian did not make landfall in Tampa Bay:
Today I’m posting stock image pictures of development on the many barrier islands that encompass the St. Petersburg area so that you can see why there is a disaster just waiting to happen across a major American city:
The above two images are those for Treasure Island.
Indian Shores
Housing development along Clearwater Beach
Other views of Clearwater Beach
Looking at these pictures, it’s no wonder that people want to live there. The St. Petersburg/Tampa area is gorgeous but oh so vulnerable to even a strong tropical storm below hurricane limits.
Should taxpayers foot the bill for reconstruction once inevitably we see a disaster there? That’s debatable. If we are smart, we will abandon these barrier island developments, or at the very least reconstruct buildings located there to withstand a strong hurricane…but knowing human nature, we won’t. Eventually sea level rise will swallow all of these barrier island unfortunately anyway. Sigh…
Here are some “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks:
Here is some September 2022 climatology:
Here is more climate and weather news from Tuesday:
(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. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”