Hurricane Irene of 2011 now rated history's 6th most damaging hurricane
New damage estimates released last month by NOAA now place the damage from 2011's Hurricane Irene at $15.8 billion, making the storm the 6th costliest hurricane and 10th costliest weather-related disaster in U.S. history. Irene hit North Carolina on August 27, 2011, as a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds, and made landfalls the next day in New Jersey and New York City as a tropical storm. Most of the damage from Irene occurred because of the tremendous fresh water flooding the storm's rains brought to much of New England. Irene is now rated as the most expensive Category 1 hurricane to hit the U.S. The previous record was held by Hurricane Agnes of 1972, whose floods did $11.8 billion in damage in the Northeast. NOAA also announced that the name Irene had been retired from the list of active hurricane names. Irene was the only named retired in 2011, and was the 76th name to be retired since 1954. The name Irene was replaced with Irma, which is next scheduled be used in 2017.
Figure 1. True-color MODIS image of Hurricane Irene over North Carolina taken at 11:35 am EDT August 27, 2011. At the time, Irene was a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds. Image credit: NASA.
At last month's 30th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology of the American Meteorological Society, Paul Ruscher of Florida State University explained how Irene's storm surge came within 8 inches of flooding New York City's subway system, which would have caused devastating damage. At the current global rate of sea level rise of 3.1 mm/year, a repeat of Irene 65 years from now would be capable of flooding the subway system, if no action is taken. Since sea level rise is expected to accelerate as the planet warms in coming decades, an Irene-type storm surge would likely be capable of flooding the NYC subway system much sooner than that. To read more about New York City's vulnerability, see Andrew Freedman's analysis at Climate Central, Climate Change Could Cripple New York’s Transportation, or my November 2011 blog post, Hurricane Irene: New York City dodges a potential storm surge mega-disaster.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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The Southern part of the country badly needs an El Nino. If not this summer, then it needs to happen this fall and winter.
Hey Mon. Actually up here in Tallahassee starting to see the clouds start to roll in and hoping for some rain. I am on the outside North end of that Gulf moisture off of Florida but not looking too promising.
Also a bit down because our local NWS office is having their Annual WeatherFest today at the Regional Airport and they have some NOAA planes there and I cannot get out of work. I love their office and local forecasters but why they decided to have this event on a Thursday (when all of the past years have been on a Saturday) is beyond me(and with all the kids in school). I suspect they got excited to add the airplane dimension to it but the airport is much more crowded on the weekend with commercial traffic so they opted for a Thursday.............I am not a happy camper as a result today..... :(
Drought is expanding everywhere even in TX again which saw a lot of rain earlier this year.
You guys need a tropical storm like Nicole to break the drought. What's up Mississippi?
Driest I've ever seen it here in C FL and this is after 66" of rain last year. The problem as been there's only been 8" since last November at my location.
3:46 PM GMT en Mayo 03, 2012
Thanks for the comment, I added this to my post:
"Since sea level rise is expected to accelerate as the planet warms in coming decades, an Irene-type storm surge would likely be capable of flooding the NYC subway system much sooner than that."
Jeff Masters
Assuming an average albedo of 0.5 for sea ice (mean, rather than max albedo).
At 66N having no ice vs ice.
Summer Solstice gives plus 365 watts/ meter square of missing ice.
Equinox gives plus 203 watts/meter square of missing ice.
Winter solstice gives plus 8 watts/meter square missing ice, which is still larger than the global greenhouse effect.
For 75N latitude:
Summer solstice gives 307 watts/meter square missing ice.
Equinox gives plus 129 watts/meter square missing ice.
Winter solstice is in the dark, so irrelevant.
As you can see, forcing from positive albedo feedback is actually orders of magnitude larger, locally, than forcing from GHG feedback.
Numbers assume local astronomical noon. Other times of the day are too complicated for me to do by hand in a reasonable amount of time.
Hopefully you can get some rain...maybe some rain would give you some joy
Not much, Nigel. Just stopping by before going about the rest of my day! Hope you're doing well.
Here in Mississippi we have been fortunate for most of this year with plentiful rains. It had been dry for about 2 weeks until yesterday.
Yeah, that's not good at all. I'm still banking on El Nino sometime this year. If not, at least it won't (shouldn't) be La Nina which steers most all rain away from Florida during the winter. It won't be long before your rainy season helps out.
Those cold Pacific currents cool us off quite a bit along the coast. Remember what Mark Twain had to say about summer in San Francisco?
Interior Europe might be little affected were the currents to stop, but the isles and west coast could suffer.
Just go inland a few miles, especially on the eastern side of the coastal mountains in the PNW and you'll understand the cooling effects of the California current.
Pair it up with the map below and it makes sense:
Wall Street no longer takes place on Wall Street.
Good to know
Nice "cool" overcast over the Big Bend right now but only a 30% chance of rain.....Hoping some heating later will spin up a few t-storms.
I'm seeing cracks along my fence line where no grass is because I spray round up, can't believe it's doing that already with the all the good rains, but I guess no rain since April 20th with warm/hot sunny days will do that.
The problem for you guys is not much rain fell in 2011 so eventhough you have gotten some good rains earlier this year it has only put a small dent into a multi year drought you guys are experiencing. Hopefully TX and FL can see some tropical systems this summer to erase the drought fears. In FL lakes are nearing all-time record lows after a year that had near record rains last year. so it goes to show that several months of hardly any rain in the south with all the extreme heat we have seen lately can cause the soil to dry out rapidly.
Seems like you guys got a few, very heavy rains rather than an extended rainy season.
If that's true then you might not have had much absorption into the soil, a lot of the rain would have run off. If there was little moisture penetration then super dry soil should appear early in the season.
If few-heavy is going to be your new rain pattern then it might be time to start building absorption ponds. Get some of that water back into the aquifer.
I'm hoping but that hope is fading as it seems everytime we are expecting a big system to dump lots of rain on FL it never materializes.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_i mages/N_stddev_timeseries.png
You can also see there isn't much happening at the 850mb level. The only indication of vorticity at 850mb is way off to the west:
MESOSCALE DISCUSSION 0674
NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK
1034 AM CDT THU MAY 03 2012
AREAS AFFECTED...ECNTRL WI...LOWER MI
CONCERNING...SEVERE POTENTIAL...WATCH POSSIBLE
VALID 031534Z - 031700Z
PROBABILITY OF WATCH ISSUANCE...60 PERCENT
SUMMARY...THUNDERSTORMS ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE ALONG A CORRIDOR
FROM ECNTRL WI INTO LOWER MI LATE THIS MORNING INTO THE EARLY
AFTERNOON. LARGE HAIL AND GUSTY WINDS MAY BE NOTED.
DISCUSSION...REMNANT MCV IS LIFTING NEWD ACROSS SWRN WI AND
CONVECTION IS BEGINNING TO INCREASE A BIT JUST AHEAD OF THIS FEATURE
ACROSS ADAMS/SAUK COUNTIES IN SWRN WI. THIS TREND IS EXPECTED TO
CONTINUE OVER THE NEXT FEW HOURS AND THERE IS INCREASING CONCERN
THAT AN ELONGATED CORRIDOR OF CONVECTION WILL EVOLVE...INITIALLY
SOMEWHAT ELEVATED TO THE NORTH OF THE WARM FRONT...ACROSS ECNTRL WI
INTO LOWER MI. THE STRONGEST BOUNDARY LAYER HEATING IS OCCURRING
FROM SERN WI INTO SRN LOWER MI AND THIS WILL AID DESTABILIZATION FOR
ROBUST NEAR-SFC BASED STORMS NEAR THE WARM FRONT. CLUSTERS OF
THUNDERSTORMS WILL GRADUALLY INCREASE IN AREAL COVERAGE/INTENSITY
INTO THE EARLY AFTERNOON AND THE PROBABILITY OF A SEVERE
THUNDERSTORM WATCH NEEDED ACROSS THIS REGION IS INCREASING.
..DARROW.. 05/03/2012
13' in Orange County. Although not technically a coastal county when a hurricane's headed my way I start hearing Pink Floyd in my head. Lol.
faster and faster
would i scare ya if i told yeah we are past the point of no return
Sitting here in Tallahassee watching all the cloud cover building I can say this.... If this was July, and sheer levels were in the 10-15 knot range, I would be paying more attention........ :)
Sea ice recovering to almost normal levels during the maximum in winter, followed by a drastic fall during the melt season is becoming the pattern when you look at the year long graphs. I wonder what the implications are of having such a contrast in the extent of ice over the seasons.
Yes, extent and area were nearly "normal" (vs the 30 year average,) but average thickness is so far below historical normal that volume is still about the same it was on last year's curve.
Volume will likely drop below last year's curve at any time now.
If you have normal extent, as we had a few days ago, but below normal area, which we did, then that is not a recovery. It is evidence that the ice is breaking up and melting.
An extent drop of 1,011,920km sq in seven days.
All that "recovery" that happened a month or so ago and got folks all excited is melting away very fast. Just as one would expect with late season, thin ice.
Most of the issue down here is that while we've gotten some solid rains, it hasn't been enough to put a dent into the drought. The most I've gotten in one event was 1.4", and the most I've received in a week this year was 3.2". It just hasn't been enough to refill the water tables, aquifers, and lakes. We were down something like 26" at the end of last year (in Tomball, TX). We are about 6" over for the year now - but we are still hurting because of the deficit from before.
What TX needs the most right now is a large and wet tropical system (Cat 1 or TS would do awesome, preferably TS) to come ashore just south of Corpus, and swing up through the high plains (staying west of San Antonio and Dallas), dumping lots of rain on the high plains and points east. This would refill the reservoirs, and also provide some solid, steady rain which is sorely needed. As a point of reference, Lake Travis is *still* 33 feet below "normal" levels (roughly 50% of capacity).
Area and extent recover.
Average thickness and total volume hardly recovers at all, and actually has a net loss almost every year for the past 15 years, except 2000, 2001, and 2008.
The reason area recovers is because heat gets transported away through convection, which provides a slight negative feedback. Once the water cools off enough, a thin layer of ice can then re-form.
People are less worried about the economy. No one should be surprised that climate change concern was pushed to the background while people were worried about keeping bread on the table and a roof over their heads.
A president, or any other official facing election, can't get too far out in front on any issue. Their first job is to get re-elected and that means pissing off as few people as possible.
PBO has said little about climate change over the last couple of years, but he's been doing things which help us cut our fossil fuel use and our CO2 output.
Thanks much hydrus...yes it is
Maximum extent and area will decrease.
Look at what is happening to the ice in the Great Lakes. It's just a matter of time before we see a decrease in the overall area that experiences all-winter freeze up.
Refill reservoirs, yes.
Soak into the soil, not so likely.
If you're going to be living with a few, heavy rains per year rather than a larger number of lingering rains you're going to have soil moisture problems.
Anything that can be done to help some of those heavy rains to soak in rather than run off would help. It might be time to do some large scale thinking.
No argument about the ice volume and thickness. I never thought about convection causing a negative feedback. Very interesting. In Dr. Master's post a few weeks back he talked about the evidence of that the loss of sea ice extent was causing the jet stream to behave differently (larger amplitude and slower movement). Living in the northeast this makes sense when you compare the last two winter we had (one with record high snowfall and temperatures significantly below average and this winter with record high temperatures and almost no snowfall). It will be interesting to see how an ever accelerating rate of change in sea ice affects the jet stream and future weather patterns.
I wish but it appears to have no interest in doing so...
Oh, I understand. Our soil moisture was doing great just 3 weeks ago, but it has really dried out since then, as we've had no rain, but a bit more heat and dry air than usual. So soil moisture content has gone into the dumps.
For the best soil moisture, we need about 1/2 to 3/4 an inch of rain twice per week. To really fix the drought, we need that 3-4 times per week, for several months.
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