f13.net

see topic

Tornados spotted.

Edit: Added Irma.

this should be in gen disc, moving it

gg, corpus

(http://i.imgur.com/QkxcrRy.jpg)

For those watching the game from other states, landfall ain't the worst part. The projected, meandering, week long fucking cruise on the coast (yanking water up and dumping it, staying as a tropical storm the whole way) is the worst part. 30+ inches of rain PLUS storm surge PLUS soaked ground and high running rivers and bayous.

They're looking at floods all over the place.

Jesus. I just dropped another bunch of money on groceries -- worst case, I'll let me 21 year old kid come pantry shop when all this is over. :)

(I will say I envy a friend of mine his whole house automated hurricane shutters and NG generator that can power his whole house. I'm pricing both of those for next year)

It's 78 degrees and sunny here.

What a world.

Might not be for long. Houston just took the first feeder bands this afternoon, and the rainfall maps show ugly amounts of rain in the Houston-Austin-SA triangle over the next week.

Too much depends on where this thing goes. Haven't really see many storms that land and then reverse course.

I honestly never realized how close Austin and San Antonio were to Houston until looking at a map for this storm.  I mean, Austin to Houston is comparable to my place to Chicago. 

And here I was considering Austin as somewhere to move to if I could ever convince the husband to leave this crappy state.

I don't actually understand what is being said here.

Have the RV's "riding out the storm" from the coast been seen floating in the gulf yet?  :why_so_serious:

I think it's "fuck moving to Austin," more or less.

Have fun kids. I had a nice chuckle listening to NPR interview the CC major and some other podunk 70k pop major talking about how nobody had left and they thought it'd be just fine, "God Willing."

hahahaha.

The forecasted rain total in East Texas is 42 trillion gallons. This would form a cube 3⅓ miles on a side, containing 38 cubic miles of water. That's enough water to submerge the state of Massachusetts to a depth of 19 feet, or fill a Twinkie® 195 billion miles long.

Houston can afford to rebuild.

Those towns are completely fucked.

I confess I sort of hope the storm intensifies in a bizarrely local way and wipes every structure in Von Ormy from the map while sparing all of its people, and then they're all forced to beg for help from the government.

https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/

We are going to get 3 FEET of rain this week.  Ah well, I'll be here in my tower. Hope the power comes on at some point.  Morat - we live in greater heights and I think our power is linked up with Memorial Hermann next door, so if you have a boat and need a place to crash at some point, drop me a PM.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/3o72F8ria0Jwfuli7K/giphy.gif)

Somewhere there is now someone actually trying to calculate how long a Twinkie that would be. And how much it would weight.

I know, because I had to stop myself.

(https://i.imgur.com/tap7mpi.png)

CAT4

I heard those "we cant really afford to evac right now so we are gonna ride it out. We got sandbags and water" RV guys on the news just now. Heaven help their poor dumb asses.

Darwin, bitches.

Stay safe peeps.

Weak Cat4, but fuck....130 mph winds will fuck your day.

My new roof (per the updated city code) is 140mph roof, and I think it's time I couple that with hurricane shutters. As in "I want to hit a button and have my doors and windows seal fucking shut like a Vault.

I'm not sure about my garage door. I hear wind can rip those up.

Cat 4, holy fuck.  Basically all the worst parts of the Bible...

Your garage is fucked. If you don't have a heavy door, the wind will pull that sucker apart, and then the space there leaves nice leverage for the wind to jerk that part of the roof off. Just plan on that thing being gone in a good storm.

First of all, old testament. Second of all, best parts.

I've heard people doing tie-downs and stuff, but I'll add "upgrade garage doors" to my lengthy list.

Least it's only a mild Cat 4 and didn't have time to build up a Cat-4 level storm surge. I'm not sure how much difference it's gonna make to the poor suckers about to eat it, but 130 beats 150.

Good luck, guys and gals.

Nutjob storm chaser periscoping from Rockport

https://www.pscp.tv/Jeff_Piotrowski/1zqKVRbYXWWKB

Is he just sitting there in his car, waiting for death?

He's in a car wash bay.


EDIT: Which is now coming apart.  :awesome_for_real:

No shit it's coming apart. The walls are often cinderblock, but the top isn't -- and it'll just funnel the wind. And also, it's got tons of heavy machinery on movable mounts, ready to fall.

He's talking about the storm stalling, but I can't see that happening.

Anyone know when the last eyewall replacement cycle was?

Shit's falling down, lighting's striking, it's gusting to 150, the other guy just drives off and he...gets out of his car? WTF.

Does anyone live near where the eye is coming on shore?  It looks nasty on the Weather Channel.

Washington Post had a story two hours ago of a guy who lives in Aransas Pass, just northeast of Corpus Christi, about 200 feet from the water, who is:

a) near-blind and 66
b) caring for his disabled 40-year old son
c) has no car
d) supposed to be on an evacuation list but nobody came for him
e) heading to the supermarket to see if he can get some canned food

Reporters tried to give him a ride and offered to pick up his son, but he refused, gonna to ride it out. I would assume they told authorities.

I don't think that guy's still going to be there tomorrow if someone doesn't come to get them.

The periscope guy is currently eating the dirty side eyewall. Highlights: Steel beams cracking, cinder block walls flexing, 150+ gusts...

edited to add: I think he's in the eye now.

Almost.

Some asshole keeps calling his phone.

That guy is in serious trouble.

You can really tell the difference in construction methods -- that little shed is built more like a house, and is generally flipping the bird to the wind. Whereas the the metal roofs are flying off (low weight, lots of surface area) and breaking the crap underneath it.

Houses are damn sturdy in the face of high winds, although I would prefer the cinderblock walls he's got now to brick.

He stopped broadcasting. I hope not because he's injured or dead. But that seems like a real possibility.

He was getting back in the car when the signal cut, probably just lost signal. Doesn't mean he's okay, but at least 591 thousand people didn't see him live stream his death.

--Dave

He's apparently fine but he's not broadcasting any more.

He's back, new stream. In the eye, figuring out where to go next.

Edited: Down, then up, then down, then up, then down for good I think. It was in the middle of the eye, so I suspect his data connection finally gave it up.

He's gonna get eaten by a fuckin water-logged grue.

Man the number of fake Twitter news accounts are crazy. I'm glad I never got into Twitter.

Jeff is back!


EDIT: Any time Jeff's feed drops out the comments in every other Harvey feed are all about Jeff. Jeff is now a meme.

Look up Cyclone Tracy and enjoy the irony.

Today's prediction models for Harvey...

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIKEwgGVwAAadYZ.jpg)


 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Looks like the inner workings of a dice tower.

TABD CAN GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE WITH THAT

(is clp5 going to dallas? lol)

How are you Texans doing this morning?  It sounds like the damage is isolated so far?

I mean, southeast Houston is a pool. We won't get hard numbers from the coast for a couple days. The hurricane is just parked there. I'm getting waxing and waning heavy rain and p strong wind gusts. I woke up to rain hitting our windows sideways (north facing) with trees swaying a solid 4 feet (2 feet each way).

And as I type this the wind picked back up.

Franklin's bbq caught on fire, apparently they were gonna be open all day, so they had wind just stoking fires in pits all night. It's one block from my house, so I'm pretty comfortable saying fuck them for being stupid. They're lucky the fire didn't spread.

The radar track I saw had it going North then a little Northeast, which is terrible for you guys in the Houston area.  It would have been so much better if it had continued Northwest.

From SE Hosuton, can confirm it's a pool.

Actually not that bad yet, just regular hard thunderstorms and solid winds. Drainage is doing fine so far, but I'm already very glad I don't live near a river or bayou.

Now it's downgraded to a tropical storm.

Well yeah, it's sitting on land. And the tracks look a lot better.

Houston's still fucked as long as it's trailing feeder bands over the water, but the sharp north turn they're predicting (aiming it towards Bryan by mid-week, not Houston) means it'll move further from water and energy -- which means it can suck up less water to dump all over  Texas.

They're still projecting two freaking feet of water falling from the sky.

It's pretty hairy in East Austin now. Our neighbor is the CSI and we heard a bunch of fucking sirens go by and she rushed out and tore off in the van.

The Tornado folks just gave up. They basically announced "Okay, if you live anywhere within 250 miles of Harvey, TORNADO WATCH FOR YOU".

The Houston area announcement alone listed like a dozen counties until 2:00 AM.

We're getting fucking hammered now. Even though it looks like the eye has collapsed, we're now in formerly what was the eyewall.

It's gross.

The fun hasn't even started. Houston's due a foot of rain tonight, and this damn thing won't clear until Wednesday -- the feeder bands are not only dragging rain all across Houston, but it's pushing the tides up 3 or 4 feet.

But it's quiet and there's only been about 6 inches of rain in Houston so far. I'm worried about the number of people who might decide to go out this evening.

Damn, that sounds nasty for all you guys down there.  Just hope none of you float away.


Which part?  The part where I didn't know Texas geography that well or the implication that I didn't want to move to Austin after all?  I think it would still be on the list because you don't usually deal with cat4 hurricanes parking overheard, but OTOH, it looks like there's no direct route to Houston either, which probably doesn't matter all that much.

Ah.

Austin is literally a direct shot (one highway) to Houston.

And no, typically hurricanes don't happen. This is like a thousand year thing, not a hundred year thing. Honestly, the only surprise is the wind. We've gotten heavier rain, though less, from standard Texas storms.

I look the Bus from Austin to Houston once. Was actually a really pretty drive.

This storm just lives here now. Also, two new leaks in house discovered.

Yayyyyyyy

You best be chargin that bitch rent.

(http://i.imgur.com/rlcDpEx.jpg)

I mean...

Corrected by guy who knows how to use the width command.  :grin:

It got really shitty overnight. We're good (fuck you, rainfall!) so far -- we're in a good position when it comes to that. My kid managed, surprisingly -- although his place is more "storm surge fucks you" than "rainfall". Dickinson (yes, real town) is basically underwater. My Aunt's place is basically an island in a sea. My parents had water in their garage but not house. And a friend of my son's had her fucking car float out of her driveway.

Water moved it about three feet.

Had about 12 to 18 inches across Houston last night, and a brief reprieve -- and another 8 to 10 inches expected today.

My particular little town has pretty much drained, the space between bands of punishing rain is a few hours apart, but...that doesn't do you a lot of good in places that don't drain well, and places where rivers and bayous are overtopping. Those will take days to go down, not hours.

This storm can't afford Austin's rent. That's why it's fuckin angry and throwing a fit.  :oh_i_see:

Ah, so that's why Hurricanes don't even bother coming to California. 

No, the earth merely tries to kick California off it.

The tornadoes last night were pretty bad. We had one only a few blocks away, and my tiny town had three or four. I think the damage was pretty minimal, I'm not sure they touched down for long.

But clearly I haven't been out to rubberneck.

Ex's place in Pearland water got up to the garage last night but the street drainage is working so that flooding has gone down. The creek across the street is within a foot of going into her neighbors back yard and not showing any signs of going down. She keeps talking about evacuating and I told her the best thing they can do is hang out on the second floor if water starts to rise as the major storm surge is over but trying to drive across a flooded Houston and south Texas is asking for problems. It all depends on if they're going to get any more rain, as right now it's stopped.

50 inches of rain total now being forecast in the Houston area.

Never seen the NWS post something like this:

"This event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced. Follow orders from officials to ensure safety."

NWS is not known for its exaggerations.

Yep. Most of the rain fatalities are in your car. Second floor if you have to (but not attic. You want a way out) or roof. I can't imagine the flooding hitting a second floor.

50 inches of raini is for isolated locales, right?. I'd hate to be those locales. (Some places saw up to two feet last night. We saw less than one. Houston is pretty honking big.). So they're forecasting another foot to two feet over the next four days. So four feet total, if you get super unlucky...

It's freaking weird seeing some of the footage and looking outside at light rain and clear streets. I'm about 15 miles from Hobby, which got two feet of water.

Right now I seem to be in a charmed zone between two heavy bands of rainfall. It ends just to the west of me and begins about twenty miles to the west of me. I've friends in the Woodlands who are seeing the same weird, low-rain bubbles.

Seriously, some of the pictures of downtown are awful. The bayous and rivers are full, there's no way for it to go. At least the rainfall intensity is slowing down some.

Five feet by Friday, says our computers.

The replies to this, eeeaaaghhh.

https://twitter.com/HoustonTX/status/901741970065907712

CBS is showing a main road that is flooded and the current is so strong that the signs and light poles are actually causing wakes in the water.  I have no words.

The radar is showing a lot of heavy stuff all the way out to Louisiana. We just had the next heavy band hit us -- it's not too bad, but I know it hammered stuff to the southwest of us hard earlier.

This is just an insane amount of rain.

Edited to add: I keep hearing "Up to another 25 inches of rain through Friday" which doesn't sound so bad as compared to "25 inches of rain in the previous two days" except all that previous rain is still trying to drain.

I cannot believe I'm in a hurry for a damn tropical storm to get closer, but if it gets close we can stop eating the dirty side of the stupid thing.

I wish you all the best and hope everyone comes out the side alive and well.

Yay. First leak from the roof. It's small, and the roof was old and already about to be replaced (They were supposed to do it last Friday).

I can't find it exactly, but it's pretty slow. I think it's coming from right behind the ductwork. Only real solution is a bucket and jabbing a small hole in the ceiling.

Hey, maybe you can get some of that insurance money for roof replacement. But seriously, stay dry.

We took a walk earlier since it's gotten quiet in the Heights.  We walked to Ella Blvd and there's was a ton of water, navigable in a truck though (as people did while we were there).  Few mins later, all those trucks came back.  Turns out it wasn't flooded standing water from the rain.  It was flooded because it's part of White Oak Bayou now.  Here are some images from Ella @ TC Jester (https://www.google.com/maps/search/map+ella+at+tc+jester/@29.803474,-95.430824,17z).

(https://d3926qxcw0e1bh.cloudfront.net/post_photos/d0/e4/d0e45e45ed75c7e90a9623edb4d49d5b.jpg.max800.jpg)

(https://d3926qxcw0e1bh.cloudfront.net/post_photos/9a/cb/9acb8dbababdb5f48fc3535d58826b0a.jpg.max800.jpg)

(https://d3926qxcw0e1bh.cloudfront.net/post_photos/f9/31/f931e8ec8ecabcb0e912300548829cbe.jpg.max800.jpg)

(https://d3926qxcw0e1bh.cloudfront.net/post_photos/71/eb/71eb4b213c8ebf33ce464d82ce7ffb9d.jpg.max800.jpg)

(https://d3926qxcw0e1bh.cloudfront.net/post_photos/9c/a1/9ca13cfa7ffd5b47e3edf5845042913c.jpg.max800.jpg)

This guy has a live stream of Buffalo Bayou @ Milam (https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7618342,-95.4102987,16.5z):

https://www.youtube.com/user/t3dwork/live

Here's the reference image:

(http://i.imgur.com/yFOKAmt.png)

Note: If they have to relieve the Barker and Addicks resevoir, that Bayou stream could go up SO FUCKING HIGH.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIQxX-sXYAEurJN.jpg)

And just for fun, here is Hobby Airport's runways (Southwest main hub):

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIQdXmoW0AE6XbP.jpg)

It's poking the street drains with sticks time.

I'll say this: My particular little town has pretty high taxes. They spend it on infrastructure. After Allison, they sunk a ton into upgrades. It's really paying off. I can see the main culvert for our area, and there's still plenty of concrete showing. Assuming our damn street starts draining. It's got a good four or five hours before the next set of heavy rain.

Yup. With Harris county, you can really see where the money was spent.

Some of these pictures I am seeing are insane.

Good luck, folks.

You know, that's going to be a REALLY important story to tell afterwards, and it's so easy to not tell: towns that invested in their infrastructure doing pretty well. Your tax dollars at work; your public servants doing as they ought.

I really wish Harris County wasn't 1700 sq miles.  It's hard to figure out if a tornado warning for Harris county means me or Seabrook 45 miles away.

For the little it's worth, best wishes and luck to all of you guys in Texas and surrounds.

What Azazel said. Hope you are all fine.

The images would be an impressive nature spectacle if it wasn't about the people affected. :/

Not people, Texans. Not quite the same thing in most cases  :why_so_serious:

So, it's already time to make jokes?

Will the Texas Coast smell better after this?

This is what happens when the governor tells everybody in the state to pray for rain.

No. No it is NOT. It never is. Never, ever, ever.  You do NOT drive through standing water. Period.  I don't care if you "Know" it's only 12" deep, the terrain undulates more than we are ever aware in our day-to-day life. Those people are lucky they did not get stranded in the first place, causing even more problems for a stressed emergency system.

A simple 'flat' road can dip as much as 18" across a few hundred feet without being noticeable. (.5% slope across 300' = 18" change)  A mere 6" can be the difference between "no problem" and "shit, I'm stuck and the water is rising."

That's assuming flat land. In several of those photos I see multi-foot drops plainly evident within only a few dozen feet.

Stay safe. Stay out of the fucking water, regardless of how "badass" and "lifted" you or your truck think they are.

Oh God, yes I know.  That stuff is nuts.  But people do it.

Starting to hear reports from some of our friends that they finally lost power or they are finally in what's considered evacuation zones.  It's terrible, because we have been relatively unaffected but no one can navigate to get here for A/C and food.

I'm going to donate something, and I'm sure the red cross and larger organizations are currently getting tons.  You folks on the ground, any thoughts on anywhere to donate to that might be lesser known and more needy?

DIAPERS.

http://wtkr.com/2017/08/27/texas-diaper-bank-in-need-of-donations-for-families-displaced-by-hurricane-harvey/

SERIOUSLY. DONATE DIAPERS.

So looks like Hurricane Fuckstick 5000 has now finally hit water again (or close to it) and is going to meander up to fuck with Houston and/or Louisiana.

Which adds in "storm surge" to the run-off problems (compounded by the fact that cities and county's are being forced to open up reservoirs and let them drain, as they're about to over-top which would be...worse), oh and also high winds. Oh, and power outages.

I hear "high winds" and "soft, soggy ground" and "trees" don't go together well. It's hopefully only TS winds, but Harvey's been fucking everyone so at this point I wouldn't be surprised if it magically went Cat 5 and grew a middle finger to give to Houston.

And none of it will stop until this fucker passes us sometime Wednesday, plus like two damn days to let the water drain.

(In all reality, I think the constant rain bands and stuff have been sucking a ton of heat out of the ocean around here. I'm not sure there's much for it to draw on).

Diapers donated.  :)

You know, I was just mentioning this to my wife. For all the fact that services are being overwhelmed, it looks like the infrastructure in most places is sound. Apparently disaster management is something that is taken seriously in Texas, and whatever corruption is allowed there has kept (mostly) hands off.

This is from an outsider looking in, but kudos to anybody there working disaster relief, both the planning and the reality.

Also thanks Schild for the diaper tip.

Someone on another forum has been commenting on the fact that Harris county has (a) High taxes and (b) been spending that money on infrastructure.

Anyway photos of flooding in Baytown.

http://baytownsun.com/local/collection_ce7a654e-8b34-11e7-a2e1-6bc181d57aec.html

Hope all our Texans are still flourishing.

It's amazing in photos that even the smallest dip in elevation in a rain-drenched landscape becomes a lake.

Done, and also a general reminder that diapers are always in need, even when there isn't a disaster.

Bleach might be good to donate as well. There is going to be a lot of people wading in what is effectively raw sewage, and scrubbing exposed skin with bleach diluted water could stop serious infection setting in.

In the meantime panic is setting in with some Texans, resulting in the unlimbering of second Amendment solutions in some cases.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/28/us/harvey-houston-texas-louisiana/index.html

Just to add misery to total destruction, Chemical plants in the area are starting to add to the fun.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Chemical-leak-adds-to-catastrophe-in-Ship-Channel-12097384.php


Harvey is heading for New Orleans...

Well, they're moving my grandfather out of his home tonight. It's been flirting with coming in his house (he's got some in his back porch now) for a few days, but it looks like it's just not going to drain fast enough to keep up with oncoming rain.

So he'll end up in a shelter for a few days, since nobody can get him the 10 miles to me or my parents (both of us with dry streets and no current risk of flooding).

Then this weekend we'll have to go assess the damage. I don't expect it'll be too bad, thankfully. He's not exactly a horder, and his stuff is all up pretty high. even most of the furniture is solid wood that can be cleaned easily.

Umm... here's what the head of disasters for the Red Cross is saying.




- http://www.npr.org/2017/08/28/546691455/the-after-effects-of-hurricane-harvey-have-been-overwhelming

The hard thing is that so many people can't get to some other people to help--it is severing social and familial networks even if people are only a few miles away from one another.

Yeah, flooding is a different kind of problem than most natural disasters. A tornado, an earthquake, even a normal hurricane, these are point events. They happen, over the course of hours, and they're over. The normal rule is that they have 72 hours to restore order, before the shock wears off and everything goes to hell.

This is a disaster in slow motion, we're more than 72 hours from the beginning and it is still getting worse. People are going into "me and mine" survival mode, turning on the aid providers because they aren't at the front of the line.

--Dave

The damage area is freaking huge. And it's so variable. I'm sitting dry and in no danger of flooding (knock on wood) about 6 or 8 miles from flooded out neighborhoods. My town will be up and running, fully back to business, 12 hours after the rain stops -- but I won't be able to get to work (only 15 miles away) for a day or two after that, minimum, because of flooded rivers and bayous.

My sister-in-law is an hour's drive away, north of us -- and she's hovering on the edge of having to get her canoe and paddle out. She's still got a lot of room for the water to rise without getting into her house, but there's no driving out of where she lives. A good chunk of her town is flooded out.

I've cousins out in Katy, which has been getting hammered -- who are dry. Friends in the Woodlands who just saw their first real flooding today (as rivers crested suddenly, water flowing down from rainfall past them).

A friend of mine just sold his house inside the loop a few months ago -- from what I've heard, the water was feet deep in there.

Friends out in Victoria, 120 miles away -- that just got power back, don't have clean water, and of course are waiting to see if their cresting rivers will flood them when the hurricane proper failed.

It's a giant clusterfuck and it's gonna cost billions and billions.

And cutting off of communities is the worst. It's pretty fucking shitty to be sitting here dry and with power, and unable to offer a bed or a shower to people because they can't get here without a helicopter.

Hey, Trump's showing up tomorrow so everything will be fine.

Jesus, that cemetery pic.  Just reminded me that burial in wood boxes is still our common practice.  Going to be one hell of a thing if the ground softens enough for coffins start floating all across the state.......

https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2017/8/28/before-and-after-photos-of-hurricane-harvey-flood-waters

Dramatic shots from downtown.  We are over the worst of it in the city, but most of Greater Houston will be a lake of varying sizes for the next couple weeks.

Word is now that there is a massive chemical spill into the waterways.  Everyone in the area smells it and a lot of folks are getting sick.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Chemical-leak-adds-to-catastrophe-in-Ship-Channel-12097384.php

Updated 8:32 pm, Monday, August 28, 2017

"La Porte police and the city of Shoreacres signaled shortly after 7 p.m. that the incident was resolved.  No injuries were reported."

It looks like Harvey is deciding to go fuck Louisiana. The rain levels and winds are already shifting here in Houston. Still raining, far windier, but not as much rain as best I can tell.

Still ridiculous levels, but not as staggeringly horrible as before.

Edited to add: So fun question -- I have (no dried) water stains coming from a light switch. Now it looks like the same leak that was previously dripping out of my ceiling has moved six inches and then gone down a wall, and only happens during the most intense rains. The wiring should be insulated and it's dry now, but....can I use that switch?

If water is coming from inside the switchbox, definitely don't use it.

Turn the power off to that switch and take the plate off and look inside and see if it is wet.  Likely you can blow it out with shop vac or compressed air can and get any water out of it.

How about them ants?

Fuck the ants, Houston is about to be Mosquito World.

Just saw "All cities matter", good for a chuckle.

Those mosquitos need to bring their A game.
https://twitter.com/i/moments/902172033345257472

Also "supercolony" may be a thing.
https://twitter.com/The_Reliant/status/902536760038711296

(http://i.imgur.com/gamxng1.png)

Third & final landfall was this morning at 0430 near Cameron, LA.

Don't say final, this thing might surprise us and keep slowly skipping East along the gulf coast like a stone until it gets to the Florida Keys.

You know where I work, yes?

No?

The Weather Channel, and once the prediction maps all line up, it's a fairly sure thing.

We were pretty much dead on this time.  Much like Snowmageddon in ATL in 2014.  Unfortunately, local authorities didn't believe us.

Four feet of rain is hard to swallow.

In any case, I'm starting to worry about the structural integrity of some of the reservoirs. I'm not, AFAIK, in the line of fire if one of those lets go but they're all old and I think they're all using the emergency spillways for the first time since they were built in like the 40s.

I really hope that this wakes people up to the importance of infrastructure investment.  Sadly, I don't think it will.

Hope all of you Texans are ok. 

I dunno, Houston has been working pretty hard since Ike and Allison. (I think I said before my city took out a huge bond to pay for it's own massive upgrades). The problem is, well  -- a lot of stupidity is already baked into the cake. Designs from the 40s that were sufficient, until people started building in the 60s and 70s in places where they...weren't supposed to. Back when we thought the Army Corp of Engineers could overcome nature given enough money.

Now...it's incredibly expensive to fix. Natural disasters like this often make it strangely easier (it both gives you the potent reminder work needs to be done and -- bluntly -- often trashes the fuck out of the property that needs to be torn down and used for flood mitigation. It's so much easier to pay people for their trashed homes than to seize perfectly good ones and tear them down). Katrina's devastation opened up Louisiana's ability to restore a ton of marshlands. Because the fucker razed everything previously built there and no one wanted to rebuild.

And in the end -- four or five feet of rain in less than a week. Is that something you should even engineer for? Can you engineer for it? Where do you make the trade-offs? Houston's clearly got some serious work to do (this is the third massive flooding event in the last few years. Harvey might have been a freak of nature, but the last two massive sets of flooding weren't stalled tropical storms), but how far do you take it?

Although I did read some guy's idea to start building diesel powered thrusters along the bottoms of bayous and rivers -- for when gravity doesn't cut it, you engage the independent thrusters to to force water to the sea faster...

In other news: Harvey's last hurrah was to fuck the Port Arthur area as hard or harder than Houston. I think almost two feet of rain in just a day or two. People went from fine to on their roofs in hours. Fuck Harvey.

Any chance this wakes up even a few Texans about climate change?

This was published in December 2016 and it's an excellent read, IMO.  Gives a good explanation for why Houston is flooding so badly, in addition to the whole "flat and built in a swamp" part of things.

https://projects.propublica.org/houston-cypress/

Someone's Sim City Project is starting the "exploding chemical plants" phase of his "fuck this city" disaster.

A flooded Texas chemical plant is about to explode (https://news.vice.com/story/a-flooded-texas-chemical-plant-is-about-to-explode?utm_source=vicetwitterus)

Jesus, it sounds like the plot of a disaster movie. 

We might get a Toxic Avenger sequel.

Well, we have a TV star for President, so why the fuck not?

I've been half paying attention to the coverage of this and I am ASTOUNDED at how many complete fucking idiots are getting caught on live camera driving their truck into water, getting swamped and having to be rescued by fucking reporters. These fuckers get this truck and suddenly think it's a APC that can literally go over or through everything until Harvey presents them their fucking Darwin award.

People are fucking idiots about floods. They really are. Houston had to resort to putting depth gauges on underpasses. it's rather shocking to see a video of an underpass with the water at the "10 feet" label...

I grew up driving in floods. I don't get how so many people can be so stupid, unless' it's just the assumption that as you're in a truck or SUV, clearly the water is always low enough....

Fun fact I learned this flood: My city has a fine for "wakes" -- if you drive down flooded streets and leave a high wake, sufficient to cause damage (or further damage) to vehicles or property, you can be fined. 2000 dollars per incident. They're not fucking around.

Viaducts that have a lower elevation than the road approach always have depth gauges in most parts of the world.

Looks like COTI wins the prize for coming the closest.  We should have had a pool going!

That Chemical plant has begun exploding

Remember the last time a chemical plant exploded in Texas and there was all that awesome video? Remember how people said, "Surely this will change Texas law about storing volatile chemicals and explosives near residential areas!"

Hah.. fools and their optimism.

No-one said that.


 :awesome_for_real:

Yea, that definitely never happened. West, TX is like a fucking magnet for disasters and a gleaming beacon of human stupidity and frailty.

Mostly everyone looked at it and said "Cool, now how much traffic will this create on I-35?"

Nobody here said it. It was, however, said elsewhere.

The best part of that whole fire, though? It was ruled Arson last year and people are now going back to old articles and commenting how they should be removed/ updated while ignoring that, maybe, possibly, building a residential area near a chemical/ fertilizer plant is a bad idea.

This one? Yeah awesome how reports are talking about the 'non-toxic' but "irritating" clouds and focusing on how the water will keep the fire contained. Because, yes, the fire spreading is the part we should be worried about when a chemical plant explodes.  :awesome_for_real:

It really is only a matter of time before the US has its own Bhopal.

Things are nice and calm in Tyler county.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/houston-weather/hurricaneharvey/article/East-Texas-county-tells-residents-GET-OUT-OR-12162456.php

(http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/65/37/45/14023021/4/920x920.jpg)

"GET OUT OR DIE!" should be listed in all manuals as an example of short and to the point public broadcasting.

Holy fucking shit.

I just read that FEMA requested that the EU activates it's emergency mapping service (of the Copernicus Earth Observation programme) to provide damage assessments.

The results are also publicly available here (image is link):

(http://i.imgur.com/2TINPRp.png) (http://emergency.copernicus.eu/mapping/list-of-components/EMSR229)


The high quality maps are up to 9000x7000 px, so just example a low-res example of Houston, situation 28th and 30th August, here:

With apologies for my shitty GIF skills, I took Austin and Houston area maps and turned them into a Before - After comperison.

Even with the bad quality the difference is very noticeable:


(http://i.imgur.com/JKqW4ZI.gif)       (http://i.imgur.com/NQEHNMx.gif)

I can see my town from there....

Anyways -- 4 to 5 feet of rain. That's just insane.

Third or fourth 500-year storm in the last 20 years.

Houston's gonna have to eminent domain a bunch of underwater places if they really want to do some serious flood control improvements. On top of deepening bayous, increasing reservoirs, removing the idiots in the spill zones for the reservoirs,  repairing said 80 year old aging reservoirs before they fail, removing development alongside the bayous and turning it into parks or something that Houston can allow to flood without risking life or property, creation of more overlow ponds (hundreds of acres probably), marshland restoration...

Houston's got a century of shit design to fix.

Tens of billions in repairs, upgrades, seized property -- and at least a decade's worth of work.

What's your call on the Houston area?  Is it an economically viable area that can get past this and move on?  Or is it like New Orleans where people just packed up and left?

Houston will get over it. The city has double the gdp of all of louisiana, not to mention the nearby cities aren't total fucking shitholes.

It'll get over it.

Even if Houston couldn't on it's own, the whole country would force it. It's the sixth largest port in the world, it's the largest refining center in the world, the fourth largest US city, and has a GDP of about 500 billion. Bluntly, it'd fuck the whole country to let it fall apart.

It's one of the primary ports in the US, especially for energy (which makes the world -- and the US -- go round).

Houston simply doesn't compare to New Orleans -- you'd be more apt comparing it to NYC or LA.

That really is an excellent article, even if the flashy formatting drives me a little bonkers. Well worth the read.

This was worth a read: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57276/harvey-longterm-effects/

LET'S TALK ABOUT IRMA

OR NOT

LET'S ALL JUST DIE OK

(http://i.imgur.com/pfiyv0r.png)

GET OUTTA HERE

At least it's nice enough to leave us alone till after Labor Day.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIl4y_QW0AAzmUH.jpg)

Everything's bigger in texas.

i have never heard that

especially not 57,831 times in the last week

where did you come up with it

(http://i.imgur.com/2qttnkB.png)

Meant second hit.  Being cheeky as getting this fucker my way would suck ass. 

I think the cold front coming in (which is weird to say at the beginning of September) is likely to block Irma from Texas -- that seems to be the general gist I was getting, that the weather patterns over the next few days will push storms north pretty hard.

That's what I got from closed captioning while playing Ticket to Ride with my nephew, anyways.

It is a week out from hitting the continental US so much can change.

I am sure Yeg knows exactly where things are going because his people commune with the weather gods, but us mere normal folks have to wait until things are 2-3 days away to know for sure :)

Weather Channel hurricane forecaster of 10 years says Irma's forecast intensity is the highest he's ever seen (https://twitter.com/MJVentrice/status/903386408869560320), calling it "another retiree candidate" after Harvey's rainfall.

This is basically what everyone warned us about wrt climate change. This is why insurance companies implore everyone to do something. This is why even companies like Exxon are now wuillling to stay in the Paris agreement. This is why the Netherlands are spending 100 billion on anti-flood measures. THis is why the CIA and NSA consider this the biggest threat to security going forward.

So I expect Trump et al to not care and pretend it's just a freak occurence. Also to further cut flood prevention and rebuilding budgets and budgets to build levees and dams.

A second storm so close together. Good god. I hope this ends up well and everyone will be alive and well afterwards. But good God this is fucked. Proper fucked. Take care and for all that it's worth I hope everything goes well.

A highway in Houston.

(http://i.redd.it/mxodnwacq5jz.jpg)

Welp.

Irma is not close enough to ANY land to say with confidence that it will hit anywhere on the US coast, most models have it hitting well east of Texas so this is probably not a "second storm right after."

Hurricanes not long after others happen fairly frequently. We have just happened to have some fairly mild hurricane seasons the last few years so people forget.

In this new era of climate change we can't rely on history about how storms get larger and sustain themselves. The rule book is out the window.

Yeah, we've had 5 years of mild, mild seasons. Since Sandy the ocean's been quiet, but this is more along the lines of what's been 'normal' previously. They're just a lot more powerful than they were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_Atlantic_hurricanes

There's been a hurricane that hit somewhere in the US nearly every year since the 1880's.  2015 was unusual in that we didn't have a single one. It's been quiet.

So in case anyone needed reassurance that not all people are assholes....

Today I was at a friend of my mom's. Their whole neighborhood (a hundred or more houses) was six feet under water, minimum. Every street was lined with cars, people in masks and gloves just shoveling shit to the curb. Sheetrock, furniture, clothes, mementos, appliances -- just irrevocably ruined shit. It averaged around 5 or 6 people per house.

It's not super hot for September here, but it's warm enough and it's humid. We were lucky -- the house we were in the AC still worked, though it struggled (the doors were all open). We gutted the interior walls to about six feet, carried endless piles of shit to the curb, etc.

And then there was this one guy. He wasn't from the neighborhood. He'd shown up to help a friend the day before, and they'd gutted the house by nightfall.

Today he was back. In his truck, the back of which was filled with coolers full of ice and water bottles. He drove through the neighborhood constantly, offering cold water to everyone. He was almost out of his second load of water by noon, and was planning to do do more runs by the evening.

Just because he thought it'd help the people who were busy trashing giant chunks of their lives.

And that was pretty fucking awesome.

There is amazing stuff going on down there. I've read some reports of what some of the rescuers have been doing and experiencing that is just flat out nuts.  I don't know if it is public yet though so can't really get into details.

I don't know anything about that Joel Osteen guy that is splattered all over the media for not opening his TV church up as a shelter...but could that guy ooze evil lizard in a skinsuit any more than he does?  He looks like some movie directors idea of what the anti-christ would look like if given his own TV evangelism show.  I get the creeps just seeing his picture.

Ya. I'd never heard of that guy before,  hadn't even read anything about him, and my first reaction on lookint at his photo was "who the hell is that sleese?" He really does ooze evil.

Anyway, if people need to look at a happy face, its nice to see a fire at a chemical plant enjoying itself.

(http://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Screen-Shot-2017-09-01-at-7.35.03-PM-e1504309030375.png)

He preaches the prosperity gospel. They're all fucking lizards.

Seriously, anyone teaching the prosperity gospel is openly and shamlessly using his church as a personal piggy bank while telling it's members that. They're just too fucking greedy (the members) to realize they're being scammed, even as the fucker in the pulpit tells them exactly how it goes.

I can't really call it "vile and damnable heresy" seeing as I'm not Christian, but....it is.

His wife is a little lizardy too:

(http://celebreeties.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/vic-2.jpg)

Oh Christ (heh), you're right.  She looks like she was assembled from the chopped up remains of more attractive people.

Seriously, that prosperity gospel shit should basically considered it's own religion, separated from normal Christian doctrine and out somewhere on the crazy fringe.  I was raised in a religious family, and despite whatever I may or may not believe in as an adult, that prosperity crap is a blatant contradiction of the whole idea of the Christian religion.  Rich men, eye of a needle, and all that.  One of those things that seems to apply in real life, in my opinion.

John Oliver did a show on the prosperity gospel. Worth a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg

Seen around: The entire city of Houston is now playing Bioshock.  :grin:

Irma has become category 4 and the whole of South Florida is inside the cone.

Florida has declared a state of emergency 4 days ahead of it *possibly* making landfall. Forecasters are saying at MINIMUM this is Wilma.

yay

(http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT11/refresh/AL112017_5day_cone_no_line_and_wind+png/204223_5day_cone_no_line_and_wind.png)

Oh I remember Wilma. I was living on Miami Beach when that blew through. My first real hurricane and actually experienced going through the eye. Fun times.

Getting my go-bag ready for Irma. My bank is ready for dat phat FEMA OT check  :drill:

Maybe this will be that storm that sucks all the bad people up into the sky.


I mean the rapture.

Most likely landfall according to,the data seems to be Tampa?

One minute ago on Reddit:

As a Fort Myers guy, I would agree with that assessment. If you've got kin in those areas, tell them to evac or start tattooing their SSN and names.

I'd hold off on panicking just yet. It's south florida... hurricanes are not a new thing.

They are not, no. Andrew taught Florida many lessons in it's wake, and while building codes and countermeasures have been implemented, we've also had 25+ years of growth and urban sprawl into areas previously devoid of people and exposure to disaster. It will be...interesting, to see how it all pans out. My money is on a worse situation than Houston. Flood water sucks, but at least you can replace things and the waters may recede. It's the gale force winds and chaos of a strong Cat 4+ hurricane that can wreck a city. Anything built with cinder block and concrete should hold, but it's the trailer parks and older houses that about to be purged that people should be worried about.

Looks like a monster. That is Puerto Rico on the left there.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DI7M545XoAAbBg4.jpg:large)

Soon to be was.

Irma gerd now it's a CAT 5  :awesome_for_real:

Seriously, if you're in Florida or have kin, leave. The good lord is coming to 'reck Mara Lago.

Looks like the current models are pointing at Miami.

The latest 5 day forecast.

(https://icons.wunderground.com/data/images/at201711_5day.gif)

Oh that's cute, they have hope it drops to a cat 4 when it hits some of the warmest water on the planet. That's nice of them.

It's not uncommon. Wind shearing + the islands will tear it up a little bit.

I'm aware of the reasons. I just don't have much hope. See: The White House, Houston, 2017.

So there's a possibility its going to enter the gulf without hitting major land mass, that doesn't bode well.

that would really be something, but it's literally one outlier track so incredibly unlikely

<Computer>: USER SCHILD HAS JUST DOOMED LOUISIANA

Going to have to factor in the big cold front working though the states right now... which will make it interesting if it stalls out.

And don't forget, Tropical Storm Jose has formed out around where Irma did. It's current tracks look like the Carolinas are a likely target.

And what will likely become Katia is sitting in the southern gulf off the coast of Mexico.

 :ye_gods:

Oh, if your commentary had any effect on it, you'd have doomed Texas.   :awesome_for_real:

Prepare your anus.

Was it here that I read a piece recently about how Tampa is the most unprepared of all of Florida's major coastal cities for a major hurricane? At least one track has Irma plowing right into it as a Cat 4/5 storm.

The WU track is a weighted aggregate of all available models.

On Miami by Saturday, ~150mph.

Also Jose is coming.

TIL where Lesser Antilles are.

Awesome.. I hope it hits by Sunday. I'm supposed to fly to Orlando and hit Florida Polytechnic next Friday. I'd prefer the storm be gone by then.

Guy I work with has a family vacation scheduled at Disney the last week of September. I told him I hope he has Trip insurance with cancellation due to weather included.  :grin:

Would absolutely cancel and get refunds now.

If he can't cancel, he'd better book some canoes ahead of time.

Always scary when you start seeing the term "catastrophic" in official memos.

Irma is currently termed the "second worst Atlantic storm ever" with not one but two more storms already forming.

Office is paying so it's not my problem. Me, the CEO, my boss, and another senior VP are headed there for a contest we're sponsoring. Boss and I agreed to worry about it next week.

Trying the big blue image sharing.  I don't know if you guys can see it.  Let me know.
https://ibm.box.com/s/zeb3evdsfmhx16o8rhokvug20xzxxzfz

Worked fine on my end.

Alright.  Unlimited free storage is good for something.  I might have to take it down, though.

Oh joy, I'm in Naples.  Been nice knowing you fine folks!

FEMA almost out of money (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-05/fema-is-almost-out-of-money-as-hurricane-irma-threatens-florida)

Models are now showing it turning at Miami and going straight up the Florida peninsula and giving Florida a thorough fucking.  Since there is time I would move everyone they can now.

Basically if people aren't on the road by tomorrow morning they might not get to a secure place, especially if they're planning to get completely away from the impact areas that are possible. I would guess there's a lot of people up late tonight.

I wonder occasionally what it feels like to be faculty and senior administration at the University of Miami--to know that even leaving shit like this aside, you have 30-40 years before you might have to basically close down unless you have a plan to relocate facilities etc bit by bit further inland. But man, this must be acclerating thinking of that kind. When I was at Coral Gables and Coconut Grove two years ago, I remember thinking that if a big hurricane came straight up from the south, the entire place was basically utterly fucked. No breakwater, no sea wall, houses right down on the water, a lot of the buildings I saw looked basically unprepared for a big storm. I'd be in my car right now with everything meaningful in my house that I could jam in it if I lived right there.

University staff are usually so practical.

I'm pretty concerned about Puerto Rico. But at least people there are actually used to real storms. But infrastructure there has gotten so bad in the last decade...

Miami, if it gets hit at Cat 4 or 5, with the fact that it is already flooding at high tides -- is screwed.

I have family up in Jax, hope the track doesn't head that way. But they are not on the water. Their backyard floods from storms, though.

Parents have a "Retirement Home" (basically one of those very nice, permanent trailer type house jobbies in a Seniors community) just spitting distance south west of Disney Central in Orlando.    Somewhat concerned that the entire park may end up wrecked depending on how hard this thing hits.

I live in between Fort Myers and Naples. There isn't anywhere to go if you don't have any money. There are a lot of people here that don't have any money.

Lost the anemometer at ~3:25am :
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=BARA9

GOES-16 images :
http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-16&sec=mesoscale_01&x=708.5&y=1020&z=1&im=60&ts=1&st=0&et=0&speed=100&motion=loop&map=1&lat=0&p%5B0%5D=1&opacity%5B0%5D=1&hidden%5B0%5D=0&pause=0&slider=-1&hide_controls=0&mouse_draw=1&s=rammb-slider

That is an ominous image.

The space-camera adds ten knots.

:roll:

Jesus fuck. We're paying for a quiet decade now.

It was busted before that then, yes? About an hour of 0 readings before it went completely offline.

Well.. If my trip is on I'll be sure to get some great first person pics for you all.  I don't have any reason to think there's going to be a Florida next week, though, so win for the country, right?  :why_so_serious:

My family from Miami is coming up to stay with us, Orlando might not be out of the woods either but at least it won't be Miami.

I was in Ft. Lauderdale 3 years ago and it only rained about your average Midwest thundershower but the entire city was inundated. I had to forge puddles that took up entire roadways just to get on the highway to the airport, and the highway wasn't much better.  I can only imagine the fucking that a Hurricane and tidal surge will give the entire Miami/ Ft. Lauderdale area will make Katrina look like a test run.

I see this as God's punishment on red states for electing Trump.

Don't care, I still miss living in Miami Beach.


Hope there will be a Miami Beach left for me to move back to someday.  :oh_i_see:

The CAP in Texas is doing imagery work to support SAR efforts. You can browse them by day/mission on this site: http://csr08.tacc.utexas.edu/moves/public/

Delta flight flies into and out of San Juan, Puerto Rico with Irma bearing down on them.

https://twitter.com/i/moments/905487561182908416

Balls of steel... Duke Nukem, make room!  :awesome_for_real:

You know, I have seen a couple of different radars on Irma today and I cannot recall ever seeing black used in any of the color gradations in any weather phenomena before.

it was used in the rain total maps for Harvey.

Of course, that was just a week and a half ago so I will give you a pass.

Damnit.  Knew it was gonna smack us in the nose.  Glad we have time to evacuate the coast here in SC.

I don't want to hear any bitching from people in Carolinistan until this thing has done its job to Maralago.

Welp, spent 6 hours putting up the storm shutters today.  Irma is sure to miss the West Coast now.  After all that work those fuckers are staying installed until Dec. 1st.

Barbuda was one of the first Islands hit by Irma. It's completely destroyed. 95% of the Island is underwater and uninhabitable now. Projected 150 million in damages.

In other news, for ~$158m you could own Barbuda.

Projection:

(http://s1.lemde.fr/image2x/2017/09/07/212x206/5182158_6_a1e7_sa-traversee-destructrice-des-caraibes-a_9d050a355378b37aa496f987d9e37b55.png)

Not good for Cape Canaveral... :/

Saint Martin:

(http://img.lemde.fr/2017/09/07/0/0/1156/764/620/410/60/0/a926ddb_3533-79tgpq.bk7qskbj4i.jpg)

Just watched some video of Anguilla in the aftermath. The fucking island is now Venice 2.0. It's just utterly fucked.

Wonder if Branson made it out of his wine cellar yet or if they are still playing AD&D or if they drown.

You talking about his private island?   That only got sideswiped.

True, but a sideswipe from this beast had to be pretty fucking catastrophic.

Everybody on the island is OK, but the 'sideswipe' destroyed almost everything on the island they say.

 :ye_gods:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJKcv8uWAAQuNN8.jpg:large)

IBM's "Deep Thunder" weather predictor is predicting a direct hit on Miami as Cat 5 hurricane. :ye_gods:

https://twitter.com/MJVentrice/status/905950194772176896

Let's hope Deep Thunder is as bad at learning as IBM's Watson is and is wrong :awesome_for_real:

NHS cone of doom is now predicting a track centered all the way up the center of the peninsula.

Stay safe Floridians.

if it's right

grandma is coming home to a completely destroyed condo

(https://i.imgur.com/wfyKqYK.png)

NWS has it as a 4 winding down to a 3 at landfall, so there is some variability in the models. Still bad but not necessarily a Cat 5 landfall.

cat 3 is fine
cat 5 is death

8.1 quake off coast of Mexico.  3M tsunami warning for Mexico coast. Maybe this is the end times.

Well, isn't Jesus supposed to come back when Trump/Pence blow?  :why_so_serious:

Two prediction:

ECMWF 0z left, GFS right


(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJL2py5WsAEqxkw.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJL2pyBW4AAwbmz.jpg)

The European model has the landfall in SW Florida, GFS (US) dead center Miami.

 :oh_i_see:

That'll be the end of South Beach...  :ye_gods:

It's fortunately not related to Watson in any way.  It is a replacement for the TWC model and IBM's model, created by the combination of IBM's 5 (!) meteorologists and our best-of-200.  Runs on a new Cray.  I only just opened up the firewall holes for it so I'm not 100% on if we are using it in the aggregate.  But I've been busy on other things.

The ECMWF is a good model but we still mash it all together and manufacture a best guess from all of them.

And:
(https://i.imgur.com/vc5nzWS.jpg)

Won't it still be pushing a bitch of a storm surge, though?

It still has a pool of really warm water to roll over before it makes the turn, I wouldn't bet too much on it getting much weaker before landfall. Or that it won't be cat5 again.

This is a hell of a year. O.o

As of 6pm, projected storm surge is 5-10 feet and 8-12 inches of rain for south FL.

Should they expect 155 mph winds or will that subside a bit by landfall?  Any idea on the speed of the path and lingering effects?

Corpses float. They all float.

Damn.  Maybe we should just stop using I-J-K for naming storms.

I've got family up in Jacksonville but inland a bit... am growing more concerned. Usually Jax is fairly safe from the big winds. This time...

Winds around Miami are forecast to be ~130mph when it rides over, but of course that is the high mark of the storm.  My info is old, still from 6pm, so I'd suggest watching TWC or tolerating weather.com if you can.

I'm busy planning some infrastructure-as-code patterns for a new product.  My machines make the same unintelligible JSON payloads no matter what is going on, just some of the numbers are bigger or smaller at the moment.

Get out of Florida.

Yegolev, in case anybody hasn't actually said, thank you for your weather advice.  Many people on this forum never say anything, but you have a unique job and information, so thank you for posting what you know here.

A hell of a lot of people just lurk and say nothing.  I hope everybody in general appreciates the information they've given out.  Also, I hope you get picked up in a particularly unique wind blast and thrown out to to sea where you meat the ....arrrgghhhh
If you play Xcom, there are a ton of awesome propaganda posters with your name on them!  Also, fuck.  Much as I want to hate on Florida, I wish no i'll will towards fellow Americans.  Hope everything works out!

Yes, this.  Thanks Yeg.  I appreciate the info.

Harvey and Irma, Married 75 Years, Marvel at the Storms Bearing Their Names (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/harvey-irma-couple.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article)

I thought that story was an Onion at first, but nope. One funny thing in a non-funny moment.

Looks like the track is shifting west? Bad for the Keys, better for Miami, maybe worse for Fort Myers? Plus current forecast is for 8-14 ft. storm surge into the Keys which is   :ye_gods: but if that rolls over into the southern Everglades, bad for lots of alligators and pythons and shit but not wiping a city off the map. I don't think anybody who lives(d) in Key West had better plan on driving back to their property soon.

Cat 5 again.  :ye_gods:

Updated track too. Looks like Naples is landfall now.

http://robirmatnik.ytmnd.com/

ytmnd still exists?

The sheer size of the thing though... the projections show insane hurricane wind speeds covering more than the width of Florida even if it continues to track west.

Yeah, labeling hurricanes on the assumption that wind speed at the eyewall is the only meaningful parameter is turning out to be inadequate, the sheer scale of two Cat 5 storms can differ by an order of magnitude.

--Dave

Also important; tidal surge and how many tornadoes does the storm spawn.

1. Harvey was a Cat 4 storm at landfall and look at what happened
2. Irma is already much larger than Katharina or Andrew
3. Cat 5 "cataclysmic damage will occur" vs. Cat 4 "catastrophic damage will occur"

Debating about will it be a Cst 4 or 5 is largely academic it will be one of the biggest Atlantic hurricanes yet and should be treated as such.

Its down to a 3 so hopefully it won't have enough time over water to strengthen back up.

They were not expecting it to get back to a 5 before it hit Cuba either.

Let us not make any bets on this storm. The waters between Cuba and the Keys are warmer than any Irma has passed so far.

Once again, stay safe people.

Good luck and stay safe everyone.  Shit looks rough.

Locking down here in Lee County for the night. See you all tomorrow.

Good luck folks.

A long term track just came out having Jose hit New York City.  :ye_gods:

well

that would be something

Irma back up to 4 either because of being over water or an eye wall replacement cycle.  Stay safe peeps.

And she's back to a cat4 already.  :ye_gods:

key west radar loop appears to be down.  I hope those guys in the NWS there are ok.  They have been true heroes in this so far we know what this thing is doing because of their radar since Irma encountered Cuba.  This is not a politics forum but how horrid has the NWS prediction model been throughout this entire ordeal (not talking about the radar from Key West).   We really need to invest in that as a county so that our weather model becomes the better of the two.  It is a real disgrace that the Euro model has been more accurate and reliable throughout this period where we needed good information in order to save lives.  Instead it seems clear that the models we have  has  led to a situation where people in the wrong coast fled and then when it became clear how bad the model was off, it caused a greater problem with more congestion, less resources, and more importantly less time.  

We absolutely need to invest in a mini manhatten project for weather prediction, especially if this is the new normal due to global warming.  What we don't need right now is another tax give away to the rich.






The really bad news for people like my family is the gulf is warm.  Really, really warm 90+ degrees by Blind Pass in Sanibel as of this Monday morning and I have a nasty suspicion that before this hurricane encounters Naples with its highly destructive winds it will be up to a cat 5.  The real problem is not only is the water really warm, but the pressure keeps falling.   A horrid combination for people on the west coast.  I have pretty much resigned myself to coming back to nothing tomorrow evening.  I am really hopeful that my family will make it through this in Fort Myers as they have storm shutters and a hurricane door on their home.  

Regardless, the paradise of where I lived is about to get at best catastrophic wind and waters (hopefully at low tide and not at high tide).

It looks like Key West is taking a direct hit.  I hope they have a concrete shelter to hunker down in.

This is the best weather tracker I have seen in a browser. (https://www.windy.com) Can look at anything in the world including Irma, Jose, live or with projections, and click on any location for the wind speed and forecast.

Thinking of everyone affected. Stay safe.

Wow. That's an amazing site.

Power keeps flickering here at downtown Fort Myers. Will probably go out soon. Hooray for diesel power gennys that take up an entire floor  :awesome_for_real:

Good luck.

Good Luck. I hope you're coming out of this alive and well. For all that that's worth Inwish you the best.

The Nest cam and thermostat for my place in Cape Coral went down about 30 minutes ago now. Lost power and/or internet. Expected to do a drive-by shooting of my town by 9ish tonight.

Edit: And just as I hit the Post button, we lost main power and switched to the genny here at work.

Big storm surge apparently imminent where you are. Hope it's not as bad as feared.

Mesmerizing.  Seriously cool site.

On the right, you can switch it to temperature (among a number of things), which is also useful to see the warm waters whipping up the hurricanes.

Apparently the site is the work of the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts, a 30-nation organisation in the UK. It’s also available as an app.

Windy.tv is a great weather app/website (source of the ECMWF / GFS comparison I posted before), but not related to the ECMWF. It's a non-commercial pet project by a Pragueian (is that a word?) entrepreneur who made his millions launching the first Czech internet search engine in 1996 (Same year Google went live, incidentally).

I STILL LIVE!

And like fucking Neo, I dodged a bullet.

Storm went east of my location, because Irma apparently said "fuck you, Cantore, I'm gonna go to through Lehigh and take the scenic route.

I have no idea how my house is doing, but because the storm didn't stay on the water and drive-by the coast, we shouldn't have gotten the storm surge we were expecting. At least, not as bad.

Catching up on overnight reports right now. Looks like Zone A in my county was given a surge warning late last night, but I'm in B.
Anyone else out there get hit? Are you ok?

Great to hear you are alive.  :heart:

(Understatement of the day)

I've been told that the NWS is indeed working on a new model (as are we).  The science for these is intense and timely global forecasts require lots of computation power.  This is why we use everyone's models to generate a mosty-likely forecast; we do not even favor our own models in the aggregate.  Betting on a particular model track like a horse isn't really good science.

I do not know where else to put this, but I just learned that the system we have that was set up to provide weather data for Madden '10 is still running.

It's a Toyota, but whatever:
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/09/10/hurricane-irma-weather-channel-van-almost-floats-away-miami

Yeah, don't do this kids.

There are two of those that sit in the parking lot most of the time.  I Instagramed them with the old paint job, haven't gotten the new one.

"I guess they know what they're doing. They're the Weather Channel."   :drill: :why_so_serious: :drill:

This actually appeared in our corp Slack and I put the :chuck_norris: emote on it.

Fox is so crappy.  It neither almost floated away nor was a shitty GM.

how did it... almost float away?

Fox just tells you things and you must believe them.  Facts are for libruls.

All the vans float down there.  :grin:

Ft Myers could get 3-5 ft waves tonight.  North of Tampa to the Pee Handle & coastal GA-SC could see 4-6 ft.

Tornados possible today from Jax to Wilmington NC, then tomorrow maybe some from Wilmington to Norfolk VA.

My family in Jacksonville is not hit by the flooding (other than the bacl yard that floods anytime it rains). But quite a lot of the riverside areas are apparently under up to 3-4 feet of water.

Power is out, though. Who knows when it will be back -- it's a lot of outages.

Jeeeez.  And now Jose  :heartbreak:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJdjBuYWsAAizG1.jpg)

That's a future picture for the "I live in hurricane alley" starter park

Milo's home was destroyed.

Before you ask, he's still alive.

Or not: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/celebrities/article172687231.html

God he's such a piece of shit.

If anyone deserves the good old fashioned tied-to-a-fence-and-be-stoned-for-sexual-choices, its this guy.

And it has nothing to do with his sexuality. He just deserves it.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJbo1K4XUAAb_UZ.jpg)
Quick draft of all the NOAA tropical cyclones from the last 200 years. Thicker line and higher alpha level representing higher wind speeds. (https://twitter.com/tjukanov/status/907168386857279490)

If only we could really have a map where Florida didn't exist.... :why_so_serious:

Sure as hell is not for the lack of the Earth trying.  :awesome_for_real:

"dessimated" ... whoops Herald.

I saw that but figured since they used the word wrong anyway, misspelling it was the least of their sins.

I figure it is worse if a spellchecker from the 1960s could have caught the mistake.

I had that argument recently but apparently since the common usage now is a synonym for annihilated it doesn't matter what the word originally meant.

Welcome to the English language.  Almost none of the words we currently use mean what they originally meant.   :awesome_for_real:

Power is coming back rather quickly to the neighborhoods here in Lee county, though my own home has yet to be restored. The contents of my refrigerators are a loss, but with all the overtime I'm working for the storm, it's not that big of a loss. Aside from that, the house didn't take any structure damage nor shingle loss (hooray for 2015 construction!), but I did lose a tree in the backyard.

Glad to hear you missed the worst of it.

Same here, my power just came on this afternoon.  The mail and the trash just resumed service as well.   Although my refrigerator is a total loss we prepared our freezer and to my surprise we found that those preparations led to it being sufficiently cold that everything in it survived.  Yay for freezing water into every container you have and putting it into the maximum cold freezer.  Its a bit surreal going through a natural disaster like this as you saw the best and the absolute worst in humanity.   From gas hoarders, businesses operating rackets at the pump in order to milk every drop faster as gas was running low, to looters, to people getting in fist fights over their right to hoard ice it has been an amazing couple of weeks.  It also is really amazing to see the real heroes throughout this entire ordeal.   I am not talking about the police either as their performance has been less than satisfactory.  I am talking about the guys operating the rigs who resupplied us.  It allowed a lot of people to leave Fort Myers after fleeing from Miami and it allowed many people afterwards to get food, medicine, water and to keep their communications equipment alive.  The guys operating the rigs kept something on the shelf even if you had no time to prepare.   The weathermen in Key West  were singularly heroic, they stayed and because they did we knew where the storm was going to make landfall at Marco Island.  School Districts became community shelters and allowed thousands of people in Collier county to take shelter from the storm.   There were examples of corporate heroics to, such as the Everblades who used their stadium to house their community.  You also saw really small acts of heroism.   Numerous good deeds and people banding together to share water, food, and even to look out after each other on the day after the hurricane.  

In just a few minutes I am going to go to sleep and I hope I will have my first real full night of sleep in three days but one more thing I learned is just how hard it is to sleep when you are so unbelievably hot (and in Florida that heat is worse at night) and hungry.  Though I was very lucky, and able to eat a can of soup a day, some pretzels, and water you just don't understand really how irrational and easy it is to lose your cool when placed into that position for days.  It is an experience I hope to never repeat, but it is also one I will be better prepared for next time.      

Glad you all came through this ok.  Keep the updates coming!

About NOAA's GFS model...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/us-forecast-models-have-been-pretty-terrible-during-hurricane-irma/

Had several friends and colleagues who traveled to the affected areas to help evac people - the damage is pretty extreme in some areas, such as St. Martin.

Jose has apparently (now that he is a tropical storm and not a hurricane) decided to stop his pirouette in the open sea and head towards land. Current center of the NHC cone of uncertainty has him as a hurricane headed straight for New England by the end of next week.

You know, I've been spending all my time watching the hurricane paths and forecast back in the US.  Then I noticed the sky starting to get dark outside here at work, so I checked the weather.  

And only just realized I'm about to be hit by a Typhoon.   :awesome_for_real:

https://www.cyclocane.com/doksuri-storm-tracker/

Got power back a couple days ago, but no internet until today. A couple houses down a tree was blocking the entire road, that thing falls the other way and it would have crushed their entire house to tinder.

sneaky little bugger those typhoons.. :oh_i_see:

Puerto Rico may not exist come Thursday, newly minted Tropical Storm Maria is forecast to be a major hurricane by the time it reaches Puerto Rico and the center of the forecast cone is smack dab on the island.

What a month, eh?

Maria?  Isnt that out of sequence?  What happened to K and L?

Katia hit Mexico last week.

Lee is puttering around in the mid atlantic and will not get near land.

Jose's still alive and kicking, though. It may even find a way to come onshore in the Mid-Atlantic, though likely as an extratropical storm by that point if it did happen.

Jose is not going to end up doing any damage.

Which is surreal considering how powerful the storm has been at times and how long it has been a named storm.

Might be some beach erosion and flooding in Jersey, Delaware and Long Island.

I just heard of a hurricane named Maria!

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at5.shtml?cone#contents

Well Puerto Rico is fucked.

Maria dead center over Puerto Rico in three days:


 
(https://i.imgur.com/tnNKu1Z.jpg)

Puerto Rico prediction for 20. Sept 22:00 UTC Data ECMWF model. No comment necessary.

The tracks of Maria

(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4c67082ff8d4e1afeb83b3c022a012d4a59239ba5f2b66d9e8070e83a775a18c.gif?w=600&h=435)

Don't post spaghetti plots, they are basically worthless.

Also, Maria is a Cat5 with the next stop Puerto Rico.

Someone needs to photoshop Cthulhu onto that thing.

Maria is close to Puerto Rico, and is projected to hit it dead on at Cat 5. San Juan will be pretty much under the Eye. It is one bloody massive storm. God help them.

http://google.org/crisismap/2017-maria

Sounds like Dominca has been flattened.

Yes.  I don't know what is going on at WU.

Maria seems to be tracking more easterly for the rest of the week, maybe turning north after it brushes north shore of DR.  Still possible to impact SE US but not very likely.

HEEEERE COMES NATE!!!

(http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT16/refresh/AL162017_5day_cone_with_line_and_wind+png/145426_5day_cone_with_line_and_wind.png)

Oh this looks great...  :ye_gods:

It's coming right for us!!!!  :ye_gods:

Thankfully Mississippi and Alabama have wisely invested their tax dollars in storm surge infrastructure.  You'll be just fine!

It looks like Mother Nature's going for the full house on the Gulf of Mexico states this year.  :why_so_serious:

That means the next hurricane has to start over again with Texas.   :awesome_for_real:

We still have Georgia and the Carolinas that have not been hit before it goes back to cycle through the Gulf again!

The Carolinas got pasted the last 2 years while I was here, causing me lost income. The storms can just keep hitting Texas this year instead. Texas Ren Fest deserves all the flooding it can get.

Hey I got a good steak knife there 2 years ago.

Naw, we good!   :awesome_for_real:

Nate has made landfall.  Everyone hang in there.  :grin:

So, uh, Ophelia is about to slam Ireland as a hurricane. I just don't even. Be safe Irish and Scottish friends.

Yeah, I looked at the Irish Breaking News thing on facebook, and pretty much 100% of the comments were idiots laughing about a "bit of rain," and that the forecast is never right anyway. Even walking around today no-one has a clue what's coming and no-one is worried.

I'm cooking u some chilli and rice and will store enough for a few days if the power goes out, and I will get some extra milk tomorrow, then batten down with some books I've been meaning to read. There is not much more I can do. I live near the southwest coast so I'm going to be very near the eye.

(http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT17/refresh/AL172017_5day_cone_no_line_and_wind+png/024441_5day_cone_no_line_and_wind.png)

"Closest point to #Ophelia’s present location at which a major hurricane was ever seen: Michael (2012)."

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMHDBItX4AAtc72.jpg)

2017 is shaping up to be a special year.  :ye_gods:

The fucking shetland islands are going to see this as a tropical storm.

Fuck, the thing might still be a tropical storm and hit Norway.   :ye_gods:

BUT GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX AMIRITE?

Wind is starting up outside, and it literally just now started raining. Here comes the fun! I'm about as prepared as I can . The news has been pretty Apocalytic all day, so I can expect to have a fun time for the next several hours.

(https://www.met.ie/weathermaps/WEB_sat_ir_eur.jpg)

not to belittle global warming, as it is a well established fact which can only be denied with extreme and deliberate selfish or malicious ignorance, as is the rising global CO2 levels which directly correspond to the combustion of fossil carbon, and the greenhouse effect of CO2.

BUT

These things (hurricanes hitting Europe) do happen, and have been happening for all of history (and almost certainly quite a bit of prehistory! LOL), they just aren't very common.

I was in Norway in the late 80's I think when a hurricane crossed the Atlantic, romped across England knocking down 300yr old oaks, and was still a tropical storm when it hit Norway and literally came right up the fjord I was in. Pretty wild stuff.

So, warning to anyone in it's path who might not be used to these things. Stock up on water, food you can eat without cooking, batteries, and, any medicines you need. Fill the gas/petrol tank in your car (and any gas cans you might have lying around) and stock up on cash.  Because I learned the hard way (Hugo) that ATM's, gas pumps, and credit card cash registers don't work when the lights are out  (I'm betting Apple Pay won't either)! Also hurricane lamps (oil/kerosene) are VASTLY better than candles.  Oh, and electric chainsaws are worthless when you need them the most, like to cut your way out of your heavily forested neighborhood after 70+ mph winds have knocked over half of the trees!

I had a quick look and the last hurricane to hit Ireland was Debbie in 1961.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Debbie_(1961)

Photos of the sky over London (tinged yellow by all the debris the storm picked up) are pretty unreal.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMRDUmSX0AAxh66.jpg)

On the bright side, it's not sharks.

<Narrator's voice>  The debris was actually very small sharks.

I ruse.