Laura and Marco

Whew, for a minute there I thought this was a spicy GOP scandal brewing.

[edited to add] No longer applicable as the storm name is now identified here as "Laura" not "Lara".

Uploaded just so I don't have to look at her face on the homepage.

Sorry.  I see you fixed the spelling of the first storm.  We could have avoided all this unpleasantness.  

Apparently this is the first time this has happened since the "satellite era", which I guess means since the early 60's.

This looks awfully bad.

man, how did they forecast this stuff before satellites? talk about a game changer.

drummerboy said:

man, how did they forecast this stuff before satellites? talk about a game changer.

 Apparently, they didn't, or at least not very well. I read this review last week about a new book on the topic -

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/books/review/furious-sky-hurricanes-eric-jay-dolin.html?searchResultPosition=27

For instance, the Weather Bureau called for “light rain” in the New York area on the evening of Aug. 23, 1893; instead the city was hit by a Category 1 storm. Four days later, the bureau warned that a hurricane was about to make landfall near Savannah, but by that point, the Category 3 hurricane was already bearing down on the city and even those who received the alert had no time to prepare. Particularly devastated were the islands to the northeast of Savannah, off the coast of South Carolina, which were on the “dirty,” or right-hand, side of the storm. (In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricanes rotate in a counterclockwise direction; this means that whatever direction the storm is moving, the danger will be greatest to the right of the eye, because there the speed of the winds is increased by the forward velocity of the tempest.) Some 2,000 people were killed in the so-called Sea Islands Hurricane, most of them African-American. Relief was slow to reach the islands, in part because of all the damage and in part because South Carolina’s avowedly white supremacist governor delayed calling for help.

Four decades later, communications technologies — radio, telephone — had vastly improved, but, as Dolin recounts, the bureau’s forecasts had not. In the hours before the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 made landfall, the bureau missed the fact that the storm had taken a sharp northern turn; the result was that hundreds of unemployed World War I veterans who’d been sent to build a road connecting the Florida Keys were killed. Ernest Hemingway, who rode out the Labor Day Hurricane on Key West, visited the vets’ camp, on Lower Matecumbe Key, a few days after the disaster. (He’d been drinking buddies with many of the men.) The dead, he reported, were “everywhere and in the sun all of them were beginning to be too big for their bluejeans and jackets that they could never fill when they were on the bum and hungry.”

Satellites now allow hurricanes to be monitored from their inception, and computer models take vast amounts of data and spit out predictions. But as Dolin notes, forecasting hurricanes remains a “tricky endeavor.” Hurricanes are susceptible to the “butterfly effect” — small changes in the initial conditions ramify into very large changes later on. Meteorologists try to deal with this problem by running their computer models many times over, starting with different initial conditions, but they can never overcome what’s known as the “limit of predictability.” Thus, hurricane forecasts will always come with a range of uncertainty.

Recently when I looked at the eastern sky around 4:30 a .m. there is a round white stationary shape,not the moon. It is quite large.Could this be a satellite?

Satellites are not stationary, they orbit.  They can be visible. Look for a high up white moving light that doesn’t have any blinking lights (that’d be an airplane). I’ve spotted them, usually right before or not too long after nightfall. 

galileo said:

Recently when I looked at the eastern sky around 4:30 a .m. there is a round white stationary shape,not the moon. It is quite large.Could this be a satellite?

some satellites are in a geo-stationary orbit, so you wouldn't see them move. however, I think those need to be above the equator, so maybe we can't see those from here?

and here's a night sky map to help you figure out what you might have seen.

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/usa/trenton

galileo said:

Recently when I looked at the eastern sky around 4:30 a .m. there is a round white stationary shape,not the moon. It is quite large. Could this be a satellite?

 Probably a planet, maybe Mars, although it usually looks reddish. This may help: 

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/

Thanks,everyone. The maps are good but this did not look like a planet. Will keep looking.

There is a great app for your smart phone called Sky Guide.  You just point the phone at the night sky, and  a map pops up naming all the stars, planets and constellations.  It's not free, but it cheap (under $3.00) and if you upgrade for another 2 bucks apparently it will give you information on satellites as well. 

https://www.fifthstarlabs.com/sky-guide

I am not affiliated with this company, I just enjoy using this app especially when traveling to some place with darker skies than here. 

I found two free apps via a google search that offer the same techniques to those of us who are constellation- and planet-challenged. 

I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast (Houston) and I still have a lot of family and friends there, including my sister and her family.  Not looking good, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them.

galileo said:

Recently when I looked at the eastern sky around 4:30 a .m. there is a round white stationary shape,not the moon. It is quite large.Could this be a satellite?

 That's Venus.

I like the Heavens Above app for spotting satellites. The ISS is very easy to see with the naked eye. It will make a low level pass in the eastern sky Monday around 5:30 am and a better pass about the same time Wednesday.   There are quite as few satellites you can see with the naked eye, even with our washed out skies, but only those in low earth orbit, no geosynchronous satellites are visible here, even with a telescope.  E pur si muove

drummerboy said:

Apparently this is the first time this has happened since the "satellite era", which I guess means since the early 60's.

This looks awfully bad.

 Right now it appears that Marco will make landfall Monday morning and Laura Wednesday and they will not be hurricane strength at the same time, but this is a complicated set of systems and the models, while similar, are showing significant changes from run to run.  Both could hit the gulf coast between Houston and Pensacola and maybe even closer together than that. 

There is little chance of any significant effects to our weather here.

yikes

Laura looks like she's fixing to do some real damage to the coast and right up through Arkansas.

I also see the long range track has her crossing over NJ some time this coming weekend as a tropical depression, then strengthening back to a tropical storm as she travels East out to sea.

So Marco wussed out but Laura seems to be getting stronger.

this is a pretty wacky path. can't recall a hurricane traveling across land so far and maintaining significant strength.

drummerboy said:

this is a pretty wacky path. can't recall a hurricane traveling across land so far and maintaining significant strength.

 It will not mainain its strength over land. Will undergo extratropical transition quickly as it gets absorbed into the mid-latitude jet stream and move east. Path is actually not all that uncommon.

unsurvivable

drummerboy said:

unsurvivable

 Max and WxNut can confirm if this is the correct meteorological response: holy crap.

The 15-20 foot storm surge forecasts are pretty insane.

mrincredible said:

drummerboy said:

unsurvivable

 Max and WxNut can confirm if this is the correct meteorological response: holy crap.

 holy crap is generally preferred over holy **** by professionals as there might be children watching

...AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT REPORTS LAURA HAS BECOME AN 
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE...
...CATASTROPHIC STORM SURGE, EXTREME WINDS, AND FLASH FLOODING
EXPECTED ALONG THE NORTHWEST GULF COAST TONIGHT...
...LITTLE TIME REMAINS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY...

Katrina Part Deux?

yahooyahoo said:

Katrina Part Deux?

 Will likely be stronger at landfall than Katrina. That said, Katrina was the event it was because the levees broke. This reminds me more of Hurricane Michael from a couple years back.

Laura has intensified 5 millibars in 90 minutes. Still undergoing rapid intensification.