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Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

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Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#21

Post by Retric »

swasheck wrote: post #17

I know that this is slightly off-topic so feel free to downvote if you feel so inclined: There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding. What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters. For instance, the comment in this discussion about the airline…

Yes, but the most common form is infrastructure. Schools for example are often over engineered so they can be used as evacuation shelters.

Abstractly, the Red cross for examples also promotes disaster preparedness. http://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergenc...

Simple notification is another, huge but often overlooked step. More immediate things like providing busing to evacuate people is often considered part of the event.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#22

Post by olegkikin »

rbritton wrote: post #14

This site makes an appearance on HN somewhat regularly, but in case it's new to anyone, it tends to be a pretty useful forecast visual for wind: https://www.windy.com/?25.820,-67.720,5

It's also interesting to look at the bigger picture. The southern hemisphere has its own level of insanity going on:

https://www.windy.com/?-22.513,39.375,3

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#23

Post by zanny »

swasheck wrote: post #17

I know that this is slightly off-topic so feel free to downvote if you feel so inclined: There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding. What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters. For instance, the comment in this discussion about the airline…

I think the general trick is there are always enough people in the world in need of charity to make pre-funding private disaster relief seem like wasted potential.

This is supposed to be something governments account for. They budget for and provide the insurance on giant disasters of this scale.

If we want to do anything about improving the preparation and recovery from natural disasters, it will have to be a political engagement. The total costs of some of these incidents push tens of billions of dollars for the whole recovery. If there is anything governments should be accountable for, it is acts of nature.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#24

Post by mikeyouse »

ars wrote: post #13

I remember reading a few days ago that European models were predicting a turn to the north, and US models were predicting a high pressure ridge holding the hurricane to the west. Anyone know more about this? Because if true, it's the second time European models were more correct than American ones. Last time they decided we needed more supercomputing power, and they got it. Did it help?

> Last time they decided we needed more supercomputing power, and they got it. Did it help?

Per a few sources I've seen, no, it didn't. One big cause of the GFS (USA) model's inaccuracy is lack the of computing power, which we've addressed a few times with new supercomputing clusters.

The bigger problem is that the GFS model uses bad underlying physics. Decades ago we made several choices to optimize around the current architecture and processing ability, which was probably okay in the mid 1990s. Today, it just results in greatly inferior predictive ability compared to the European models. When you combine the poor model physics with lower resolution compared to the competitors, it becomes clear that we need to reboot the whole thing.

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/06/us-numerical-weather-...

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#25

Post by dsfyu404ed »

drewmol wrote: post #16
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #15

I really need to fill up my truck before there's another post hurricane price hike.

I think the price hike is mainly due to decreased refining capacity, I doubt a hurricane in Miami/SF would have the same effect.

IIRC there's a some refining capacity in NC/SC, also the oil companies know that not everyone knows where there is and isn't refining capacity.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#26

Post by [deleted] »

swasheck wrote: post #17

I know that this is slightly off-topic so feel free to downvote if you feel so inclined: There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding. What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters. For instance, the comment in this discussion about the airline…

[deleted]

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#27

Post by singularity2001 »

rbritton wrote: post #14

This site makes an appearance on HN somewhat regularly, but in case it's new to anyone, it tends to be a pretty useful forecast visual for wind: https://www.windy.com/?25.820,-67.720,5

it's only showing about 60 knots (70MPH). is the model off? does the model show higher altitudes? are the news exaggerating?

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#30

Post by S_A_P »

Having just lived through Harvey, I cannot stress enough that if you are in a position to evacuate, please do so. We were lucky to narrowly escape flooding in our home, but for 3 days we had no water, septic or power(need power for the other 2). The flooding had us stuck in our neighborhood but we were able to kayak out to safety. In addition to high winds(which Houston fortunately avoided) flooding is very dangerous. Those in the path of Irma should expect both. Again please evacuate if you can.
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