Houston is a sitting duck for the next big hurricane (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Houston is a sitting duck for the next big hurricane (2016)

#21

Post by briholt » Tue, Aug 29, 2017, 3:50 PM UTC

hoodoof wrote: post #10

Three Years After Sandy, Is New York Prepared for the Next Big Storm? https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102015/three-years-afte... California ill-prepared for the Big One, experts say https://phys.org/news/2016-07-california-ill-prepared-big-ex... What Would Happen If Yellowstone's Supervolcano Erupted? https://www.livescience.com/20714-yellowstone-supervolcano-e... America’s Crumbling Dams Are A Disaster Waiting…

Let me predict right here, right now, that someday something bad will happen somewhere and someone will be unprepared for it. You heard it hear first.

Re: Houston is a sitting duck for the next big hurricane (2016)

#22

Post by yahna » Tue, Aug 29, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

hoodoof wrote: post #10

Three Years After Sandy, Is New York Prepared for the Next Big Storm? https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102015/three-years-afte... California ill-prepared for the Big One, experts say https://phys.org/news/2016-07-california-ill-prepared-big-ex... What Would Happen If Yellowstone's Supervolcano Erupted? https://www.livescience.com/20714-yellowstone-supervolcano-e... America’s Crumbling Dams Are A Disaster Waiting…

I dunno, people/society have a tendency to ignore problems and then freak out when they cause issues.

Maybe if we keep hammering on about how people predicted this stuff the next prediction will get listened to a bit mroe.

Re: Houston is a sitting duck for the next big hurricane (2016)

#23

Post by bonesss » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 11:02 AM UTC

FTA wrote: post #17

manyoso wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with climate change it will continue to be hard to predict these events other than to say that if you are near the coast... good luck.

I have not seen any evidence in journals that climate change will inherently reduce predictability of short or medium range weather forecasts. I believe you're implying that without climate change we could somehow be predicting hurricanes years ahead of time in the current year, which is really not the case.

> ... climate change will [not] inherently reduce predictability of short or medium range weather forecasts

In the broad sense that's totally correct: weather will still be weather, and the sensor data & computing resources we have to throw at prediction are only getting better.

One aspect of this specific conversation relating to climate change, though, would be the relative abruptness of multiple weather systems combining into much larger storms. Sandy, for example, became a Frankenstorm in part due to multiple slightly abnormal factors coming together. That trend should erode predictability across multiple axes.

On the order of centuries, compared with the otherwise ability to predict weather: I would expect to see a marginal decline in weather predictability as more events, and more extreme events, are added to the atmospheric system.

Re: Houston is a sitting duck for the next big hurricane (2016)

#24

Post by mohene1 » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 4:29 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #7

frigen wrote: post #6

Someone, at sometime, has previously predicted just about anything and published it, making them appear prescient.

If you read the article you will see that it entirely failed to predict what just happened in Houston. The article goes on and on about Storm Surges, and building Dikes - neither of which had anything to do with what just happened.

ghshepard, true. The article focused on seawalls and surges, but still managed to get the damage correct: 600,000 residents effected, $100 Billion in damage, 145 mph winds. Regardless, knowing the effects of the storm -shown through the simulation - there could have been a plan for the ensuing catastrophe, e.g. evacuating the city, relief efforts; which seem ad hoc.