[HN Gopher] We've already seen category 6 hurricanes - scientist...
___________________________________________________________________
We've already seen category 6 hurricanes - scientists want to make
it official
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 247 points
Date : 2024-02-05 22:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (eos.org)
| swagmoose wrote:
| "multiple storms have already spilled over into the hypothetical
| category 6"
|
| If they do go this route, I'd like it if they future-proofed it
| and include categories 6-10. Seems inevitable we're gonna see the
| first category 7 in the next 5-10 years.
| anatnom wrote:
| Confusingly, the paper[0] cited by this article seems undecided
| on this front. Figure 1A of the paper puts Hurricane Patricia
| (2015) into hypothetical category 7, but the "current and
| proposed categories" in Table 1 stops at declaring category 6
| wind speed > 86 m/s (or 192mph, 167 knots, 309 km/h), and
| category 7 doesn't make an appearance elsewhere in the paper.
|
| I was really hoping to find an authoritative listing of the
| strongest storms, but it is missing in both the linked article
| and the underlying paper. The paper itself uses data from
| International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship, which
| has a confusing website. As a non-expert, the website's top
| windspeed[1] category lists the following storms with maximum
| wind speeds of >167 knots (category 6 in the proposed scheme):
| 213kt - 1958 IDA 194kt - 1958 GRACE, 1959 JOAN, 1959
| DINAH, 1961 NANCY, 1964 SALLY 185kt - 2015 PATRICIA
| 184kt - 1961 VIOLET 180kt - 1955 RUTH 178kt -
| 1955 JANET, 174kt - 1951 MARGE, 1953 NINA, 1956 WANDA,
| 1957 VIRGINIA, 1957 HESTER, 1957 KIT, 1957 LOLA, 1959 VERA,
| 1959 CHARLOTTE, 1966 KIT 170kt - 1964 OPAL, 2013
| HAIYAN, 2016 MERANTI, 2020 GONI, 2021 SURIGAE
|
| I don't see any explanation for why there were so many
| fantastically powerful storms in the 1950s-60s. Perhaps the
| older data is of dubious quality?
|
| [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2308901121#t01
|
| [1] https://ncics.org/ibtracs/index.php?name=browse-wind#210
| scythe wrote:
| Wikipedia gives Typhoon Ida (not to be confused with various
| hurricanes named Ida) a wind speed of "only" 175 knots (325
| kph; 202 mph) which accounts for the largest outlier in the
| list.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Ida_(1958)
| anatnom wrote:
| Confusingly, that wikipedia page cites the same IBTrACS
| system that I referred to, and in that page[0] the max
| intensity is listed at 213 knots. The data shows that the
| 213 knot speed was seen for measurements across twelve
| hours on 1958-09-24.
|
| [0] https://ncics.org/ibtracs/index.php?name=v04r00-1958263
| N1314...
| sudenmorsian wrote:
| You are looking at the data for the CMA (China
| Meteorological Agency). The official data center for the
| Western Pacific according to the World Meteorological
| Agency is the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA/Tokyo),
| but the IBTrACS dataset does not have wind speeds from
| them for 1958.
|
| The Wikipedia article is sourcing data from the JTWC
| (Joint Typhoon Warning Center), the US wind column for
| 1-minute sustained wind speeds. In general, the Wikipedia
| convention is to include wind speed data from the JMA and
| JTWC when available.
| dwd wrote:
| There is some research regarding an increase in Saharan dust
| storms that retards hurricane development in the Eastern
| Atlantic. Apparently this is still trending upwards and has
| resulted in fewer hurricanes forming over the last few
| decades.
| Animats wrote:
| The scale is somewhat arbitrary (plot the points) but category
| 7 would start somewhere around 225MPH. Highest ever recorded is
| 215MPH, so category 7 is worth having in reserve.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Ida/Kanogawa was 245 mph/213 knot peak.
|
| https://ncics.org/ibtracs/index.php?name=v04r00-1958263N1314.
| ..
| zamadatix wrote:
| Saffir-Simpson is based on sustained, not peak.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Set Category 10 at the speed of light, then work backwards...
| thfuran wrote:
| Well that's easy. The meteorologists can remember that
| category number = 10 v' / c, where v' is the maximum median
| windspeed over a one hundred acre convex region, and all
| anyone else needs to know is that every storm is cat 0.
| richardw wrote:
| Agree, need to do this properly. What's a fair cap in our solar
| system?
|
| "Neptune's winds are the fastest in the solar system, reaching
| 1,600 miles per hour!"
|
| What category is that?
|
| https://scijinks.gov/planetary-
| weather/#:~:text=Neptune%27s%....
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I would guess that atmospheric pressure is going to matter a
| lot for the expected "damage", so it would not make sense in
| places where it's wildly different ?
| _tom_ wrote:
| Why should we "create" categories. There should be an algorithm
| for determining level. Input 1000 miles an hour, you get a
| category.
|
| Earthquakes don't have an upper limit. It's just a function of
| energy.
| TylerE wrote:
| Earthquakes are sort of naturally limited though. A 9.0 is
| going to be catastrophic no matter what, and while I'm not
| saying a 10 couldn't happen it would probably be something
| like once in a billion year event.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| 10.0 is firmly in "if it happens nobody's gonna be around
| to care what it's designated" territory I think. There's a
| practical point at which the death tolls are going to be
| sufficiently high that the number probably shouldn't
| matter.
|
| Though in tornadoes there definitely are EF-4 designated
| twisters that are hotly contested online as being truly
| EF-5; often that's down to where damage occurs in the
| lifetime of a tornado though and it being difficult to
| prove windspeeds when a system is moving through, e.g.:
| trailer park vs an industrial park.
| TylerE wrote:
| I don't think it's quite as cut and dried as that. A 9.5
| hit Chile about 60 years ago, and about 95% of the most
| directly hit town survived. Which is not to minimize it -
| there were thousands of fatalities - but it was human
| scale tragedy, not apocalypse.
| ewhanley wrote:
| An estimate of the upper limit of an earthquake is
| approximately 10. It's a function of max rock strength.
| selectodude wrote:
| It's actually a function of energy released. The earthquake
| can get bigger if the fault slip is larger. A magnitude 12
| quake is technically possible but requires an entire
| hemisphere to slip 500 meters. There's a really interesting
| paper that takes the moment magnitude scale to its logical
| extremes.
|
| PDF warning: https://www.fujipress.jp/main/wp-
| content/themes/Fujipress/pd...
| ewhanley wrote:
| Fair enough - something like rock strength and rupture
| length. Good paper. Thank you
| saalweachter wrote:
| I seem to recall something about the asteroid that killed
| the dinosaurs producing a magnitude 11.
|
| I wonder what the collision that produced the moon rated?
| Nevermark wrote:
| Well, as long as they are only doing those in papers!
|
| With regard to hurricanes, we are an active participant
| in creating the level of need for new terminology.
| Beldin wrote:
| I seem to recall a video (perhaps KurzGesagt) that a
| magnitude 25 earthquake would overcome the binding energy of
| Earth - the planet would be in separate pieces. That
| definitely is an upper limit: when the "earth" in earthquake
| literally cannot take more.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| Not necessarily because there may not be any difference between
| a wind speed of 350mph and 400mph wind in term of destructive
| power. Both may simply be able to strip the land bare and
| deliver the everything above it many miles away as well as
| temporarily moving parts of the sea miles inland.
| sillywalk wrote:
| By the time storms of 7+ come that level become commonplace, I
| doubt there will be people track and name them.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| While that is probably most sensible, it doesn't seem like a
| lot of fun. Instead, I recommend we call a new global
| conference, every few years, to discuss the addition of each
| individual natural number to the Saffir-Simpson scale.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| That does sound fun! Is the idea to progress sequentially? or
| do we consider the proposal of 13 before 7 if there is enough
| support to do so?
| rblatz wrote:
| Category 1 - 74-95 mph
|
| Category 2 - 96-110 mph
|
| Category 3 - 111-129 mph
|
| Category 4 - 130-156 mph
|
| Category 5 - 157 mph or higher
|
| I'm not sure why these divisions were made. The jumps between are
| seemingly arbitrary, from 27 mph to 15 mph and no pattern I can
| discern. What makes the next jump to 192 which is the largest
| jump yet?
| Keyframe wrote:
| Like Fujita scale for Tornados, it's about potential for
| potential damage it can cause which is here dependent somehow
| on the wind speed variable. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable
| about it can explain how it's correlated, but it's not about
| wind speeds (alone).
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Reminded of a joke by Ron White in the context of a person
| choosing to remain behind in a hurricane because they believe
| they can withstand the wind and rain: "It's not _that_ the
| wind is blowin', it's _what_ the wind is blowin'."
|
| On topic, it makes me wonder if the wind cutoffs have to do
| with what can be additionally picked up by the increase in
| energy. I'd honestly assume not but I would still hesitate to
| assume that it's arbitrary. Not really sure but the phrasing
| of the joke made me wonder.
| Keyframe wrote:
| This made me interested as well. Why the exact cut-offs,
| right?
|
| I found few resources like NOAA
| https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/sshws.pdf and wikipedia
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_scale
| saying basically about the wind speed that the actual wind
| speed is "sustained winds as average winds over a period of
| one minute, measured at the same 33 ft (10.1 m) height" and
| then I thought ok if this scalar we're using is correlated
| to potential damage, that would mean force, right? They did
| remove air pressure and storm surges as components later
| on. I didn't bother with air pressure outside of standard
| since it would deviate a lot into researching exactly that.
|
| Since it's not really my domain, I decided to wing it by
| googling around and looked for wind force formulas. One
| that I found out (
| https://sites.uci.edu/energyobserver/2017/09/07/hurricane-
| wi.... ) can roughly be translated as F = v^2 but then when
| I charted it out with x being wind speed and y proportional
| force, only thing I found out was that it looked
| logarithmic (which I didn't need a chart for lol ).
|
| The other I found was saying for wind load formula "The
| generic formula for wind load is F = A x P x Cd where F is
| the force or wind load, A is the projected area of the
| object, P is the wind pressure, and Cd is the drag
| coefficient." I had to hunt for variables here, but gist of
| it is that since scale is in mph I went USA with 1 square
| foot for A - area (and then to square meters from that,
| 0,093 m^2), wind speed to m/s, and went with these (more
| googling): Wind Pressure (P) is P = 0.5 x p x V^2 where p
| (rho actually) is air density (google: 1.225 kg/m^3 at sea
| level and 15C, I couldn't find one at 10m height), V is our
| wind speed, and Cd (drag coefficient) for a flat plate
| which is 1.28 according to https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-1
| 2/VirtualAero/BottleRocket/a....
|
| tl;dr; I couldn't find clear cuts in Newtons. I tried
| minimum, maximum and average wind speeds for each
| categories, and then I kind of lost interest there. More
| googling says that it was based on established observations
| what wind force can do to structures, but no more than that
| and I couldn't source original work to see more details.
|
| Outside of optics, this is as far as my physics will lead
| me tonight. I'd be highly interested to see if anyone more
| in the know can provide methodology behind it, be it from
| meteorology, construction, or fluid dynamics.
| kurthr wrote:
| Yeah, you know that's not a bad idea... just label the
| Category by what is being blown around in the wind.
| Category 1: Trash Cans and Patio Furniture Category
| 2: Shingles and Gardening tools Category 3: Branches
| and Bricks Category 4: Small vehicles and mobile
| homes Category 5: Lage vehicles and houses
| Category 6: Full concrete Trucks and and Roads
|
| I once traveled ('97) to go see the damage done by an F5
| tornado and what struck me was that a 50ft wide section of
| asphalt roadway had been removed where the eye had passed.
| Granted that is about 270mph, but I would still be worried
| about depressurization even in a bomb shelter.
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| Category 7: Hospitals and skyscrapers
|
| Category 8: Small continents
|
| Category 9: Other hurricanes
|
| Category 10: Your mom
| gct wrote:
| You're getting downvoted but this gave me a chuckle
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| The thing I find interesting (in a way) is that even then,
| the damage caused is not a single-variate function.
|
| Where I live, we just had a massive for the area storm with
| really strong wind gusts. My little weather station on my
| balcony recorded 80mph gusts. I also have several new cracks
| in the walls from when the roof tried to leave the building.
| But in other places, hurricanes and tornadoes much stronger
| than that still end up leaving buildings intact.
|
| We try so hard to reduce so many things to a single number, a
| single qualifier. And nature just keeps showing us why that's
| not entirely useful.
|
| Musings from an evening spent in the dark, and perhaps the
| slightly spoiled leftover meatloaf that I had because there
| was no power to cook anything.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think its the damage that benign debris can do to a person at
| certain speed thresholds
|
| but I could be wrong
| senectus1 wrote:
| which seems weird when you consider the building materials
| and styles that different regions use.
| TylerE wrote:
| It's an extension of the Beaufort scale. The start of class 12
| aligns with the start of cat 1.
| vitus wrote:
| That's a partial answer, but not the full story.
|
| The Beaufort scale is designed to grow as B^1.5, and so it
| has a natural direct extension. 13-16 on the extended
| Beaufort scale do not map onto category 2-5 (https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale#Extended_scale). As others
| mention, SSHWS was designed to reflect building damage.
|
| Apparently, Saffir's original scale only included wind speed;
| Simpson augmented it to include storm surge and flooding.
| However, the categories were at times conflicting (e.g.
| Hurricane Charley in 2004 was a category 4 that led to a
| storm surge of 7 feet, or Katrina that made landfall as a
| category 3 but led to a storm surge of 20+ feet in places).
| To reduce public confusion, the NHC simplified the scale to
| only use a single prescriptive factor, wind speed (oddly,
| while still keeping Simpson's name attached to the thing even
| though they removed his contribution).
|
| https://www.nps.gov/articles/saffir-simpson-hurricane-
| scale.... contains the multi-factor scale that was
| discontinued in 2009.
| Lendal wrote:
| They are indeed completely arbitrary, which makes "Category 6"
| completely meaningless/useless, just like the rest of those
| silly numbers. A storm with a wind speed of 130 mph is not 20%
| more dangerous than a storm with wind speed of 128 mph. They
| are equivalent dangers. It's a ridiculous system and should be
| abolished, but it won't, because it's good entertainment.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Oh come on, by that criteria you dismiss the entire concept
| of categories.
|
| Rounding is not a disqualifier.
| dgellow wrote:
| Something being arbitrary doesn't make it meaningless. It's
| arbitrary and useful, so people use it.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| It's supposed to be roughly correlated to damage potential to
| man made structures. It is also supposed to be logarithmic.
|
| https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It's nothing new to talk about, but rating a hurricane's
| destructive force on windspeed alone is sub-optimal.
|
| On the other side, one-dimensional labels for a storm help convey
| the severity of it quickly and unambiguously.
|
| Hurricanes have three components IIRC (as someone who lived on
| the coast a long time): Storm surge flooding, rain flooding, and
| wind.
|
| Hurricane Ike was a cat2 in 2008, which did significant damage to
| the Houston coast because of its large storm surge.
|
| Harvey in 2017 was damaging due to its consistent rain over the
| area as it stalled. Tropical storm Allison in 2001 was similar.
|
| One may argue that wind causes the most acute damage as well as
| the fastest "change in status" of the three: High winds can
| topple a tree to block a road instantly, or rip the roof from a
| house in a flash, or knock down powerlines taking out a
| neighborhood.
|
| While I'm not against a cat 6 or higher rating existing, for the
| sake of human communication "cat 5" means "get the hell out of
| there" already.
| pjot wrote:
| > Storm surge flooding, rain flooding, and wind
|
| I use wind and the speed of the storm directionally as my
| mental model when thinking about hurricanes. Rain/surge
| flooding are results of how long the system is over an area.
|
| That said if a storm is a 3+ I'll leave - driving 3-4 hours is
| way more enjoyable than trying to sleep with no AC
| metaphor wrote:
| > _Hurricane Ike was a cat2 in 2008, which did significant
| damage to the Houston coast because of its large storm surge._
|
| > _Harvey in 2017 was damaging due to its consistent rain over
| the area as it stalled._
|
| The outsider impression that I took away was that a major
| reason why Houston got so rekt by a mere Cat 2 hurricane was in
| large part driven by property developers building communities
| in low lying areas that the Army Corp of Engineers had
| designated as "emergency spillways"[1][2]...the Army knew about
| the risk, the city turned a blind eye, and the devil in the
| details weren't disclosed to homebuyers.
|
| Perhaps there's more to the story?
|
| > _While I 'm not against a cat 6 or higher rating existing,
| for the sake of human communication "cat 5" means "get the hell
| out of there" already._
|
| I agree, but skipping town isn't always an option even if you
| wanted to; experienced two such events[3][4] on Guam as a kid.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/22/us/houston-
| ha...
|
| [2] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2021/how-
| houston-f...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Omar
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Paka
| unethical_ban wrote:
| On the first point, you're correct about Harvey. Several
| neighborhoods were built in the basin of a flood plain. And
| lesser examples of such poor planning and drainage are all
| over Houston. But sometimes it really is storms that stall
| over the city dropping rain for three days.
|
| To the second point, yeah... My family tried to evac Rita
| (2005) and got 5 miles in three hours. Turned around, and the
| storm missed us.
|
| Three years later, my parents stayed for "cat 2" Ike and were
| trapped in the attic for 12 hours because Galveston Bay had
| come five feet up our house.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Any rating system is going to fail to be actionable until two
| things happen. 1, structures need to be rated by the level of
| wind they're able to withstand, and 2, geographic regions need
| to be categorized by their likelihood of flooding.
|
| As it stands, as a person, you have no way of knowing if you
| have a cat X capable roof, nor do you know if you're in an area
| that is likely to flood, or how likely that area is to flood.
| Until you have a concrete rating system for those things,
| you'll have more people thinking that "We can just hunker down"
| when a cat X is barreling down on them than you want.
|
| That sounds like a big bite to take, but, realistically, you
| can more or less tag existing houses based on when they were
| built (ie under which revision of the building code were they
| built) and then use USGS data to determine flood risk. Then,
| you categorize all of the above by storm, ie, live in a cat 3
| area with a cat 4 house? Evacuate if you have a cat 3 storm
| because it's going to flood. That will also inform localities
| as to which areas are going to need to be evacuated first,
| along with which areas are going to need more emergency
| assistance post-storm so resources can be allocated more
| efficiently.
|
| We're already kinda sorta accounting for this at the local
| level, but, codifying the practice allows it to scale and
| improve over time.
| santoshalper wrote:
| All models are wrong, but some are useful. Hurricane ratings
| have proven to be very useful.
| wpollock wrote:
| The problem with this is that wind speed alone is not a good
| indicator of how destructive a storm can be. Storm surge, mud
| slides, etc., contribute and can be deadly even in a category 1
| or 2 storm. If the scale is to be updated, it would be beneficial
| to include other factors in addition to wind speed.
| bombcar wrote:
| Wind speed is measurable before landfall, many other
| destructive indicators are only so after the destruction is
| done.
| interestica wrote:
| The enhanced fujita scale for tornadoes takes into account an
| assessment of damage after the fact to make a guess of the
| wind speeds that were produced. An after-the-fact assessment
| of hurricanes could be useful in creating a categorization
| that better communicates risk to persons than just windspeed.
| TylerE wrote:
| Maybe, but the Fujita scale can greatly _under_ report
| strength, because the higher grades need to be justified by
| damage to modern, well built structures. There are tons of
| tornadoes that meteorologists are sure are at least EF-4
| based on Doppler and video, but are rated at EF-1 or EF-2
| because they didn't hit anything but cornfields and sheds.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Isn't that the system working as-designed? We don't
| really need to blast the alarm for a few stalks getting
| bent out of shape.
| TylerE wrote:
| It can lead to a false sense of security... maybe if it
| turns east instead of north east it barrels into downtown
| Omaha.
|
| In the most extreme case a small tornado in a larger
| storm that hits no man-built structures may go totally
| unrecorded.
|
| Essentially if you assess tornado risk as something like
| (frequency * severity) / area, this will under assess
| risk to a previously developed area that is now being
| developed. Before there was nothing to hit. Now there is.
| interestica wrote:
| I think that's also the challenge of using the same
| categories/windspeeds of the Saffir-Simpson scale when
| applying it to a place like Jamaica vs Houston. Both
| places may face a cat4 hurricane and see _very_ different
| levels of damage entirely due to the difference in
| infrastructure.
| bombcar wrote:
| Its a matter of informing people how to use the scales -
| we have temperature and wind chill but people still need
| to know that -40deg will hit the Midwest much differently
| than -40deg would hit Texas.
| jrockway wrote:
| Classic example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_El_Reno_tornado
|
| This had wind speed measured by radar, but ultimately
| didn't hit any substantial structures, so they couldn't
| justify anything above EF3. Tornadoes are only rated
| based on the damage they do to damage indicators, the
| wind speeds are just best guesses.
| contravariant wrote:
| A well placed tree can make any storm deadly, it's perfectly
| fine to separate the size of the storm from the potential
| impact. You need to draw a line somewhere. Drawing it at the
| part you can measure/predict is pragmatic and sensible.
| hedora wrote:
| I disagree. Wind causes a different type of damage than mud
| slides, storm surges, etc.
|
| For instance, if you live at high altitudes, you can ignore
| storm surge when preparing your house.
| stubish wrote:
| I had previously heard that category 5 storms were originally
| thought to be impossible, and only became possible due to global
| warming adding more energy into the atmosphere. The article
| however states that category 6 was technically possible as far
| back as 1979. Have these category 5, 6 and maybe higher always
| been possible, but just more improbable?
| TylerE wrote:
| There were 19th century storms that were clearly 5s, at least.
| Whoever told you that didn't know that the hell they were
| talking about, to put it mildly.
| interestica wrote:
| > The question of whether a category 6 would be an effective
| communication tool requires a larger discussion, with input from
| social scientists, psychologists, emergency managers, and city
| planners, Kossin said.
|
| Or, communications professionals! I would love to see more
| emphasis on science communications.
|
| The article touches on the fact that the Saffir-Simpson scale
| kinda over-relies on arbitrary windspeeds as its categorization
| factor. It doesn't take into account the potential damage from
| storm surges and flooding. (Also, as the comedian Ron White has
| remarked, it's not _that_ the wind blows, but _what_ the wind
| blows.[1]) Does a human have any way of conceptualizing the
| difference of 178-208 km /h (cat4) versus 252+ km/h (cat5)
| hurricane? Instead, there's an over reliance on the number --
| perpetuated by how news media portray the storms.
|
| In October 2023 residents of Acapulco, Mexico were told that a
| Category 1 hurricane was approaching. It rapidly intensified to a
| cat 5 within a day and residents were totally unprepared.[2] Did
| residents even know "rapid intensification" was even possible?
|
| Is the potential for rapid intensification due to warming waters
| the thing we should be communicating rather than "category
| numbers"?
|
| In 2007 they updated the 'Fujita Scale' for Tornadoes (Now the
| 'Enhanced Fujita Scale') to better incorporate assessed
| damage.[3] Do we need some sort of update to the Saffir-Simpson
| scale that better takes into account potential/assessed damage?
| (Especially as it relates to the flooding/storm surge aspects).
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQD7Fzid1xI
|
| [2] https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/information/data-in-
| action?title=...
|
| [3] https://www.weather.gov/oun/efscale
|
| edit: In terms of _what_ the wind blows: an equivalent category
| storm that hits Jamaica versus one that hits Houston will likely
| produce very different levels of damage purely due to the
| difference in infrastructure types. Yet, both regions are warned
| with the same "category number."
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This is also similar to the difference between Moment Magnitude
| vs Modified Mercalli or Shindo.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...
| greesil wrote:
| You want wind Sieverts, not wind rads
| ggreer wrote:
| I am skeptical of this paper. If you go to Wikipedia's list of
| most intense tropical cyclones[1] and sort by barometric
| pressure, there doesn't seem to be much correlation with time.
| The biggest and most intense tropical cyclone is still Typhoon
| Tip in 1979.[2] If you read the actual study[3], it looks like
| they do a lot of data manipulation and simulation to come to
| their conclusion. They subtract 15 meters/sec from wind speeds
| measured before 1973, claiming a bias in measurements from that
| time. This causes a huge step up in lifetime maximum intensity in
| the 1970s. Their estimates of future category 6 probabilities are
| from simulations that they admit don't simulate current
| conditions correctly.
|
| I think it's more likely than not that tropical cyclones are
| getting more intense, and that they're hitting places that didn't
| typically get hit in the past, but I don't find this paper
| convincing. It really feels like they cajoled the data to fit
| their conclusion.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_intense_tropi...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Tip
|
| 3. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2308901121
| BeefWellington wrote:
| In fairness though, they didn't just make up their bias
| assertion; it's in other published works[1] and there is real
| evidence that old measurements were incorrect (biased towards
| the high side) when compared to other available contemporary
| measurements.
|
| [1]: Landsea, C. W. Mon. Weath. Rev. 121, 1703-1714 (1993) -
| https://journals.ametsoc.org/configurable/content/journals$0...
| laverya wrote:
| Their corrections may be correct, but it's still always nicer
| when the magnitude of the signal is larger than that of the
| corrections to the data.
| Nevermark wrote:
| What is nice is vetting and correcting data for reliability
| and consistency.
|
| Part of aiming for objectivity, and better understanding,
| isn't worrying about which direction a correction takes. At
| all. Only that it is a good correction.
|
| Our brains constantly make up distracting narratives, if we
| let them.
|
| If the correction had been the other way, some people would
| say scientists have been downplaying data and probably
| still are.
| foofie wrote:
| > Part of aiming for objectivity, and better
| understanding, isn't worrying about which direction a
| correction takes. At all. Only that it is a good
| correction.
|
| I don't think you fully grasp the implications of
| arbitrarily correcting old measures. In the end, and
| accepting at face value these corrections, you're still
| manipulating old data to use the result of said
| manipulation as the whole basis of your hypothesis.
|
| This approach automatically leads to questions on whether
| you draw your conclusions from the data, or you change
| the data to fit your conclusions.
|
| Do you understand the risk that this poses in any
| discussion on a politically sensitive topic?
|
| Think of the hit to the credibility of any claim
| supported by this data manipulation if later your method
| is deemed untrustworthy because it needs further updates,
| and how it would look if you had to correct it to move
| the dial either way (i.e., "they were lying from the
| start and are now covering their ass" vs "they felt their
| lie wasn't fooling anyone and decided to double down.")
| eecc wrote:
| The point was that the corrections aren't arbitrary.
| foofie wrote:
| > The point was that the corrections aren't arbitrary.
|
| But they are, aren't they? It matters nothing if you
| apply a precise rule to change values. What matters is
| that you picked a rule.
| lolc wrote:
| > arbitrarily correcting old measures.
|
| Why do you say the correction is arbitrary? Are there
| papers arguing for corrections in the other direction?
| foofie wrote:
| > Why do you say the correction is arbitrary?
|
| Because it follows a method picked and chosen by the
| corrector.
|
| > Are there papers arguing for corrections in the other
| direction?
|
| It doesn't really matter if these corrections sway one
| way or the other. What matters is that someone decided
| that the original values weren't good, and proceeded to
| pick a way to come up with other values by changing the
| original ones.
| lolc wrote:
| I still don't understand your choice of words. It feels
| like you jumped into epistemology at the deep end and
| don't know how to swim in it. One article that pops up
| frequently around here is "Reality has a surprising
| amount of detail"
|
| http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-
| surprising-...
|
| I think you could profit from reading it. And I found
| "The Golem" a pretty good read too, if you want to go
| down that path:
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/ch/universitypress/subjects/gen
| era...
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Tough shit. Nature doesn't care about political
| inconvenience. You must work with your most accurate
| representation of the data.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| I wonder how these comments measure on the Henderson
| Scale of plot-derailment.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > It really _feels_ like they cajoled the data to fit
| their conclusion.
|
| (Emphasis mine.)
|
| That Guy!
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| To add to the "not arbitrary corection" comments.
|
| Correction is also not lying. Anyone who states that is
| not grasping something about a totally political
| topic/method.
| brookst wrote:
| It's just reductionism: if changing data is bad, changing
| data is always bad.
|
| Same nonsense gets you how terrible surgeons are (if
| cutting people with knives is bad, cutting people with
| knives is always bad).
|
| It's a good rhetorical technique because if you remove
| enough context you can pretty much always find something
| "exactly the same" to prove a point.
| foofie wrote:
| > It's just reductionism: if changing data is bad,
| changing data is always bad.
|
| It's not reductionism, and you're missing the point.
|
| The whole point is that changing the original data to be
| able to support/reject hypothesis naturally raises the
| question of whether there is foul play.
|
| If original measurements don't support your claim and
| suddenly by changing data you get it to fit your belief,
| any rational analysis would quickly flag the risk of data
| manipulation and scientific malpractice.
|
| If instead you're dealing with a politically charged
| topic that attracts denialists and contrarians then
| you're making yourself vulnerable to accusations of fraud
| that will certainly be used to poison the well.
|
| Do you understand why this is a problem?
| lamontcg wrote:
| > The whole point is that changing the original data to
| be able to support/reject hypothesis naturally raises the
| question of whether there is foul play.
|
| People are applying a stronger point here where changing
| the original data is hard evidence of foul play and
| sufficient to completely discount any changes.
|
| We'd be grappling with the reality of faster than light
| neutrinos now, though, if that was correct logic.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| Yup it's a good way to make it fit the narrative and get more
| funding.
| deprecative wrote:
| While I like a good conspiracy, it seems to me as though
| this was a perfectly appropriate outcome of technological
| advancement. Surely old storms would be biased high given a
| variety of reasons.
| sudenmorsian wrote:
| It's been acknowledged in the meteorological community
| that reconnaissance wind speed estimates for storms in
| the 1950s and 1960s have a high bias in the most intense
| storms, as the field was still in its infancy during that
| time period. Further advancement in later decades has
| improved the confidence in the estimates.
|
| No conspiracy needed. After all, the first time a
| hurricane was intentionally flown into by a storm was
| only in 1943:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Surprise_Hurricane.
| The 1950s and 1960s are not that far removed from that
| initial attempt.
| soperj wrote:
| They do the same thing with temperature readings.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| Don't say that. You will get called a climate denier.
| dgellow wrote:
| Precision of temperature readings improved over time
| photochemsyn wrote:
| From the paper:
|
| > "...of the 197 TCs [tropical cyclones] that were classified
| as category 5 during the 42-y period 1980 to 2021, which
| comprises the period of highest quality and most consistent
| data, half of them occurred in the last 17 y of the period
| (12). Five of those storms exceeded our hypothetical category 6
| and all of these occurred in the last 9 y of the record. The
| most intense of these hypothetical category 6 storms, Patricia,
| occurred in the Eastern Pacific making landfall in Jalisco,
| Mexico, as a category 4 storm. The remaining category 6 storms
| all occurred in the Western Pacific... Fig. 1A shows these 5
| storms on the existing Hurricane Wind Scale and our proposed
| extension."
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2308901121
|
| Theoretically, increased wind speeds are linked to increased
| sea surface temperatures, a warmer deeper ocean mixed layer,
| and more moistore in the atmosphere. However, increased
| vertical wind shear tends to break up the hurricane's chimney
| structure, and that might also increase with warming. Hence, a
| complicated prediction - but if conditions are right, it seems
| reasonable to conclude that unusually strong hurricanes will
| become more likely, even if overall frequency is unchanged.
| autokad wrote:
| > Hence, a complicated prediction - but if conditions are
| right, it seems reasonable to conclude that unusually strong
| hurricanes will become more likely, even if overall frequency
| is unchanged.
|
| Not really, its not caused by warm water, its caused by
| DIFFERENCES in the temperature from the water and air, which
| is why we have actually seen fewer hurricanes over the last
| 20 years (ignoring post 2020 because this decade doesnt have
| a lot of data in) source:
| https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
|
| Its hard to decide when picking a particular category, so
| what I did was charted category 1s + 2* category 2 + 3 *
| category 3 ...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Warmer water will put more water vapor into the air, which
| will provide more energy, even if the difference in
| temperature between water and (upper atmosphere) stays the
| same.
| esalman wrote:
| > I think it's more likely than not that tropical cyclones are
| getting more intense, and that they're hitting places that
| didn't typically get hit in the past
|
| I think so too. One measure is the amount of insured losses
| from hurricanes. There's been an uptick in number of hurricanes
| and other weather events causing more then a billion dollars in
| insured losses- that's simply correlated with the increase in
| the value of insured assets.
|
| Even if we assume that storms are not getting more intense, or
| climate is not changing, we cannot deny that we have more
| valuable assets to protect now. Which requires climate actions.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| Was this adjusted for inflation?
| vdaea wrote:
| "Even if this study is a lie, and storms are not getting more
| intense, we will still need to take your right to drive a
| car"
| deprecative wrote:
| There's no need to strawman. Even if storms weren't getting
| stronger we'd still have to contend with rising sea levels
| and the loss of arable land just for starters. While it
| would be ideal to live in a state of progress such that
| most folks didn't own nor operate a vehicle there is no
| credible threat at this point toward not being able to own
| and operate a vehicle.
| vdaea wrote:
| >While it would be ideal to live in a state of progress
| such that most folks didn't own nor operate a vehicle
|
| No it wouldn't. It is ideal to live in a state of
| progress where most "folks" can afford to own and operate
| a vehicle that allows them to go wherever they want
| whenever they want and take people with them.
| macNchz wrote:
| The US has followed this as a guiding principle over the
| last hundred years and largely succeeded, however the
| end-state seems to be a built environment where car
| ownership is not simply a widely enjoyed privilege so
| much as a de facto requirement to go about the activities
| of daily living, which feels, at least to me, somehow
| less free.
| harimau777 wrote:
| If they can accomplish the same things with more
| efficient public transportation, then that seems like it
| would be progress.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Why is that "progress?" Why is "progress" a good thing in
| its own and who decides what "progress" even is?
| harimau777 wrote:
| I addressed that in my post. In this case I'm using
| progress to mean accomplishing the same thing with less
| resources. It's not a good thing on its own, it's a good
| thing because resources are limited and expending those
| resources tends to produce pollution.
| vdaea wrote:
| Only that you are not accomplishing the same thing. You
| are accomplishing something inferior. And please don't
| make me explain to you how you don't get, by far, the
| same level of service, the same amount of destinations,
| 24/7 availability, etc with public transportation than
| with your car.
| harimau777 wrote:
| When I lived in NYC, the experience of using public
| transportation was far superior to the experience of
| driving. I didn't have to purchase and maintain a car, I
| could read or use my phone during the trip, when I went
| out with friends I didn't have to worry about a
| designated driver, I could travel late at night when I
| would be too tired to drive safely, in the winter I
| didn't have to spend half the trip in a cold car, my risk
| of injury during my commute was much lower, etc.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 1. Most people do not live in New York. I live in Seattle
| and driving is not a problem except for an hour at the
| end of the day.
|
| 2. Public transportation comes with its own set of risks.
| It is up to the individual to determine what they wish.
| Neither option is "progress" it is a trade off.
| edgyquant wrote:
| You aren't accomplishing the same thing, you are
| providing less tailored experience and calling it
| progress because you believe your opinions are progress
| and any others are regressive. Thanks for proving that
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| How is no independent mobility progress?
| harimau777 wrote:
| People don't have independent mobility now. The majority
| of cars are not designed for off road and therefore can
| only go where there are streets. If public transportation
| provides the same access, then there is no loss of
| mobility.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Well yes, but in 99.9% of cases, there are roads to where
| you want to go. Public transport is not independent. Live
| in a rural area? Fsck you, no bus/train for you. Have a
| large dog? Nope, no transport for your dog. Want to
| travel at 3 in the morning? Nope. Need to carry stuff
| with you, more than you can carry? Nope. Want to go to a
| protest? Nope, no buses/trains driving there today.
| gonational wrote:
| I live _ON_ the beach, and the beach hasn 't changed one
| iota in the past 40 years, other than a loss of the scarp
| during / after large hurricanes. The TV "science" is
| becoming so ridiculous that it's hard to fathom that
| there are people who actually believe it.
|
| Am I to believe that there is one large, interconnected
| ocean, and that fluid naturally levels itself out, but
| that _also_ , somehow, certain places experience sea
| level rise while others don't? Is it some huge
| coincidence that the places experiencing extreme sea
| level rise (e.g., Solomon Islands) are ephemeral and
| ever-changing volcanic islands and other volcanically
| active regions that sit upon a soft foundation of molten
| mantle?
|
| Use your brain, my friend.
| zaccusl wrote:
| There is absolutely no possible way that you (or any
| other person) would notice a 4 inch GLOBAL AVERAGE rise
| in sea level over the last few decades. I don't care if
| you literally spent 24 hours per day, 7 days per week,
| 365 days per year on your belly at the high tide mark.
|
| The data is the data and you need a lot more than "living
| on the beach" to refute it.
|
| And yes, the sea level is different in different parts of
| the Earth. Why? Because forces are different in different
| parts of the Earth. Current (which impart forces) alone
| is enough to make a difference in sea level in two
| different parts of the Earth.
|
| And yes, land changing elevation is colloquially part of
| sea level rise.
|
| The problem with using your brain is it doesn't make you
| an expert in things, or able to refute expertise without
| actual knowledge. And simple observations do not amount
| to much knowledge on anything but the most simple
| subject.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Sea levels are rising primarily because the sea is
| warming, and water, like most substances, expands as it
| heats up.
|
| Global warming does not affect every place on Earth
| evenly, that's partly why the phrase "climate change" is
| preferred. It's possible that you live in an area that
| due to the local or regional geography, the sea level has
| not changed much.
| esalman wrote:
| Bruh.
| somat wrote:
| With tornadoes the traditional F(Fujita) classification is
| based on how much damage the wind does. There is a
| correlation to windspeed. but the final verdict is based on
| damage done.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujita_scale
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_scale
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| Why have categories at all. Just use stats.
| gonational wrote:
| Stats, like wind in miles-per-hour? That seems arbitrary. Why
| not just use wind speed in plank-lengths per zeptosecond,
| then?
|
| It's almost as if expressive abstractions are helpful for
| human understanding of large sets of numerical statistics,
| no?
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| nobody knows the difference between four and five and three
| and two. Its always on the news as a "warzone". so a real
| energy number would be nice.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| > they're hitting places that didn't typically get hit in the
| past
|
| The human population is four times larger than it was in the
| 1970's, so there's more things to hit are they are often built
| in more marginal locations.
| zaccusl wrote:
| Can you clarify?
|
| Are you saying that locations of the hurricanes have not
| changed, it's merely that there are now people/structures
| there so it's now noticeable? Or that humans are altering
| storm paths based on structural changes to the environment?
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Just making the observation that there are more humans and
| a larger built environment. When there is a natural
| disaster, there's likely to be more human impacts now than
| 50 years ago, regardless of the location or cause.
| ryathal wrote:
| Mostly the former. with more developed coastline and more
| people living there, more damage is going to happen. Could
| storms be altered by human activity? Sure, but it's very
| difficult to reconcile how much is human action vs a
| hurricane making landfall in an area that wasn't urban 50
| years ago.
| dskrvk wrote:
| This is exactly the premise of Bruce Sterling's novel "Heavy
| Weather".
| irrelative wrote:
| Classic spinal tap. "These go to eleven."
| jcalx wrote:
| For futureproofing, we should extend the scale to cover
| hypercanes [1], which (according to Wikipedia):
|
| - require ocean temperatures of 120 degF (50 degC)
|
| - have sustained winds of 500 mph (800 km/h)
|
| - have barometric pressures in their centers sufficiently low
| enough to cause altitude sickness
|
| - may persist for several weeks due to above low pressure
|
| - may be as large as North America or as small as 15 mi (25 km)
| -- Wikipedia has an unhelpful caption about the size of the
| "average hypercane" (!)
|
| - extend into the upper stratosphere, unlike today's hurricanes
| (lower stratosphere)
|
| - due to above height, may sufficiently degrade the ozone layer
| with water vapor to the point of causing (an additional) hazard
| to planetary life
|
| As of today, both a hypercane and a regular, run-of-the-mill
| catastrophic hurricane would be rated a Category 5. But I suppose
| hurricane categorization and nomenclature would be the least of
| NOAA's problems in such an event.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercane
| Nevermark wrote:
| > But I suppose hurricane categorization and nomenclature would
| be the least of NOAA's problems in such an event.
|
| This is implausible to me. Just to be safe, we should get the
| naming done up front.
| zgs wrote:
| I'm skeptical about one of the opening sentences in the article:
| "category 5 underestimates actual risk".
|
| Category 5 cyclones/hurricanes are already assumed to essentially
| destroy everything in their path. This will still be true
| regardless of how strong the winds get.
|
| Having experienced several lower category cyclones, there really
| isn't a lot to do except 1/ evacuate if you've got time and a
| place to go or 2/ bunker down and pray. It's just luck that I've
| not experienced a direct hit from a higher category storm.
| sidlls wrote:
| I've been in cat 1 and cat 2 storms. They're awesome in their
| power for destruction. I've evacuated from a category 4 storm,
| which did a huge amount of damage in the city when it hit.
|
| A category 5 storm is essentially going to destroy everything in
| its path already. What good would adding a 6th category do?
| nscalf wrote:
| I lived in Florida for a long time, I can tell you that people
| don't evacuate when it's a cat 4 threatening to maybe become a
| cat 5. Having a category meaning "this is much worse than a 4"
| would be meaningful here. I see no reason to have an upper
| limit, it just artificially makes everything at and above the
| cat 5 threshold mean the same thing.
|
| Also, Florida homes are built from cement, meant to survive
| storms like that. The building codes come from hurricane
| andrew, a particularly damaging cat 5.
| Beldin wrote:
| > _Having a category meaning "this is much worse than a 4"
| would be meaningful here._
|
| But don't you think that cat 5 would become the new 4? That
| is: why do you think extending the scale will expand the
| range of warnings communicated, instead of smearing the
| existing range out over more values?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don 't you think that cat 5 would become the new 4?_
|
| The few who might be saved are worth it. We can't keep
| optimising for saving idiots.
| matwood wrote:
| Florida gonna Florida. I grew up and still live in a
| hurricane area. Went through a cat 5 as a kid - not going to
| do that again. But, cat 2/3 or less I'm not going anywhere.
| Last time we took a direct cat 2, we didn't even lose power.
| Like you said, FL and really most of the southeast coast
| learned from Andrew. Simple changes like roof ties and more
| expensive ones like cement plank siding make a pretty
| significant difference [1].
|
| TBH, my main concern in a storm is water. My house is ~12'
| off the ground and given its location, if there's water in
| the house we're basically in an end of days, biblical level
| storm.
|
| [1] https://www.usglassmag.com/30-years-later-hurricane-
| andrew-r...
| deadbabe wrote:
| Not just cement, all new construction now requires impact
| windows and doors that can withstand a Cat 5 by default.
| kaliqt wrote:
| For Floridians, Cat 5 is scary but not that scary, Florida's
| one crazy state with sturdy buildings and only very select
| areas get leveled in major storms. There definitely needs to be
| a better way of rating hurricanes, for strength AND area of
| damage.
|
| Hurricanes are extremely area focused, and they lose power
| FAST. It can miss you at the last second and not even knock a
| shingle off your roof, while leveling a trailer park 50 miles
| south of you.
| vitus wrote:
| Literally the only hurricane that made landfall in Florida as
| a Category 5 after Andrew was Michael in 2018, so most
| Floridians haven't experienced a Category 5 hurricane in
| decades (if ever). (Irma and Ian were downgraded before
| making landfall in the US.)
|
| Michael did confirm that the new building codes were
| effective -- structures built prior to 2002 suffered much
| worse damage. From an early reconnaissance report [0]:
| "However, roof cover and wall cladding damage was still
| commonly observed even in newer structures. Failures were
| frequently observed in both engineered and non-engineered
| buildings."
|
| Michael also highlighted that no matter how much you
| strengthen the building code, that means nothing for old
| buildings that haven't been updated, or for infrastructure
| (downed power lines and transmission towers, washed out roads
| and bridges, etc).
|
| Would a Category 5 hurricane be more damaging if it struck
| Manhattan rather than Miami? Absolutely. IMO that's a
| consequence of climate change we should be worrying more
| about than peak storm strength -- more places (that don't
| necessarily have the same historical awareness) are going to
| be affected by stronger storms (and more frequently! 2020 saw
| two back-to-back Cat 4s make landfall in Nicaragua 15 miles
| and 2 weeks apart).
|
| To say that Cat 5 isn't that scary in Florida is
| underestimating how incredibly rare these are, and
| overestimating the building code's coverage / efficacy.
|
| [0] https://www.weather.gov/media/tae/events/20181010_Michael
| /St...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I recall the book 'Bannerless' by Carrie Vaughn, depicting
| a post-apocalyptic world that fell, not with a bang but
| with a whimper.
|
| Erosion of public services, erosion of cities, millions
| then billions of refugees, starvation and disease, collapse
| of order.
|
| This is the scenario we should be anticipating.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| How much hardening is required to not be destroyed.
| anArbitraryOne wrote:
| Next thing you know they'll be trying to make category 7
| hurricanes official
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Another Emergency to take care of. This is the reason why
| TV/movies lost mojo since a decade ago, its a better
| entertainment to wait for the next emergency (and read about it
| in the media) than waiting for the next blockbuster.
| obblekk wrote:
| This might be true but paradoxically, there hasn't been an
| observed frequency or intensity of Florida hurricanes in last 100
| years [1].
|
| Florida is worth looking at because they were industrialized and
| have had relatively robust meteorological record for the entire
| period.
|
| I do wonder why as it seems like common sense that heating air
| and water temps (which have happened) would cause more
| evaporation and potential for water and wind storms.
|
| [1] https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
| nraynaud wrote:
| As a wertern European, the first time I converted wind speeds
| from a US hurricane, I thought I fumbled the maths, it was like
| 100kph/60mph higher than our winter storms. I since learned that
| the storm scale and the hurricane scale are different, and we
| simply don't have hurricanes here, we never see real crazy wind
| speeds and we don't use the hurricane scale at all.
| albrewer wrote:
| The aftermath of a hurricane is like nothing you've ever
| experienced - there's something deeply unsettling about all the
| trees in a forest being bent uniformly in one direction, or
| entire neighborhoods completely erased. 285 km/h sustained
| winds comes out to roughly 3.8 kpa pressure on all surfaces. So
| for every 1m^2 of surface area perpendicular to the wind
| direction, you're getting ~350kgf applied.
| djmips wrote:
| In the Pacific Northwest, we get extra bad wind storms around
| every 30 years. The storm in 1993 was 60-75 mph and going back
| to 1921 a storm was 115 mph with gusts to 150 mph. What's it
| like in Western Europe?
| nraynaud wrote:
| I'd say Lothar was a very big recent one,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Lothar (albeit the
| name, cyclones don't develop if the ocean water is less than
| 26degC, and let me tell you that there was a solid 15-20degC
| margin in the zone).
|
| Germany had some solid gust speeds, but when you look at
| France, it's not biting that much in the 100mph.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Hurricanes require big patches of warm ocean to feed on--they
| can leave such areas but they will weaken with time if they
| don't have warm ocean to feed on. Furthermore, northern-
| hemisphere hurricanes will in general move northeast, your
| water is to the west.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| You get the rare EF3 or EF4 tornado in western Europe that have
| hurricane wind speeds.
| partitioned wrote:
| I like how this is basically scientists arguing about tier lists.
| The stats tell the story but people just love to rank things.
| miller_joe wrote:
| I just happen to be reading Peter F. Hamilton's Confederation
| universe (1996-2000) trilogy and in it earth has been dealing
| with the "Armada storms" for a couple hundred years due to
| climate change. From the descriptions there are multiple of these
| storms occurring at any given time. Humans now live in
| "arcologies" which are giant multi-kilometer domes over
| population centers. There was no way to reverse the damage done.
| We can't fly anymore so everything is in a very fast underground
| train system called "vac-trains". I suppose this may be where we
| are headed (although I'd rather love to see the vac-train system)
| lawlessone wrote:
| That one's the Edenist Universe or the MorningLightMountain
| universe?
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