[HN Gopher] Hurricane season has flatlined. When will it roar ba...
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       Hurricane season has flatlined. When will it roar back to life?
        
       Author : howard941
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2024-08-21 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
        
       | brink wrote:
       | When they measure the heat content in the Gulf, do we know how
       | deep they're measuring? If the weather is still, won't the
       | surface water heat faster from the sun when it's not mixed with
       | the deeper gulf water resulting in new "highs"?
        
         | upon_drumhead wrote:
         | > Oceanic Heat Content (OHC) is the measure of the integrated
         | vertical temperature from the sea surface to the depth of the
         | 26degC isotherm and computed from the altimeter-derived
         | isotherm depths in the upper ocean relative to 20degC.
         | 
         | https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cwn/products/oceanic-heat-conten...
         | 
         | They calculate based upon the depth of a specific temperature
         | rather then temperature at a specific depth.
        
         | waterthrowaway wrote:
         | In this case it seems ocean heat content is a depth integrated
         | measure (see page 11 of this document I found by following
         | links in the above article https://upper-ocean-
         | dynamics.earth.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/atb...). Seems like that
         | OHC measure uses some reanalysis model but surface temperatures
         | can be measured by satellite, and temperatures below can be
         | measured from moorings in the Gulf
         | (https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/obs.shtml) and argo floats currently
         | in the region (https://argo.ucsd.edu/about/status/). I would
         | expect them to all show similar trends.
        
       | raggi wrote:
       | Oddly timed article with Ernesto being what it was and is
        
         | jjulius wrote:
         | This feels akin to, "Global warming probably isn't real because
         | today is colder than usual".
        
           | ydnaclementine wrote:
           | Too many hurricanes!!
           | 
           | Not enough hurricanes!!
           | 
           | "Acktshually we have less hurricanes but they are more
           | intense than before"
        
       | TheChaplain wrote:
       | Always amazed by those living in tornado areas, I've seen the
       | total destruction those things do on YouTube and people just seem
       | to pick up the pieces and rebuild their homes like it's another
       | day.
       | 
       | I'd be devastated if something came and obliterated my home..
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | I've lived in midwest "tornado" areas my whole life. I've never
         | seen a tornado. They can be very destructive, but are quite
         | localized. They don't affect nearly as many people as a major
         | hurricane, so cleanup and recovery is much easier.
        
           | matthewdgreen wrote:
           | Few years ago in Iowa we ran into a sudden weather system
           | with (the radio later said) a big tornado in it. Got off the
           | highway, only to be on a different highway with no shelter
           | except for highway overpasses and a flimsy gas station a
           | couple miles down. Technically we _also_ didn 't see the
           | tornado, but the weather around it was like nothing I've ever
           | experienced or want to experience again: continuous multi-
           | colored lightning, torrential rain, big hail. (And nothing
           | even close to an appropriate building to shelter in.)
           | 
           | Afterward my friend looked a little thoughtful and said "oh,
           | I guess I forgot how bad the weather out here gets." Reminded
           | me of the way people allegedly got used to the Blitz.
        
             | geerlingguy wrote:
             | Honestly hail and damaging winds cause more cumulative
             | damage; growing up we had a derecho and hail storm that
             | knocked out power for a week and broke at least one window
             | (and added tons of golf ball dents) on every car that was
             | parked outside within about a 3 mile area.
             | 
             | The wind pulled up tons of even healthy trees, bringing
             | down a bunch of power lines, and it was probably the last
             | time in my life I remember seeing more than two or three
             | neighbors outside in the front yard at the same time
             | (suburban midwest).
        
         | Mistletoe wrote:
         | You just have a storm shelter and home insurance. It's pretty
         | rare for a tornado to actually hit your house.
         | 
         | >Economically, tornadoes cause about a tenth as much damage per
         | year, on average, as hurricanes.
        
         | ein0p wrote:
         | Confirmation bias. It could just be a couple hundred yards that
         | tornado tore through and it won't ever touch that place again,
         | yet the media will only show you the absolute worst of it (and
         | sometimes also fake it when it deems the devastation
         | insufficient, hello Anderson Cooper), so you think it's like
         | that all over. It's not. Moreover the same is the case with
         | nearly all news coverage. Death and devastation sells ads.
        
         | eskibars wrote:
         | I grew up in Ohio and experienced regular tornadoes. Like most
         | natural disasters, people in the area get "trained" on how to
         | be safest in them (go to a storm shelter/basement, etc) and
         | grow accustomed to the relatively low risk to their own person.
         | 
         | I later moved to the SF bay area and was _terrified_ by
         | earthquakes and the potential building collapse, but my
         | colleagues from the area shrugged that off.
         | 
         | In the end, these are all kind of similar risks, and we all
         | just grow accustomed to the risk we're familiar with
        
         | kube-system wrote:
         | Tornados and hurricanes are entirely different beasts.
         | Tornados, although very violent, are tiny and short lived by
         | comparison.
        
       | readthenotes1 wrote:
       | Didn't we just read that an Atlantic La Nina is forming, cooling
       | the surface down?
       | 
       | https://preview.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/atla...
        
       | bloopernova wrote:
       | Very cool way of charting the energy used by cyclones, mentioned
       | in the article, Accumulated Cyclone Energy:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy
       | 
       | I don't suppose anyone knows where to find this graph but for
       | different years?
       | 
       | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...
       | 
       | Edited to add, this might be the source of the image above, but
       | no charts for previous years:
       | https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=...
        
         | alexk307 wrote:
         | Here's ACE since 1851: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ace-
         | north-atlantic-hurric...
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-21 23:01 UTC)