Will Hurricane Milton be a dud or will it be paradise lost?

[elbows]

It intensified shockingly rapidly.

Its pretty comical to compare the lowest recorded pressures (in modern times where we can measure those things) from weather systems in that part of the world with the sort of minimum pressures we experience in the UK.

UK record lows are discussed on apges like the following one: List of atmospheric pressure records in Europe - Wikipedia

eg:

• Lowest air pressure: 26 January 1884, Ochtertyre Scotland 925.6 hPa.

Contrast that and others mentioned on that page with US records:

 

[frogwoman]

Maybe because the area was just hit by a hurricane and is still recovering from the 2022 one? Not sure why you want to play this down tbh. It's obviously better that it's a Category 3 and not a Category 5, but it's not exactly nothing is it

 

[elbows]

I think one of the reasons it’s making big news is because it seems to augur the future in terms of how climate change could impact on storms and the results of those storms.

A large percentage of extreme weather reporting these days does indeed have a climate change angle in the narrative. Its a bit of a tricky area because they have to caveat such narratives with the fact that we cannot directly attribute any particular single weather event with the human impact on the climate. So instead they often end up talking about the increased frequency of extreme weather events.

 

[Humberto]

The wealth of the population more than the actual size and the fact that Florida is a swing state and we are less than a month away from a contentious US Presidential election: the risk of hanging Chad's blowing in the wind.

Ignoramous mode:
I think it first hit Mexico, Yucatan probably and must have battered Cuba and Jamaica on its way to Florida, but I really don't know.

 

[frogwoman]

2 category 4-5 hurricanes occurring in the space of about a week is very worrying, also because of the hot water being churned around in the Gulf of Mexico that made it all easier to form...

 

[tim]

welll that and disney land

It's Woke Disneyland these days. God is probably punishing De Santis for not doing enough to halt the Satanic Mouse and their Liberal agenda.

Disney: a billion-dollar casualty of woke

The entertainment giant is paying a heavy price for trying to shove identity politics down our throats.

www.google.com

 

[pbsmooth]

Definitely brolly weather, I’ll give you that.

 

[elbows]

Ignoramous mode:
I think it first hit Mexico, Yucatan probably and must have battered Cuba and Jamaica on its way to Florida, but I really don't know.

In this case I dont think other places were devastated, direct hits were avoided. However the storm was still powerful enough to cause flooding and power outages on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Its certainly true that our news coverages tone and quantity is biased towards some places and people and against others, and we see examples of that all the time.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

They have located the nearest pub, discovered it open and doing breakfasts.....whether the bacon is streaky remains unknown

Well...

Waffle House Index - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[cesare]

I've just heard from.one of my cousins. She and her family are ok but "riding out the storm" which expected to hit north of them. They are in the south. East of the everglades. Until I heard from her, together with my rubbish conception of where they are geographically, I thought Milton was headed for the south west but no, much further north.

 

[elbows]

Well...

Waffle House Index - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Yeah that waffle house stuff as an indicator of how seriously a looming weather event is being taken is certainly one of the things I learnt about by watching US storm chasing channels this year.

 

[Humberto]

In this case I dont think other places were devastated, direct hits were avoided. However the storm was still powerful enough to cause flooding and power outages on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Its certainly true that our news coverages tone and quantity is biased towards some places and people and against others, and we see examples of that all the time.

There's quite an expanse of near empty Gulf of Mexico a fair bit northwards of the places I mentioned now I look at the map.

 

[tim]

Definitely brolly weather, I’ll give you that.

A proper brolly from that shop in New Oxford Street not one of those flimsy things that get blown inside out.

 

[Sue]

I was on a call with someone in Florida earlier. She's just north of where it was tracking this morning. She's Spanish and hasn't been there very long and isn't quite sure what to expect. Hope she's okay.

 

[Nylock]

If the aftermath of helene is anything to go by, the trump team will bring their toxic presence to bear on the aftermath of milton with the same insufferable amounts of bullshit and misinformation that has interfered with the rescue efforts in NC. I wonder if DeSantis will grow a spine and tell trump to wind his neck in or if he'll play along with odious grifter and his pack of oxygen-stealing troglodytes....

That's the spirit


View attachment 446191


View attachment 446190

'I'm not panicked': British family heads to Florida for Disneyworld holiday - despite Hurricane Milton warnings

A British holidaymaker flew his family out to Florida this week for a Disneyworld trip - despite widespread warnings about Hurricane Milton.

www.lbc.co.uk

What a weapons-grade moron. That ginger kid in the bottom left corner does not appear to share the same misplaced confidence as the rest of that idiotic group.

 

[Humberto]

A proper brolly from that shop in New Oxford Street not one of those flimsy things that get blown inside out.View attachment 446212

You'd be airborne.

 

[Ax^]

Ron has no spine..

 

[Nylock]

He's supine....

 

[cesare]

Ron has no spine..

He was refusing calls from Harris, ffs

 

[elbows]

2 category 4-5 hurricanes occurring in the space of about a week is very worrying, also because of the hot water being churned around in the Gulf of Mexico that made it all easier to form...

Its been a bit of a weird season to observe in the broadest sense. A bit of a rollercoaster, because most of the season forecasters predicted a very active hurricane season well ahead of the season actually arriving, raising expectations that this season was going to be a dramatic one. And whats happened so far sometimes defied more typical timing patterns, with some stuff happening unusually early but then a lull during a period where lulls are unusual.

I havent actually been paying attention to all of this properly. I just watched a video or two about the original season forecasts, and then it felt like there was a lengthy period where there wasnt all that much for me to pay attention to. This has only changed quite recently. And I probably should have read as much into the unexpected lull period as I do this uptick in activity.

Various details about those predictions and what has actually happened this season so far here:

2024 Atlantic hurricane season - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[taperoo2k]

That is one factor in the amount of coverage a particular event gets. Its far from the only one though. Others include the size of the population, whether the weather system came close to breaking any records earlier in its evolution (in this case the minimum pressure was fairly impressive) and also how long it has been in recorded modern history since a similar weather event was expected to hit that particular location. Also how much other news is vying for the top headlines on any particular day. And of course the response is also newsworthy in itself, eg if the scale of the evacuation is considered newsworthy.

Hurricanes in relatively quick succession were always going to be a big ticket news items. If the Storm surge is as bad as
predicted then it's going to be devastating.

Oh and the news can also get primed by previous recent events. The impact of the recent hurricane probably made people and news services more sensitive to this latest hurricane.

The devastation from the previous hurricane is still ongoing, I've checked on places like North Carolina via youtube and it's still
terrible. It's a recovery operation now, bodies being marked by the national guard for retrieval. I saw some footage of a trailer park
that got swept away.

It's all too easy to sit in an armchair all smug about Americans being in a panic. We are vulnerable to storm surges in the UK, the last big
one hit in 1953.

Great North Sea flood of 1953 remembered 70 years on

David Mitchell, who was aged 10 at the time, recalls the flood which claimed more than 300 lives.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[elbows]

Hurricanes in relatively quick succession were always going to be a big ticket news items. If the Storm surge is as bad as predicted then it's going to be devastating.

With this sort of prediction I usually feel the need to point out that the estimated surge levels are a range rather than a single number. Combine this with the fact that the range prediction often gets tweaked closer to landfall, and that variations in exactly where the storm lands compared to the predicted path can also make a significant difference to the impact, and I have little sympathy with people who later claim that the warnings were over the top and that people overreacted. We would be doing something wrong with our predictions if the maximum possible storm surge levels predicted by those ranges came true every time.

 

[cesare]

It's because we're an island nation and susceptible to storms/surges that we have empathy for others similarly affected. We live on reclaimed marshland from.the Thames and the Thames barrier is just a few miles away from us. We can imagine what Floridians are going through but many times worse.

 

[tim]

You'd be airborne.

I'd get one of their models with the built in sword stick and land like a malignant Mary Poppins within the FBI security cordon at Mar a Largo.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

You'd be airborne.

The Banks family will have a new very unusual nanny.

 

[elbows]

In this case I dont think other places were devastated, direct hits were avoided. However the storm was still powerful enough to cause flooding and power outages on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Its certainly true that our news coverages tone and quantity is biased towards some places and people and against others, and we see examples of that all the time.

By the way, after I posted that the BBC dedicated some seconds of footage to flooding in Cuba, via their live updates page, and the following link should go to that post:

Hurricane Milton live updates: Milton spawns tornadoes and storm surge as it nears Florida

US President Joe Biden says despite the storm being downgraded to a category three, "it is still expected to be one of the most destructive to his Florida in a century".

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Timing!

 

[Humberto]

I'd get one of their models with the built in sword stick and land like a malignant Mary Poppins within the FBI security cordon at Mar a Largo.

View attachment 446213

It'd be a bit of a daddy-long-legs effort at best.

 

[tim]

Timing!

Winds in the east, there's a mist coming in, like something is brewin' and 'bout to begin.

 

[frogwoman]

So the water that has been churned up by the previous category 5 winds is being pushed to the coast? That makes a bit more sense thanks.