A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
Showing posts with label Hurricane Irene. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hurricane Irene. Show all posts
First, a map showing the record 14 weather-related disasters that resulted in more than a billion dollars in losses and damages during 2011.
One of the two disasters added was Tropical Storm Lee, which I blogged about atleastfourtimes. I expect the damage described in those entries was included in the estimate.
The second is a map of all the localities that had annual records for precipitation, drought, heat, and cold last year.
This GOES-13 satellite movie shows Hurricane Irene lashing the Mid-Atlantic and just making landfall in New York City. The animation runs from August 26, 2011, at 8:45 a.m. EDT to August 28 at 8:45 a.m. EDT. (no audio) Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project, Dennis Chesters
The snarky Taiwanese animators at Next Media Animation had some fun with The Weather Channel's coverage of Hurricane Irene.
The Weather Channel doesn't get many viewers when the weather is nice. Instead, the network banks on its major storm coverage. Hurricane Irene gave The Weather Channel its best full-day ratings ever.
New tropical systems are now threatening the US Gulf, including Hurricane Katia, much to The Weather Channel's delight.
Weather Channel reporters are known for turning up the drama, even when conditions are less than dangerous.
Did forecasters, policymakers and media types overhype Hurricane Irene? It's not just a meteorological question: The debate over whether the outlook for damage was overhyped, or hyped just right, touches upon issues of risk perception and even the climate change debate. Like most natural disasters, Irene's deadly sweep over the U.S. East Coast has left behind some important lessons for researchers as well as regular folks.
Among the questions being asked, the article lists the following:
What was right and wrong about storm prediction?
Did forecasters overhype the storm?
How much was lost in translation?
Do more big storms lie ahead?
I highly recommend you read the article for what Alan Boyle says are the answers so far. If you like video, there is both a clip from the Today Show and a YouTube clip showing Irene from space embedded in the article.
One answer that you won't read in the article is from Nate Silver at the N.Y. Times. Nate concluded in How Irene Lived Up to the Hype that that the answer to the second and third questions was that the storm was not overhyped and the journalists actually got it right. His conclusion was that the ranking of the coverage based on numbers of stories about Hurricane Irene divided by the number of total news stories written while the storm was in the air was commensurate with the rankings of fatalities and damage. If anything, because of the increased number of fatalities attributed to the storm since his column was posted, it was probably underhyped.
Meanwhile, Royal Oak and surrounding communities were especially hard hit by the storm; DTE Energy's website indicated at 12:20 a.m. that nearly 4,400 customers were without power in Royal Oak's zip code areas of 48067 and 48073. Ferndale had more than 6,000 homes without power, and Pleasant Ridge, Oak Park and Madison Heights had thousands left powerless as well.
Tom Wait of WXYZ reports from Pleasant Ridge about the power outages from the storm there.
Residents in John Monaghan’s neighborhood in Pleasant Ridge spent today working with city crews and one another, using chain saws and rakes to remove debris from the area.
The damage from Saturday’s storms -- which knocked out power to 120,000 customers -- included many downed trees and branches, said Monaghan, who lives on Cambridge Street.
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Nearly 59,000 DTE customers remained without power at 9:45 p.m. tonight after rain and winds of up to 70 m.p.h. swept through southeastern Michigan the day before. DTE Energy spokesman Scott Simons said the powerful storms downed more than 1,000 wires across the area as line crews were busy clearing debris, trees and branches. He said the utility expects to have power restored to up to 90% of the remaining customers by Monday evening.
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Simons said additional help was on the way, as 70 crews are expected to return tonight from helping restore power to those affected by Hurricane Irene. Another 70 crews from other utilities also should to arrive tonight to help with the power restoration.
Yes, Hurricane Irene is having an indirect effect here in metro Detroit, even more than a week after it hit.
Time for another tour through the lighter side of sustainability this week, with sustainability news that is funny, silly, fun, or simply positive. After a week like this, people who care about the environment could use some.
This week's featured articles come from Discovery News on YouTube, Our Amazing Planet via MSNBC, and the L.A. Times.
First, the weird news.
A hurricane, an earthquake -- it's been a wild week here on the East Coast. And it's happened twice before in history -- but never before in the same place.
Irene is predicted to be the latest in 2011's string of billion-dollar weather disasters. But for New York City, Irene is not shaping up to be the worst-case scenario it could be.
Forecasts show Irene hitting central Long Island, N.Y., sometime Sunday (Aug. 28), leaving New York City with the "clean side" of the hurricane and without the major storm surge. The city will mostly see "blustery rains and strong winds," said Eugene McCaul, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has forecast around 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain for New York City from Irene.
Interactive infographic showing location and windspeed of Irene at the link.
Hurricane Irene, a ferocious and slow-moving storm, smashed into North Carolina on Saturday morning, then slowly swirled its way up the Eastern Seaboard, flooding low-lying areas, knocking out power to as many as 1 million customers and forcing the densely populated regions of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City to take unprecedented steps as they braced for impact.
At least eight people are known to have died as a result of the storm in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida.
Irene is expected to continue its northward path through New England before weakening early Sunday morning. The youngest victim, an 11-year-old boy, was killed when a tree crashed through his apartment building in Newport News, Va.
These topics deserve a long thoughtful post. That isn't happening tonight. As I posted to my Facebook wall, "Screw that; I'm going to drink rum and play video games tonight." Instead, I'll leave you with these two songs by Florence and the Machine and hope that they can express in music what I don't have it in me tonight to say in words.
Hurricane Drunk
Dog Days are Over
Stay safe, all of you on the east coast. See you after the sun rises!
