Patricia, Strongest Hurricane Ever Seen In Eastern Pacific, Strikes In Mexico 144
CNN reports that Hurricane Patricia has made landfall in Mexico; Patricia is notable for having the third-lowest barometer reading ever recorded, and as "the strongest hurricane ever observed in the eastern Pacific or Atlantic oceans." Slate points out that at one point, "satellite estimates of Patricia’s intensity broke the Dvorak scale, peaking at 8.3 on the 8.0 scale. ... In fact, Patricia is now very close to the theoretical maximum strength for a tropical cyclone on planet Earth." The Weather Channel is tracking the storm's path, and predicts "catastrophic damage ... along a narrow path as the eye slices into the interior of southwest Mexico Friday night." Here's a map from the National Weather Service showing Patricia's track as well as projected path.
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The Mexican government will just borrow that money from wall st. with a smaller government agency then declare it bankrupt.
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The best jokes become integral to our culture.
Re: Keep her in Mexico! (Score:1)
And the biggest joke of all might become integral to the whole world if the Republicans elect him president.
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How did it fit on a scale it broke? (Score:1)
Does anyone understand the Dvorak scale well enough to comment on how this hurricane supposedly broke it and yet it can be accurately put on the scale as an 8.3?
Re:How did it fit on a scale it broke? (Score:4, Informative)
Dvorak is derived from sustained wind speed and pressure. The wind speeds are so high, and the pressures so low on this storm that they exceed the theoretical maximum (8.0) listed for Dvorak.
I assume they calculated it at 8.3 by extrapolating from the existing scale.
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Dvorak is derived from sustained wind speed and pressure. The wind speeds are so high, and the pressures so low on this storm that they exceed the theoretical maximum (8.0) listed for Dvorak.
I assume they calculated it at 8.3 by extrapolating from the existing scale.
No - This hurricane goes the whole way to 11.
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What's the highest wind speed possible? I'm not sure, but I bet it would never exceed Mach 1.
If you're going to invent a scale, make sure that you properly define the bounds. Dvorak is a dummy.
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Dvorak is derived from sustained wind speed and pressure.
No, it is not, and that is the problem. The scale was derived from how to analyse features in satellite imagery when pressure and wind speed were not available. The scale is correlated to wind speed and pressure, because the whole point is to have some sort of scientific, calibrated estimate of wind speed when you can't measure it directly. The scale stops at 8 not because of a theoretical maximum wind speed, but because there is a strongest category of storms for which certain features are visible. The
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What I'm curious about is the statement that this is 'near the theoretical maximum strength for a tropical cyclone on earth'. How does anyone know that the maximum strength is, and what are the underlying assumptions for making a calculation of the value of that strength?
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That's why it's theoretical, duh! ;-)
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I am fairly confident they will remain subsonic
Re:How did it fit on a scale it broke? (Score:5, Funny)
Me? I'm just hoping that the windspeed stays below escape velocity!
Re:How did it fit on a scale it broke? (Score:5, Funny)
Does anyone understand the Dvorak scale well enough to comment on how this hurricane supposedly broke it and yet it can be accurately put on the scale as an 8.3?
And more importantly, what is it on the Qwerty scale, which is the one that most of us know?
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It's a hurricane, so we use the Sqwerty scale instead.
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Qwerty? That's too sophisticated for me. Can someone distill it down to A9 for me?
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I was hoping for a car analogy.
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Of course you were.
:^)
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Your description sort of comes close. The scale was originally based on categories of visual features in satellite imagery, for use when direct wind measurements were not possible. They were roughly correlated with wind over time, but still is mainly a categorization scheme more than a scale. It is like the F and EF scales of tornado, which are roughly based on damage done to various structures. Both sets of scales have a max category, where a hurricane has the strong features or a tornado does the wors
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Re:How did it fit on a scale it broke? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, some background. Dvorak is a well-known blowhard tech pundit. His blowhardness is so great that meteorologists unanimously decided to adopt the scale to measure the strength of hurricanes.
To put this in perspective, imagine being in the same room with one Dvorak. Then imagine the same room filled with eight point three Dvoraks. That's how strong this hurricane is.
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it's nonsense, Dvorak scale only goes to 8.0 just as SSHS only goes to cat 5 regardless of strength beyond the minimum required to get to the highest number. there are no cat 6 hurricanes and their are no Dvorak 8.x hurricanes other than x=0
Re: How did it fit on a scale it broke? (Score:2)
News reports this morning put the max winds at landfall as 165.
Sounds middle of the road to high. Not really record breaking.
Eye collapsed well before reaching shore (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Eye collapsed well before reaching shore (Score:4, Insightful)
My hat is off to modern day weather forecasting.
I can view Doppler from the pocket cellie in a field far enough from town they can't hear you scream, but even now, predicting the path of a hurricane is still probabilistic.
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200-165=50?
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NHC did say that the 190 mph estimate in the last full advisory prior to landfall might be a "generous" estimate. The special advisory indicating that Patricia had made landfall estimated the winds at 165 mph at that time. However, the most recent advisory included an interesting comment:
An unconfirmed sustained wind report of 185 mph and a gust to 211 mph was received from a NOAA/NWS Hydrometeorological Automated Data System (HADS) elevated station (295 ft) at Chamela-Cuixmala, Mexico near the time of landfall. This observation should be considered unofficial until it has been quality controlled.
Re:Eye collapsed well before reaching shore (Score:5, Insightful)
Winds were down over 50mph by the time it made landfall.
Fifty miles per hour seems like a lot until you realize that means winds are still up to 150mph.
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Fifty miles per hour seems like a lot until you realize that means winds are still up to 150mph.
It's like driving with the top down on the autobahn.
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Fifty miles per hour seems like a lot until you realize that means winds are still up to 150mph.
It's like driving with the top down on the autobahn.
Its more like standing in the middle of the autobahn while traffic zooms past you. Its not the 150mph wind that gets you, its the 4x4s flying at 100mph that you have to worry about.
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It's like driving [at 150mph] with the top down on the autobahn.
Have you ever tried it? Then shut the fuck up.
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The news I heard said it was down to 190mph (down 10 mph), and the eye looked like it was still there. Yes, it will decrease quickly now, but that will just mean lots of water and storm surge.
Re:Eye collapsed well before reaching shore (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure the ocean is to blame for the weakening. Patricia had a very compact inner core and a tiny eye. Strong hurricanes generally undergo eyewall replacement cycles, in which the inner eyewall contracts in and an outer eyewall takes over as the main eyewall. The NHC advisories emphasized the very compact inner core in the 11 AM EDT advisory. The 5 PM EDT advisory mentioned an outer wind maximum, which would be the outer eyewall. It sounds like Patricia was undergoing and eyewall replacement cycle as it made landfall in Mexico. Category 5 hurricanes rarely maintain their maximum intensity for very long. Eyewall replacement cycles typically result in the storm weakening while that takes place. Normally, cool waters associated with the California current (the cool northerly branch of the north Pacific gyre) do result in cool waters in the eastern Pacific, but I don't think that's the primary reason for Patricia weakening. I think an eyewall replacement cycle is primarily responsible for the weakening.
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Take a look at the terrain and vegetation, and see what a drag it is on the wind.
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Re:Eye collapsed well before reaching shore (Score:4, Informative)
Anon comment nailed it, from wunderground:
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Is that from an "eye" witness?
190 mph winds (Score:5, Insightful)
and,
the only homes of the poor.
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Most Mexicans won't be hurt. Two-thirds of them already living in the US.
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In other news bleeding heart liberals cry out for the poor citizens of Pompeii while taking the opportunity to bash the wealthy's island paradise.
God the left can be so moronic.
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You should have posted this anonymous so it was obvious.
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Anonymous posts are easy to ignore. But politics is serious business because the consequences can be quite devastating. So having one side of the political spectrum go ever further in their attempt to appeal to the worst elements of human nature, while the other desperately pretends everything's fine, is not a good thing.
Ever seen? Based on what. (Score:2)
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If it hasn't been written down it hasn't been seen. /sarcasm
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Ever seen? Based on what.
I wish I was so smart that I would be confused by that commonly used phrase.
Get used to it (Score:1)
This is what I predicted when I did my Ph.D in Climatology: a chaotic system will produce much larger storms than ever before. 30 years later it turns out I was right!
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Re:Get used to it (Score:5, Insightful)
a chaotic system will produce much larger storms than ever before.
I love it when people use phrases like "ever before" when they actually mean "in our brief recorded history".
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I meant "ever before" I got my Ph.D. Did I mention I was a Scientist? With a Ph.D.?
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I meant "ever before" I got my Ph.D. Did I mention I was a Scientist? With a Ph.D.?
Did you publish your PhD anonymously like your /. posts?
If so, that must make tracking your citations a real bitch.
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You know the AC really isn't a Climatologist, right?
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You know the AC really isn't a Climatologist, right?
It doesn't matter. If you predict a system will become more chaotic, you will ALWAYS be right. Even if it becomes LESS chaotic you are still correct, because becoming LESS chaotic is only possible if something else became MORE chaotic.
This is a small fast storm (Score:5, Informative)
The hurricane force winds only extend about 25 miles which is way below the average of 100 miles. Katrina was around 125 miles. So while the peak winds here are fast it's a very small storm. Almost midway between a hurricane and tornado.
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How about some perspective then?
The storm was packing 200 mph winds. That is an EF5 tornado. An EF5 tornado is capable of tearing asphalt off the ground, leaving nothing but slabs where sturdy homes used to be, tossing big rigs around like toothpicks, tearing tree out of the ground and shredding them, so on and so forth. Take a look at some before an after pics of an EF5 tornado.
An EF5 tornado will rarely approach a diameter of 1 mile, and is usually over in a couple of minutes.
This storm was an EF5 that wo
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This is what I predicted when I did my Ph.D in Climatology: a chaotic system will produce much larger storms than ever before. 30 years later it turns out I was right!
You knew this was going to happen and yet you didn't warn the people of Mexico. You should be sent to jail.
I've yet to see mention.. (Score:1)
Re:I've yet to see mention.. (Score:4, Informative)
..of the potential for flooding in Mexico City. Also, what kind of damage does a 50mph wind do to a shanty-town?
Here's the classification system [www.gov.ph] that we use in the Philippines, where there on average 20 Typhoon's (your Hurricane's eastern twisted sister) per year. It describes the predicted effect at different intensity grades on builds ranging from very light to heavy construction materials. Note that metric units are used.
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I think Mexico City is safe from storm surge. If it isn't neither is the SW US.
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Oh, I live in Mexico City. We are over 1,000Km away. We haven't even got bad weather (mild rain yesterday night, beautiful day today).
And about shanty towns... Of course we have some. But most of the city is much better built than what I've seen from the USA. No wonder we have that many 500 year old buildings in great shape.
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I like the cut of your jib.
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And I got my coveted off-topic mod! I luff this game.
Also, having seen your post concerning comedians. If you like highbrow, check out Emo Philips.
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Emo is a Chicago boy. He used to warm up for bands in clubs around town back in the day before he made it to the comedy joints.
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I dunno if it has as much fun when you're an AC? Burning karma is kind of fun once in a while. I don't usually troll or anything but I do go way off topic just to amuse myself and others. Hell, I haven't even done my daily novella yet. ;-) Unfortunately, I'm tired and the little lady wanted me to put my toys away ten minutes ago.
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Climate change is just something the SJW scientists made up to take away our masculinity and now Star Wars is all about a black person. Not a coincidence.
This is a confirmed fact.
The 'Troll' moderation of this comment suggests that it more 'Insightful' than it is 'Funny'.
"Third-lowest barometer reading ever recorded" (Score:5, Informative)
870mm - Typhoon Tip (1979)
875mm - Typhoon June (1975)
875mm - Typhoon Nora (1973)
877mm - Typhoon Ida (1958)
880mm - Typhoon Kit (1966)
880mm - Typhoon Rita (1978)
880mm - Typhoon Vanessa (1984)
880mm - Hurricane Patricia (2015)
The 1970s were a bad decade for storms in the West Pacific.
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BTW, it turns out that many of the readings from the typhoons in the 60s were estimated incorrectly. See Black, P.G., (1992): "Evolution of maximum wind estimates in typhoons" ICSU/WMO International Symposium on Tropical Cyclone Disasters, October 12-16, 1992, Beijing.
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Good thing pressure and wind speed aren't the same thing.
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8.3 (Score:1)
Coincidence? I think not.
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The FAT filesystem is a symptom of climate change.
Hurricane Opal (Score:2)
Jim Stone lives in Mexico, says there was no wind! (Score:1)
Jim Stone, Freelance Journalist, is reporting that this storm is a hoax. So much of a hoax, in fact, that NOAA personnel have been told they will be charged with a crime if they tell the truth.
His site is here: http://www.jimstone.is/circumv... [jimstone.is]
Hmmm (Score:1)
Patricia is now very close to the theoretical maximum strength for a tropical cyclone on planet Earth
Is that based on previous observations of Earth's weather before climate change started building?
Some of the predictions I've seen for "worst case" storms imply they could be much larger.
Side note: I misspelled "imply" as "implie" the spell checker gave me a possible correction of "pimplike" for "implie".
pimplike....
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Oh, here we go again. Gloom and doom, etc. etc.
What I always want to know is even with unlimited money, just what do you think you could do about "global warming?" Our whole society runs on energy, and without it our crops don't get grown and they don't get to market. The fuels to make electricity require energy to move them from the oil or coal fields to the generators where they are turned into electricity. And cars and trucks run on oil, there are millions and millions of cars, and nobody has invent
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Re: With the Republican's AGW... (Score:1)
Please help us all out by stop breathing. Blaming the Republicans for every thing is just beyond ignorant. Do you honestly believe that democrats are innocence just because they say something different?