While everything appears relative normal on area beaches, it is anything but. Chaos is the new normal inland as runs on gasoline and supplies have occurred. Even the animals are sensing the collective dread of the human population as the agonizing wait for potentially catastrophic Hurricane Irma continues.
We are 4 days away from the possibility of fundamentally transforming the United States of America. Who could continue to deny a changing climate with these kind of threats ongoing?
UPDATE: 2:00 AM AST, Sep 9, 2017, the Eye of Hurricane Irma is moving over the Camaguey Archipelago of Cuba as a Category 5 Hurricane with 160 mph sustained winds.
Hurricane Irma's current projected landfall in Florida is somewhere around Fort Myers Beach after passing over the Florida Keys maybe somewhere between Big Pine and Marathon. Click here for more on her forecast position at landfall.
Above, the HMON model projects that Hurricane Irma will be inland, 932 mb, at 6 am on Monday Sep 11, 2017, located somewhere to the northwest of Tampa. The GFS forecasts a similar position, perhaps closer to Orlando and slightly weaker at 941 mb (below). In each forecast the storm would fall into the Cat 4 range (131-155 mph winds, 920-944 mb).
UPDATE: EYE OF POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE IRMA PASSING OVER BARBUDA, 2:00 AM AST WED SEP 6 2017, WINDS OF 185 MPH, MIN PRESSURE: 914 MB.
On the heels of Hurricane Harvey, now estimated to be the second-costliest storm in U.S. history, attention is turning to the next threat, Hurricane Irma.
Irma, is currently marching westward across the Atlantic Ocean with 110 mph winds. Irma’s center of circulation is still more than 2,000 miles away from U.S. coast, but models continue to cause future concern.
No one knows where Hurricane Irma will make landfall.
This storm will definitely be one to watch over the next several days — particularly along the East Coast — despite the high uncertainty in impacts at this juncture.
Current status
Although it has dropped to Category 2 strength, Irma continues to look quite healthy on satellite images, as of Sunday morning, Sept 3, 2017. She is one week from potential landfall in the USA. Again, we must stress, that landfall may never happen. But she bears watching.
Pictured on this page are early Sunday morning Sept 3, 2017 computer model simulations of where the hurricane will be a week from today. It will be more important to follow these models starting mid-week when we're only 5 days from potential landfall.
Irma initially underwent rapid intensification on Thursday — it is already the longest-duration storm at hurricane strength of the 2017 Atlantic season — and these kinds of fluctuations should be expected in an intense storm that far east.
Forecast updates
Proceeding with the caveat in mind that exact track forecasts for tropical systems beyond five days are full of uncertainties, let’s take a look at what overnight guidance showed regarding Irma’s potential track beyond the cone.
Global Forecast System (GFS, American model)
The GFS has been painting an ominous picture over the past few model runs, swinging Irma around a large blocking high-pressure system anchored over the central Atlantic. It ultimately brings the storm up the East Coast with landfall between Charleston and the Delmarva.
The ensemble (spaghetti plots) for the American model are also currently focusing in on this type of solution. None of the ensemble members have the storm going into the Gulf, with most now showing a powerful storm near the East Coast by later next week.
ECMWF (Euro, European model)
At this writing the ECMWF has not finished running its latest plot but it was hinting at more of a recurvature on Saturday afternoon, indicating the storm might recurve harmlessly out to sea.
As a whole, most global models are trying to converge on the idea that a strong high-pressure system located over the central Atlantic will remain entrenched through next week, perfectly placed to allow Irma to stay over beneficially warm waters and head ever closer to the U.S. shoreline.
It is still absolutely worth mentioning again that these model solutions are not official forecasts. No one (or no model) can tell us exactly where Irma will go.
However, we can start to look at the trends from each model and ensemble run to get a better idea of how the situation might play out early next week. It is safe to say that the situation has become slightly more concerning for East Coast residents.
Its also worth mentioning that the colorful blob behind Hurricane Irma is likely to become Hurricane Jose. Jose is at a much lower latitude and his eventual path could also impact landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere.
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As more Gulf Coast residents return to their flooded homes and begin to assess damage, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will play a central role in providing assistance for repairs.
After Hurricane Ike struck Galveston in 2008, hundreds of thousands of Texans sought grants from FEMA to make temporary repairs -- enough to make their homes habitable while they waited for insurance claims that would pay for more permanent fixes.
Many of those who applied, however, claimed that they were unfairly denied assistance. In some cases, FEMA determined that the damage was a result of deferred maintenance. Questions also arose about the adequacy of the training provided to inspectors who assessed homes for storm related damage.
Tips for Hurricane Harvey Survivors From Those Who Lived Through Hurricane Sandy
Bathe your kids at their accustomed times. Use the gas of wrecked cars to fuel your generator. Beware of taking too much time off from your job. The sight of a squirrel might help.
The question over whether Osteen’s 38,000-member Lakewood Church has sufficiently aided in the disaster relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Harvey has, once again, made America’s prince of the prosperity gospel into an object of social media contempt.
With his yachts and jets and endlessly-smiling mouth offering promises of “Your Best Life Now” (that’s the name of his best-selling book), Osteen was already a subject of contempt among Americans, in general.
But in the past few days he has been lambasted as being, at best, sluggish in providing emergency aid to those suffering from the disaster and, at worst, a hypocrite who cares more about people’s wealth than welfare.
In swamping large swaths of Texas and Louisiana, Hurricane Harvey also forged a new reality for President Trump and the Republicans governing Washington.
Gone are the confrontational talk of a government shutdown and the brinkmanship over the debt limit. Instead, both Mr. Trump and his putative allies in Congress — many of them professed fiscal hawks — are promising an outpouring of federal aid to begin a recovery and rebuilding effort that will last for years and require tens of billions of dollars, if not substantially more, from Washington.
The storm has utterly transformed the federal fiscal picture.
“This is going to change the whole dynamic for September and, quite frankly, for the Republican establishment for the remainder of the 115th Congress,” said G. William Hoagland, a longtime chief budget adviser to Senate Republicans who is now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The truth of the matter is, they don’t need money to build a wall in Texas, but to rebuild the shoreline in Texas.”
How soon is it “acceptable” to politicize a national tragedy?
That question applies across the board to commentators of all stripes, whether it involves a deadly protest, domestic terror or a natural disaster. In the case of Hurricane Harvey’s toll in Texas before moving east, there was a distinct shift in editorial patterns a few days after the storm hit.
From cable anchors to elected officials, this still-worsening tragedy rapidly became a staging area for making political points. Among editorial cartoonists, the first wave of “unity” cartoons — depicting Texans coming together despite any and all ideological differences — soon gave way to the truly “political” cartoons.
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