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Hurricane Wilma, here we go again and again......!!!!!!!! (1 Viewer)

James St

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954 mb 80mph winds when I went to bed last night. Since then Wilma has exploded to 884 mb and 175mph winds.:eek:
 

Craig S

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Holy crap! I get up and Wilma became a Cat 5 overnight, and is the most intense storm EVER in the Atlantic basin. According to Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground:

Let's hope he's right about the once-in-a-lifetime part.
 

Jerry Almeida

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I work for a hospital in Tampa that happen's to be on an island.
Needless to say we get to start all of our preliminary preparations, but it's still too early to tell.

We'll know more in a day or so.
 

Anthony Moore

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I live in Sarasota, about 40 miles south of Tampa. We are definately keeping a close eye on this one.

Problem is, even with this track they have it on, there's no way they can predict exactly what city it will hit until hours before it actually does hit land.

Last year we had Charley that was headaed straight for us (sarasota,) and it made a last minute turn about an hour before it was suposed to make landfall and hit Port Charlotte instead. Some of my friends went to Port Charlotte for cover; And we barely got a drop of rain!

So we will take the necessary precautions, but I never get my hopes up, or get too worried until it gets really close.
 

Joseph DeMartino

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November 30th or thereabouts. ;)

After last year let's just say, I'm pretty much ready all the time. But after seeing some of the major post-Katrina problems in New Orleans (hard to believe that was the same storm that brushed us as a relatively benign category 1) I'll probably budget for a few extras between the end of this year's season and the start of next year's (on June 1st.) I've been trying for a year to get my condo association to give me a recommendation/list of permitted hurricane shutters, and they still haven't answered, so once the season is past I'm just getting some and if they want to bitch after the fact I've got the e-mails, copies of my letters and the return receipts to show that I made every reasonable effort to get their guidance. And while I'm well inland and have never had to evacuate, I'm going to put together a more extensive car kit just in case I have to live for a couple of days along the side of some highway waiting for gas and/or rescue. :)

Meanwhile I'm looking forward to a seriously spoiled weekend and an unknown amount of work/life disruption.

Is it December yet? :)

Joe
 

Joseph DeMartino

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That's a water vapor image, which wouldn't show the eye very clearly, and it is from an altitude that would make the eye harder to see in any event.

Here's a visible light loop

And a still that's easier to see:



That small, well-defined and tight eye is one of the things that marks this as a very powerful (and potentially very nasty) storm. Impressive enough as far as I'm concerned, especially in the visible light imagery.

Regards,

Joe
 

SarahG

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You don't think so? I thought it looked impressively nasty on satellite. Keeping my fingers crossed though.
 

nolesrule

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Well, I know it's too early for any real predictions, but the extended forecast track has slipped a little farther south. The centerline of the track used to pass north of Lake Okeechobee. It is now on the southern side.

Just making an observation. I know better than to think it's etched in stone. Like Jerry and Anthony, I was also in the predicted path of Charley. Those of us in the Tampa Bay area were damn lucky last year. with all those near-misses.

EDIT: Reading the Forecast Discussion, it seems the model predictions are starting to disagree in major ways. The NHC seems to be losing confidence in the forecast track. That's not a good thing.

 

nolesrule

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The local ABC station just showed the "spaghetti model", which shows the projected strings of all the hurricane prediction computer models. A couple of the traditionally more reliable models have it going into the Yucatan and then back out into the Caribbean. 6 hours ago, those same models had it up near New England 5 days from now. That's what the forecast discussion was referring to. So there is the possibility that it might not even come near Florida now.

The majority of models still have it going through south Florida, so who knows what could happen. It'll be interesting to see what the 11pm and 5am tracks are adjusted to.
 

Malcolm R

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October hurricanes are notoriously hard to forecast.

Past October Hurricanes Iris and Mitch were both forecast to recurve to the northwest, then north, then northeast, but both did essentially the opposite with Iris maintaining her westward track across the Yucatan, the Gulf, then again into Mexico, and Mitch sinking southwest, then south into Honduras where it killed over 10,000 people.
 

Craig S

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My bad - I was referring to the link posted above my post, which as Joseph pointed out was not satellite but water vapor. The satellite images are pretty scary.
 

Garrett Lundy

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Goddamned I wish I had a modular home dealership in Florida this year. I could have sold the same unit to people 5 times!
 

Brian Perry

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More accurately, recorded history. There have undoubtedly been hurricanes just as powerful as these, it's just that satellite imagery and advanced reconaissance planes have enabled the hurricane hunters to get closer to the eye than they were able to in the past.
 

Malcolm R

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That's why I'm skeptical that they keep saying this year "ties with 1933" as the most cyclones ever. Before satellites, there's no possible way they could know every storm that formed.

Would the US NWS have known (or cared?) about a "Vince" in 1933? If there were 21 "known" storms in 1933, it's likely there were several more they missed. It's also likely there were other years that had 16 or 18 storms, but the NWS missed a few that might have made those years the "most" ever.

This is why I scoff when they claim to have "accurate" records of hurricanes back to 1887. How can that possibly be true? Was there really enough shipping traffic criss-crossing every part of the tropical Atlantic/Caribbean/Gulf in every year from the 1880's to the advent of satellites in the 1960's to be 100% sure NO storms were ever, ever missed?

I also think the NHC is far too quick to slap a name on every little puff of swirling clouds these days, inflating the numbers, but that's another rant. :D
 

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