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Hurricane Frances (1 Viewer)

Malcolm R

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Hopefully this won't add insult to injury by taking a more directly western track across the state and exiting into the Gulf in the same area where Charley made landfall.

I'd imagine there's still a lot of debris lying around that would again become airborne.
 

Todd Hochard

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You'd imagine right. Orlando still has debris piles everywhere, so I can only imagine what some of Charley's harder-hit areas look like.
With the current track, a substantial portion of the areas that got 100-120mph winds from Charley last time, are going to see those again.

This is lining up to be one of those "100-Year" events.

I'm debating braving Home Depot for a couple sheets of plywood, to put over an East-facing window on the front of my home. That's where the wind will come from, and I have no barrier (e.g. like my neighbor's house to the South;) ). Trouble is, I think I'd rather take a blown-out window than go to HD right now.:D :D
 

Malcolm R

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The problem is that blown out window will lead to water damage and further internal wind damage (dirt and sand-blasting of your walls if the wind is strong enough).

I'd suggest the plywood, if they still have any available that is. People were buying it like crazy over last weekend already (according to the news reports I saw).
 

Brandon_T

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Another problem with a blown out window is what happened to my parents in Punta Gorda a couple of weeks ago.

My dad said that one window blew out, and as he went to put a mattress over it, the pressure then caused the rest of the windows to blow, then that was all she wrote for the roof...

Better safe than sorry.

Brandon
 

Malcolm R

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From the National Hurricane Center's latest discussion of Frances:

THE MOST INTERESTING ASPECT THIS MORNING IS THAT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GLOBAL FORECAST SYSTEM...GFS...AND GFDL MODELS HAVE SHIFTED THEIR TRACKS A LITTLE TO THE WEST AND ARE NOW IN BETTER AGREEMENT WITH THE OTHER DYNAMICAL MODELS. NOW THAT THE RELIABLE GFS AND GFDL ARE IN AGREEMENT WITH THE OTHER MODELS...THE CONFIDENCE IN THE OFFICIAL FORECAST IS HIGHER.

So it looks like any possibility of a more northerly turn toward Georgia/South Carolina is diminished.

Frances appears to be undergoing an eyewall replacement cycle at the moment. We'll have to see if it reintensifies later this evening.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the NHC has backed away from their prior discussion of possible Cat. 5 at landfall. Their current outlook maintains Cat. 4 status throughout. Still likely to be a catastrophic storm in any case.
 

nolesrule

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Currently, the entire Eastern half of Florida behind the Hurricane warning zone has been put into an Inland Hurricane Wind Watch.

On the current track (as of the 2pm intermediate advisory), it's not going to exit Florida where Charley made landfall. The area of highest probability is that it will go to the north of the Tampa Bay area and skim the Gulf Coast in the Big Bend region, and downgrading to a tropical depression by the time it reaches Tallahassee.

Bay News 9 did a really cool graphic by actually showing a zoom-in of the hurricane potential track over central Florida and overlaying the path of Charley using color-coding to denote which areas got hit with thighest winds, including a 20-mile wide white band showing the path of the eye. They also did a similar potential wind map for Frances using the same style, and it looks like Pinellas County will actual get some tropical storm force winds this time.

It still looks like its path is going to be a mirrored path of Charley, cutting up the state at a diagonal.
 

Chris_Morris

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While I feel terrible for all those in the path of this monster, as a long time weather fanatic and Skywarn spotter this is like the Super Bowl and Olympics rolled up in one.

My brother-in-law has said that just one time he wants to be that one idiot you see standing behind the Weather Channel reporter as the hurricane lands.


Chris
 

Kirk Gunn

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While I don't mean to degrade this thread into silica....



I ran across a reference to "Dyn-0-Gel" that is basically industrial-strength silica the government researched using to neutralize hurricanes.



Here's a blurb from NOAA's FAQ that illustrates the amazing scope of a hurricane:



"Dyn-O-Gel" is a special powder (produced by Dyn-O-Mat) that absorbs large amounts of moisture and then becomes a gooey gel. It has been proposed to drop large amounts of the substance into the clouds of a hurricane to dissipate some of the clouds thus helping to weaken or destroy the hurricane.



======



One of the biggest problems is, however, that it would take a LOT of the stuff to even hope to have an impact. 2 cm of rain falling over 1 square kilometer of surface deposits 20,000 metric tons of water. At the 2000-to-one ratio that the "Dyn-O-Gel" folks advertise, each square km would require 10 tons of goop. If we take the eye to be 20 km in diameter surrounded by a 20km thick eyewall, that's 3,769.91 square kilometers, requiring 37,699.1 tons of "Dyn-O-Gel". A C-5A heavy-lift transport airplane can carry a 100 ton payload. So that treating the eyewall would require 377 sorties. A typical average reflectivity in the eyewall is about 40 dB(Z), which works out to 1.3 cm/hr rain rate. Thus to keep the eyewall doped up, you'd need to deliver this much "Dyn-O-Gel" every hour-and-a-half or so. If you crank the reflectivity up to 43 dB(Z) you need to do it every hour. (If the eyewall is only 10 km thick, you can get by with 157 sorties every hour-and-a-half at the lower reflectivity.)
 

Malcolm R

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quote:"Dyn-O-Gel" is a special powder (produced by Dyn-O-Mat) that absorbs large amounts of moisture and then becomes a gooey gel.


So then instead of rain you have large globs of "gooey gel" being propelled at hurricane force?
smile.gif
 

Malcolm R

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Not to pile on, but the NHC has now identified "Tropical Depression 9" in the central Atlantic.

First forecasts call for this TD to continue to strengthen into TS/Hurricane Ivan and follow a more southerly course than Frances, blowing through the Antilles and into the Caribbean (closer to Charley's track) probably by Tuesday/Wednesday.
 

Craig S

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Yup, August & September are two VERY long months for those of us who live in the coastal areas impacted by these storms. Sometimes it seems like they just keep comin'...
 

Peter Kline

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I'm in the area where the hurricane landfall is possible. Although it now looks as if the center of Frances will hit the West Palm Beach area, which is north of Coral Springs where I reside, the size of Frances is so big that we still have a hurricane watch 40 miles away. Friends along the costal area in Pompano Beach are evacuating today and tomorrow morning. I am inland and no evacuation is anticipated. I live in a single story (well actually duplex) apartment complex built in the mid 90s. My garage, which is under the apartment I live in will have my car in it for the first time in many months. Gasoline supplies ran out this morning at most gas stations although word is more supplies are arriving by morning. Supermarket shelves are emptying as you can imagine. Plenty of bottle water is on hand, a flashlight and my trusty Tivoli PAL radio is all charged up. My niece is nearby and we'll keep in contact of course. Wish us all luck!
 

Rob Lutter

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Well, I just walked into Albertsons and got my hurricane supply of coke (4 cases) and some bottled water. No one there...
biggrin.gif
Not sure if that's a bad sign.



There was a sale though! Yipee!
smile.gif
 

D. Scott MacDonald

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quote:Well, I just walked into Albertsons and got my hurricane supply of coke (4 cases) and some bottled water.


I'm very surpised tht they still had bottled water in stock. When I lved in Houston, the stores would sell out everything at the first mention of a hurricane.
 

Peter Kline

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Update from Coral Springs at 8 AM EDT. Still calm, hardly any wind. Sun is peaking through the puffy clouds. It now looks like landfall will be farther North then originally thought, although things can change by the hour. Went to the local Publix this morning with my neighbor and there was plenty of bottled water back on the shelves. Weather forecast is for rain squalls today and heavy winds tomorrow. I wish it was over already.
 

Brian Perry

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Frances has been downgraded to Cat 3, but is also slowing down, which means it could be strengthening.
 

Kirk Gunn

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Another nightmare brewing:



The strong tropical wave in the eastern Atlantic near the Cape Verde islands has become Tropical Storm Ivan. As of 5 am AST Tropical Storm Ivan was located near 10.0 north and 30.7 west or about 610 miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. Maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph and the depression is moving west near 16 mph. Current forecast tracks by model output show this system tracking nearly due west for the next several days then turning northwest. Some longer range model output is suggesting this system will move into Hispaniola late next week then into the Bahamas next weekend. Until this system develops further this is mostly speculation. But it is possible another tropical cyclone could threaten the southeast U.S. in about 10 days.
 

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