Well said.
But …
This comment applies to every bridge, culvert, ditch, river, and piped drainage system in the entire USA. Future rainfall rates everywhere are higher than the existing infrastructure was designed for. To say nothing of how much of our stuff is 75 to 100 years old now and reaching end-of-reliable-life anyhow.
It’s not unprecedented for multiple hurricanes to follow generally similar tracks within a relatively short time period. Despite some storm damage overlap, the eyes of Helene and Milton did come ashore at different locations.
There’s speculation that such events are becoming more likely due to climate change.
In addition …
It appears the ‘fabric’ was actually “Teflon-coated fiberglass,” which – if it was original to the structure (opened in 1990) – would put it past its life expectancy of “up to 30 years.”
Which is the kind of thing I might have kept track of…
But I’m making some assumptions here.
I won’t go any farther with this subject, but it looks like Tropicana Field’s days were already numbered:
Tampa Bay Rays Announce Deal To Replace Stadium as Part of Sweeping Redevelopment
Dated 9/2023
Have you heard from her today? If so, how’d they do in the storm?
I guarantee you that it was the story that they led with at 8am. You turned it on too late to see it.
It was never predicted to have any kind of substantial impact on Miami. Where the hell did you read that?
They “scared people?” They got people’s attention, by warning them about a storm that was predicted to do a great deal of damage, and present life-threatening weather conditions…and which did exactly that.
The storm pretty much followed exactly what the National Hurricane Center was predicting it would do, as far back as Monday afternoon. It intensified to Category 5, and fluctuated between a 4 and a 5 up until sometime on Wednesday afternoon, when it started to run into wind shear, and weakened somewhat, to a Category 3 – which was, again, exactly what the NHC had forecast it would do.
Yes, by the time it made landfall, it was no longer a Category 5, but as has been noted in this thread, the Saffir-Simpson scale is only an indicator of wind velocity. Milton was still a massive, highly damaging storm when it affected Florida, even if its winds were “only” around 110 miles per hour at the point when it made landfall. (On, and a Category 3 is still a major hurricane.)
Large chunks of the west coast of Florida got over a foot of rain in the storm (St. Petersburg got 18", Tampa got 12"), which led to widespread flooding; yesterday evening, the National Weather Service issued a “Flash Flood Emergency” warning for the Tampa area – a type of warning which is rarely issued (it’s worse than the more common “Flash Flood Warning”), and indicates that catastrophic, life-threatening flooding is occurring (or is about to occur).
Over 3 million customers lost power due to the storm; a “customer,” in electrical utility terms, is a home or a business. That’s over 1/4 of all electric customers in the state.
Storm surge was the one element of the storm that was not as bad as was originally predicted, in part because the track stayed a bit south of Tampa Bay (which, again, was where the forecasts were pointing, as far back as Monday). However, storm surge was still significant (5 to 6 feet), and still did a lot of damage in areas like Sarasota, Fort Myers, and Naples.
And, while spin-up tornadoes are not uncommon with hurricanes, Milton spawned a large tornado outbreak yesterday (at least 48 tornadoes touched down), particularly along Florida’s Atlantic coast, many miles away from the center of the storm. Some of the storm deaths were in St. Lucie County, due to those tornadoes, 150 miles away from where the storm made landfall.
The major broadcast networks? No, actually, they generally don’t. It might lead off a news broadcast, but then they move on to other things. Only something that is utterly catastrophic – and in progress at that moment – will warrant an ongoing pre-emption of regular programming on NBC, ABC, and CBS.
If you are looking for continuous coverage of a big weather event, go to a cable or streaming news or weather channel.
It’ll be days before the full extent of damage and loss of life is known (the current known death count is 17), but there’s no doubt that the loss of life would have been higher if people in the storm’s path hadn’t taken the warnings seriously, and hadn’t evacuated or sought shelter.
You seem to think that this was a “boy who cried wolf” situation. Even if some of the worst-case-scenarios (like storm surge crushing Tampa Bay) didn’t occur, this was a very large, very dangerous storm, and it did a tremendous amount of damage in the state. The NHC, NWS, and local authorities were absolutely justified in “scaring people” to get the point across.
Yeah, the authorities and the Governor warned people to get out the way, which they did, and the body count (at least at this stage) reflects this. Should the authorities and the Governor not alarmed everyone to get out of the way and we had a catastrophic body count, then we’d be hearing “why didn’t they warn us?!?!”
Thanks for asking
They lost power but otherwise everything was OK. She still had cell service.
Assuming no changes, she’s due to fly home tomorrow.
Exactly. I was pretty much glued to The Weather Channel and Fox Weather for the last two or three days. They massively covered it (and neither channel overhyped it) and explained stuff over and over again, in between live shots of what was happening.
That’s good news.
Orlando just started accepting a few flights today with departures only starting tomorrow.
Best to check the flight status and get there early. Could be jam packed or it could be a ghost town. I’ve seen both at airports right after a hurricane.
That was CNN yesterday. At the worst parts of the storm, there was very little, if anything, about Israel or the election, but plenty of CNN reporters out in various Florida cities. At one point, the wind took Anderson Cooper’s hat.
I thought Cooper got hit by a piece of flying Styrofoam.
Yes, I did check into CNN too. As I recall, they carried all of the livestream of Biden’s then Harris’s introductory remarks, including decrying the misinformation being spread, then a discussion of various aspects of the federal response by various agency heads.
ETA: Debris confirmation: Anderson Cooper Hit By Flying Hurricane Milton Debris Live on Air - Newsweek
A bit after being hit and continuing with his reporting he picks up the thing that hit him and calls it Styrofoam.
There are plenty of places in the United States that would be happy to accept some infrastructure damage in return for more rain.
Yeah; here in California one of our problems is less rain, not more. Global warming adds energy to the system which creates all sorts of climatological effects; stronger and more common hurricanes are just the one that is on people’s minds for the moment. For obvious reasons.
Also, even if the amount of rain stays the same, problems can come from the way in which the rain is received.
Here in Cape Town we suffered through a drought in 2015-2019, coming precariously close to completely running out of water in 2017 and 2018. In recent years the annual rainfall has returned to pre-drought norms, but there’s been a tendency towards rainstorms that are shorter and much more intense. When you receive two months’ worth of rain in three days, that’s great for filling the empty reservoirs, but it also causes a lot of flooding and other damage.
This. And yes, as @Alessan said, more extended drought. Which paradoxically means a need to for more capable (read “expensive”) infrastructure to deal with less frequent events. Both more extensive (read “expensive”) water storage and water drainage.
I used to live in the parched desert city of Las Vegas. Which had an absolutely amazing flood control infrastructure underneath the city. Far more than one might naively expect for a place with little annual rainfall. Because when it did rain, it was insane. And the natural desert “soil” was about as absorbtive as asphalt, so the entire rainfall on the surface area of a 20x30mile valley all ran straight downhill into the city.
My brother and sister-in-law live in the Sun City Center area (South and inland of Tampa)
No power, but otherwise OK. Stuff in freezer was staring to thaw, so invited neighbors for a grill-out.
Brian
Yesterday, I drove around to assess damage. There were some downed trees in my area (one partially knocked over a brick wall), and some of the traffic lights were out, but it didn’t look too bad. The worst thing was that it was like Christmas Day, in that nothing was open.
Today, many of the roads I drove on yesterday are cordoned off by police due to flooding. I drove past one mobile home park that had extensive flooding, to the point where the homes in the neighborhood were ruined.
Also, while today some businesses are open (I found a McDonalds for breakfast, and a dispensary for supplies) very few gas stations are operating.
Albuquerque is about the same. Almost all the natural arroyos have been channelized. A massive storm sewer system. Diversion channels built. Massive “dams” built purely to mitigate a 100 year event. Everything to dump water into the river, which of course has also been massively controlled over the years. And the north-south roads can still flood during a heavy thunderstorm.
And some not so underneath. The Imperial Palace/Linq parking garage, for instance.