So hurricane Larry, instead of being a self-respecting tropical cyclone and striking Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Savannah or somewhere warm like that, decides to go its own way and head north. Way north, not just to New Jersey or Connecticut or even Nova Scotia. No, this guy’s going all the way … to Greenland! And once there, it’s going to … SNOW! Several feet of hurricane snow. I don’t think anyone predicted this as a result of Global Warming.
It’s not a unique or unprecedented event. What’s possible as a result of global warming is that these meteorological events will occur more frequently.
A hurricane IS a tropical cyclone. It’s just the meteorological name for a tropical cyclone occurring in the North Atlantic and parts of the north Pacific. A Category 1 hurricane is nothing to scoff at … of course if you mean it will weaken to a tropical storm by the time it gets to Greenland, that’s probably true.
Yes, that is what I meant. As a tropical cyclone / typhoon / hurricane moves toward the poles and / or over land, it loses energy. It is quite common for colder parts of the world to get the remnants of a hurricane that brings a bit of bad weather with it. These regions of the world experience this type of weather every now and then anyway.
As a point of reference, in Wellington, New Zealand, we had 120 kph wind gusts over night. The same strength as Larry at the moment. No hurricane here though, just “weather”, “a bit windy today eh bro?”
I didn’t mean to rain on Larry’s snow festival. It’s quite right that these events will happen more and more as sea temperatures rise. It is the warm water that provides energy for the hurricane. I just meant to point out that Greenland will most likely see “ex-Hurricane Larry” rather than “Hurricane Larry”. Gee it is a long way north though, 50º N!
Hurricane Hazel (1954) was a storm which didn’t lose much power going over land - lasting about two weeks along a path from the West Indies, through the eastern US, and then across Lake Ontario up to James Bay.
81 fatalities in the Toronto area. That was after 469 dead in Haiti, and 95 in the US.
My mom and dad and his younger brother John were moored at the Rochester [NY] Yacht Club as they had been getting the Sea Gypsy ready for tucking her away for the winter, and decided to stay aboard her for the night instead of driving back down to Perry. It had been a long day pf cleaning and making sure everything was ready and they must have been exhausted because they wake up to the sounds of gunfire and horns in Kingston Harbor. The storm had broken them loose and they ended up getting blown across the lake. Apparently Harbor Safety and the Canadian version of the Coast Guard were very busy with all the storm wrack, and the fishermen and other boat folks were worried that everybody on board were dead or too injured to respond. Nope, just dog tired from a really long day of work.
I can remember later in the mid 60s, about 66 or 67 weathering a moderatly hard storm on the Sea Gypsy, which didn’t bother me any - I always slept better aboard her, to this day I will put on a 10 hour youtube of storm sounds if I am having trouble sleeping. Some of my favorite vacations were aboard her. It helps I also don’t get seasick =)