http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/23/americas/hurricane-patricia/index.html
Blew up real fast—some are saying it’s ‘only’ cat 5 because that’s where the chart stops.
They’re comparing this to typhoon Haiyan, which did immense damage and killed 6000 people.
200 mph winds—are tornadic,on the lower borderline of an F4 tornado. The F5 that hit Moore OK back in 1999 had ‘the strongest winds ever recorded on the planet’, and those were 317 mph. I can personally attest, having been just north of Moore in OKC on that date, for some of its little brothers, that you do not want to be on the Mexican coast right now.
caught my share of supertyphoons while stationed on Guam…..
I can’t prove this in any way, but… at the beginning of the hurricane season I was looking at the lists of names they were going to use. For some reason ‘Patricia’ caught my eye and I thought, “That one is going to be abnormally dangerous.” It’s nothing at all reliable, but every so often I get a precognitive twinge from the Hungarian side of the family. It won’t come anywhere near Hawaii, but poor Mexico!
I just finished installing the last of the hurricane tiedowns on the roof last weekend, too. The rest will have to wait until I replace the supports on the lanai roof and the carport. Cement block piers with rebar and cement fill, tiedowns anchored into the cement fill.
Landfall at 165mph. Missed both Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, but a lot of villages were being evacuated yesterday. The current projection takes it over Saltillo and Laredo.
back in November 1998, we were getting ready to come north through the Panama Canal on our last leg of our deployment. We were leaving Panama City and heading for Cartagena, Colombia, and the Commodore was concerned about the possibility of Hurricane Mitch delaying our transit of the Canal. Little did we know what “Mitch” would do to the Yucatan Peninsula. When the rains started, they were torrential, and caused all sorts of mudslides. Over 11,000 people died in the Yucatan alone….
There is a nice big fat low sitting off the coast, probably coming in in a couple days. But before there was Patricia, there was Olaf which took a sharp right turn and veered north before getting too close to Hawaii. The tail of the storm off the coast is touching the outer clouds associated with Olaf. If it sucks Olaf northeast, instead of another sharp turn to the west some models predict, we could be in for some heavy rain next week.
Appears Patricia sets another record, “Least Damage Done by a Cat 5 Making Landfall on a Populated Coastline”.
I’m pleased to have my ‘intuition’ proven wrong!
Most of this is well documented, c.f. Knotts Berry Farm History, and Wikipedia-Boysenberry.
But so’s you don’t have to go do that, in short, at the turn of the last century there was a great boom in the technology of plant hybridizing, e.g. Luther Burbank and the Russet-Burbank potato, etc. In 1923 Charles Rudolph Boysen, then in Napa, California, crossed a lackberry, black raspberry & loganberry and made what came to be known as the Boysenberry. He couldn’t make a success of it in Napa, and left to become the Superintendent of Parks in Anaheim. In 1935 Walter Knott got it and made a big success of it. When I was a kid, several times my Dad drove the family across LA county (no freeways in those days!), out to Buena Park in Orange County and Knott’s Berry Farm, then the significant amusement park in Orange County, as much to go to their Chicken Dinner Restaurant as anything. I remember it was very good, over 5 decades later. So now the Boysenberry is, so I believe, well known, and deservedly so.
What isn’t so well known is why Boysen left Napa. I forget where I learned of it. Mom used to live in Anaheim–maybe that’s where I heard it. Anyway, the story I heard is that, one night in Napa a group of the competing berry growers got together to make sure Boysen’s new berry was not a commercial success! They turned up on Boysen’s doorstep one night, torches in hand. Boysen came out thinking he was to receive adulation for his new contribution, and told the crowd he would be pleased to show them tomorrow. The leader of the group shouted out, “We come to sieze your berry, not to praise it!”
Oh, that was terrible. Boo-berry!
There’ve been a few times I’ve told that story to completely blank looks. Woosh, right over their heads–people I’d thought intelligent and educated enough to recognize the quote.
So these berries, they Ate Too Brutally, you’re saying? 😀
If memory serves, both Rita and Ike were Cat 5 hurricanes, and Katrina. But a Tropical Storm can also do a lot of damage in winds and flooding.
It’s been very dark all day here (Houston) and it’s been raining, not too heavily, for the past 30 min. or so. I haven’t checked the news, but this could be coming off of remnants of Patricia heading northeast, or it could be independent from the Gulf, or more likely, two systems colliding. I believe we’re supposed to get rain all weekend, maybe into Monday.
Ike was far more remarkable for its aftermath on Houston and the surrounding area. I hope I never have to experience that again.
I just saw a YouTube video from NASA/NOAA sources. The comments from users…. I know not to expect much from the average YouTube commenter, but wow. So much ignorance and lack of empathy, and so little evidence any of them had ever been in a hurricane, or they’d know better than to say things like that.
It makes me appreciate the intelligence and caring around here (the blog) more.
In better news, next week (Halloween) will mark Goober’s 9th birthday. I count the day I got him, since I don’t know his actual birthday. He and Smokey have been doing better lately, but Goober still hasn’t dared to stay on my bed so far. I’m presuming that may change this winter if it gets cold enough that the twosome will want to share and curl up with me again, instead of petty jealousy over territory. Smokey will be 5 between Dec. and Jan., so maybe he’s going to mellow some. Maybe.
Last night our Institute for Astronomy had its annual Open House. One of the main projects in connection with the IfA this year is the construction of a new solar telescope on top of Haleakala. Sadly, both this telescope and the proposed new Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the Big Island are being obstructed by local Luddite activists with more hair than brains, under the guise of religious infringement. I doubt any of these people ever spent much time on either mountain doing cultural pursuits until they got jazzed up by someone with an axe to grind. The half dozen or so picketers last night were waving signs in the occasional rainfall at the top of the road; apparently the science down at the IfA was too frightening to approach directly.
Junior and Zorro are still around and having their intermittent squalls. They mainly seem to have disputes around mealtimes; Zorro will try to eat anything Junior doesn’t finish, and Junior objects to having his dish pirated. We had one person a couple of weeks ago ask about adopting Junior, but it was uncertain if they would be allowed to do so, since they lived in an apartment and had to get permission for a pet. We’ll see.
What’s the religious objection to a solar telescope? Is it planned to be built on somebody’s granny’s grave or are they worried that the sun god will smite us for invasion of privacy and general window-peeping?
Locally sacred site. OTOH, a telescope is a lot nicer neighbor than a housing development.
it’s not like the protesters go up there, I doubt if any of them actually consider that there are only a few people left who might believe it’s sacred ground…..and I’d agree with Chondrite, these things don’t happen unless someone gets their knickers in a knot. Granted, there are legitimate causes, but most people don’t pay much attention to things that are outside their area of existence. Seems to me a lot like the people who protest the space programs….and Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s talk at University of Buffalo several years ago hit it pretty much spot on. “Oh, I’m just going to pick up this rock here and examine it……..” We’re a one-planet species, if what happened 65 million years ago happens again, what will become of us?
I remember reading Larry Niven’s “Lucifer’s Hammer” several years ago, and he made the point that it’s not a question of if, it’s when and how often and how soon before the next and the next and the next ones…….
Doesn’t look like Patricia’s dead quite yet. Looks like she’s strengthening over the warm Gulf waters.
I’ll look at the Weather Channel for what the storm remnants are doing. I’d really hope it doesn’t regenerate. No one along the Gulf Coast needs a hurricane or tropical storm making landfall. It’s late in the season to do that anyway. But they can occasionally re-spawn after crossing over a landmass.
It’s still raining, not too heavily, but a gentle, steady rain. I’m not sure if it’s been raining non-stop since yesterday, but it’s possible. Very dark and cloudy outside. Not anything that feels threatening, just typical fall/winter rainy weather.
I’ll check the weather report to see what they expect.
My immediate neighborhood is doing OK, surprisingly. The forecast for the rest of today and into tomorrow has Houston getting rain, but lessening chances for heavy rain and flooding as Monday progresses and the storm remnants, still a heavy, large system, head east-northeast, sliding along the Gulf Coast and up into landfall over Louisiana and Mississippi or points easterly. I’m surprised we didn’t get heavier flash flooding in my neighborhood, but glad we didn’t. Another 24 to 36 hours ought to get us through most of whatever’s still in range of the city.
silly me… I used the left and right arrows for part of that quotation, forgetting that it sees that as HTML….
Dr. Tyson’s lecture can be seen here: http://www.wimp.com/tysonnasa/
Right in this thread, we’ve got reasons to do more with the space program. We don’t even need an asteroid that’s a bit off course when we get major weather / geologic events like 3 Cat 5+ hurricanes in ten years. Katrina and Ike were enough to cripple two major US cities. Most of Houston was without electricity and other basic services for one to two months after Ike, with massive work done by local, state, and neighboring state resourcs to get the city up and running again. If that had been a century or two earlier, it could’ve wiped out the cities. It’s easy to understand at that point how it could wipe out a pre-industrial nation or a Bronze Age city-state. Overnight, Houston went from the 21st century to the 18th or 19th century pioneer level, and rebuilt over the next several months. Lesson: A major hurricane like Patricia could do that anywhere else too.
The ISS space station is a great thing. But it’s only a few modules and a few highly trained people at a time. It could have been much more by now. But it is a stepping stone out of the cradle. Mars is a stepping stone too, which we haven’t reached yet. And instead of an active, manned space program, NASA’s people hitch a ride with the Russians to get into space. Imagine how much more we could do if NASA were still as active as it was in the 1980’s and 1990’s. With NASA, ESA, Russia, and other space programs all cooperating, imagine what we could get done. Heck, invite everybody to the party. Getting into space is a big enough project to need everyone’s involvement. And if everyone has a stake in space, in the benefits for Earth of being in space, then it’s less likely that any one nation will shoot at each other from space or from the ground. When your boys and girls and our boys and girls are up there together, it’s not so attractive to shoot at each other. Hmm, and they get friendly and form useful partnerships, trade ideas, trade commerce, and just maybe, they do what comes natural and make babies together. Families. And then it’s far less attractive to throw rocks from space, etc.
No benefits from space? What about all the technologies born out of the various space programs? We use these every day, planet-wide now. It benefits us all to trade, to compete in a friendly way, and to share those benefits, to cross-fertilize. Not enough resources on a crowded planet? Hydroponics, seafood farming, and so on in a space module on a station. Get people out into the solar system, it relieaves population pressure on the planet. All sorts of benefits.
And hmm, I have the strangest feeling I’ve seen all those things in a great many books by a great many authors, CJC being just one among them. — And astronauts and cosmonauts and scientists have been saying similar things for years.
Heck, a competition as well as a sensibel need to share technology, benefited both the US and Russian (and other) space programs. It made practical sense to be sure our and their equipment could work together, to dock, at least, in case of emergency. And Apollo-Soyuz and other cooperation meant both sides were not as likely to fight each other. Probably. It was at least a deterrent.
I was 3 when we landed on the moon; a little boy in footie pajamas with a blanket, who got to stay up late like a big boy to watch with mom and dad as history was made. I was in college when the Challenger disaster happened, and an adult when Columbia happened. — I really hope I’ll get to see a manned (and womanned) Mars landing during my lifetime. If it takes a century, then we’ve really stumbled somewhere. I am all for being prepared. But we can and should do this. It’s funny, Kennedy made his speech in the Rice football stadium not too far away here in the city, before I was born. Tell me again why we are not on Mars with a permanent presence by now, or why we don’t have a thriving space station and moon base.
Cost? If we really take advantage of space, then we recover our costs many times over. We get food and living space and technical advances we can’t imagine yet. We thereby lessen the reasons for conflict on Earth to some degree.
And…if we don’t go out there and reach the stars, we’ve short-changed all the astronauts and cosmonauts who were willing to dream and to do sometihing in real life, even though it risked or cost their lives. Human beings have always gone over that next mountain and that next ocean, past the horizon. We’ve always reached for the stars. Or what’s a heaven for? (To paraphrase Shakespeare’s lines.)
Preaching to the choir, but I really wish we’d get a move on. The 50th anniversary of the moon landing is less than five years away. Let’s get to Mars before the 100th, or better yet, before the 75th.