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he aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida.
Florida and Hurricane Ian offer yet another example of the truism that profound misunderstanding of how things work, a.k.a. ignorance, can be deadly. The same people who often complain after a hurricane that the forecasters hyped the danger while nothing much bad happened are now caterwauling that the forecasters and the media and the government did not warn them soon enough or strongly enough about Ian.
Horsefeathers. The National Weather Service issued warnings five days before the storm hit that it posed severe danger to all of southern and central Florida.
Now here’s the first thing one must understand if one is subject to weather: it is not possible to predict exactly where and when it will rain, or the wind will blow, or the tornado will spin up. When you are trying to predict what will happen in a global cauldron of hot and cold air, constantly rising and sinking, forming huge lateral currents, migrating poleward then toward the equator, absorbing and then shedding moisture, all on a spinning earth, what you get is not an accurate forecast of what is going to happen in any specific place, but an estimate. That is the best you are ever going to get, ever, no matter what new technology appears.
A half century ago, weather forecasts were usefully accurate about half the time. Now that we have satellites and improved radars and computer models and tons more data available to us in real time, forecasts of the weather ten days out are usefully accurate about half the time. Three-day forecasts, however, are good over 90% of the time.
(In the 1960s, as a journalist in Washington D.C., I was interviewing the head of the National Weather Service about their newly renovated headquarters. He was giving me a tour, and one of the things he said was that with the enormous new capacity of their computers they would finally be able to account for the curvature of the earth. It took a couple of beats for that to sink in. “Wait a minute,” I interrupted, “are you saying that forecasts until now have assumed a flat earth?” He didn’t like me putting it that way but could not deny it.)
Back to Ian. The first forecasts of landfall were issued Sunday, three days out, and placed it in the Big Bend area on the northernmost part of the state’s west coast. Now comes the next thing that must be understood if life depends on surviving a hurricane: every meteorologist says with every track forecast that one should not focus on the black line that represents the consensus of the moment, but on the cone, the area extending to either side that contains all the expected possibilities, and the even wider area that will experience dangerous winds no matter where the eye is, exactly..
The variables were so extreme that the various computer models differed widely in their predictions, and by Tuesday morning the black line of the track-forecast consensus had shifted south, and put landfall just to the north of Tampa Bay. But the cone of probabilities still included Fort Myers, 120 miles farther south. Predictions of the damage to be done to Tampa were catastrophic. Which brings us to another thing widely misunderstood about hurricanes by the media and the public.
When a hurricane comes ashore, it is really two quite different storms, one to the right of the eye (facing forward along its track) and one to the left. Whatever the average wind speed of the storm, the forward velocity of the storm, say 20-30 miles per hour, is added to the wind speed on the right side and subtracted from those on the left side. A difference of wind speed of as much as 60 miles per hour is significant. Water to the right of the eye is piled up against the land by the onshore wind, adding to the height of the storm surge (some of which consists of water sucked higher by the extreme low pressure in the heart of the storm). Water to the left of the eye is blown out to sea.
So when the predicted track shifted just a few miles, and was now thought to be south of Tampa Bay, the prospects for the Tampa area changed dramatically for the better, a fact that the media and the public were very slow to realize. The media had already placed their storm reporters in Tampa, ready to do their impersonations of drowning chickens, and for hours after Tampa was largely out of danger the reporters and anchors — not the meteorologists — were talking about Apocalypse Now for Tampa.
Still the predicted track drifted southward and on Monday the NWS warned people in the vicinity of Fort Myers to prepare for catastrophic damage from the wind and the storm surge. On Tuesday, Lee County officials, where Fort Myers is located, ordered evacuations from low lying areas. On Wednesday afternoon, time was up. Fort Myers Beach was nailed by the right side of the hurricane, and 90% of its buildings were destroyed.
The NWS, in my opinion, did a superb job in tracking this storm and issuing appropriate warnings. With all the sympathy in the world for the suffering of the thousands of people affected, and for the deaths of more than 80, we need to recognize going forward that ignorance about what a hurricane is and can do, along with public indifference to changing forecasts and evacuation orders, are what made the situation worse, not any imagined “failures” of forecasters or authorities.
A useful fact to remember in all cases when dealing with wind speed is that the energy of wind increases as a square of wind speed, because KE=MVsquared, that is, kinetic energy is equal to mass times velocity squared. As mass remains the same we can easily see that the relative energy of a 10mph breeze (100) is less than half that of a 15mph one (225).
A year or so ago I struggled through James Gleick’s book, ‘Chaos, making a new science’. I figure I understood about half of it…OK, a third! Anyway, he documented many of the attempts that scientists have made over the decades in tracking weather and climate movements, and the difficulties involved in lending predictability to such dynamic patterns in which the variables seem damn near infinite.
It convinced me of the truth of that old adage, “science is not an exact science”.
As Einstein is reputed to have said, “We know we are wrong. The only question is which decimal place.”
My BF’s father lives in Ft. Myers in a senior living community. He’s 96. Some staffer found an cell signal afterward and managed to send out an email. Everyone’s OK, but the whole town was damn near submerged.
PS Tom, I haven’t gotten your emails in quite a while. Was getting worried. Glad to see you’re still posting. Guess I got mysteriously unsubscribed.
Wasn’t me. Try subscribing again.
Same problem. Tried resubscribing, told me I was already subscribed
Have you checked your spam folder? Gmail has a way of branding things as spam when they are not.
To your broader point about ignorance and where it leads, interesting how the Russian energy embargo is going.
I read that margin calls in excess of $1T are imperilling the energy traders, the energy companies, the banks, and the whole Western ‘market uber alles’ financial edifice. I wonder who will pay this piper?
We are in human overshoot which demands a die-off. The hurricanes are merely acting out Gaia’s orders and she’s just getting started. Can’t wait for 50 gigaton methane belch from the Arctic to really get things rolling. We are out of time, ladies and gentlemen.
Didn’t know that about the relative wind speeds on the NE (2 o’clock) and NW (10 o’clock) sides of the eye wall. Glad I got out of bed this morning.
Having lived in Florida for 10 years, going through 2004 season in Ft. Lauderdale (missed us, but whacked West Palm and St. Lucie), and then driving through Katrina in S. Florida, we know damn well to err on the side of caution. As I told my co-workers up here in the NE, they won’t really know where Ian will hit until it gets about level with Key West. The cone of uncertainty is greatly reduced by that time. The day before I was estimating Sanibel and Captiva would get whacked.
Then everyone tries to leave and the “evacuation master plan”, (he says with wry sarcasm), has massive jam ups on the Interstates and hotels sold out for three states over. Not much of a plan – “RUN”.
After Katrina crossed S. Florida I said she is going out to the middle of the Gulf and will put on the right turn blinker and head for New Orleans. That’s the way the upper level steering air currents work. Tends to push the storm in a clock-wise arc. Reason the Carolinas keep getting hit repeatedly, and Jacksonville gets missed.
The aftermath part that really annoys though is the Build Back Strong. We will rebuild. Mostly said because the politicians have no other option. However, the insurance companies, or rather lack of insurance companies, will have something different to say about that. How can the majority afford to build if they can’t get insurance at less than $1000/mo, and hence no mortgage? The area will revert to the wealthy few that can afford to have a winter home washed away.
It is a sad turn because it is a beautiful area. But all things must pass (according to The George).
Nothing to add other than to commend the George Harrison reference. As a young man, always favored John, but George was right there in second place. As I get older though, I probably spend more time listening to George’s work.
Also, want to ask if Tom is doing ok. Just taking one of your usual breaks, or something wrong? Would love to hear your comments on Truss’s resignation, the asset market crashing anew, Ukraine, etc…
Further to Oji. Am of two minds, but for those that have been watching the energy markets and infrastructure since the days of The Oil Drum, there are usually two well defined outcomes; collapse and resilience.
That is, how will Western Europe get by this winter? Is it as bad as we are projecting, or do they come up with innovative ways to adapt and carry on? This season will be a real test for all of us to observe.
Sorry Germany et al if you feel like a petri dish.
And more on George: not only was he a fantastic musician, he was a great person. One would think carrying the moniker of “Ex-Beatle” they would have a chip on their shoulder, but he did not at all. And, if it wasn’t for George Harrison Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” may never have been made! He funded it. God bless George.
I can’t help wonder if with the lack of insurance, several things may happen:
1) building by rich people who can afford to not have a mortgage and no insurance
2) drastic drop in land values as most people can’t afford to build normal homes without a mortgage.
3) lots of people leaving
4) building of very cheap homes (ie. mobile homes, tiny homes, outright shacks) by ordinary people, that can be built on now-cheap land without needing a mortgage, and that cost less if they get washed away.
So you could get a landscape of mansion communities and shanty towns outside their gates.
Yep, sounds like the new Middle Ages.
I was actually thinking of Haiti. The rich didn’t have air conditioning, central heating and cars during the middle ages.