Hurricane Irene of 2011 now rated history's 6th most damaging hurricane
New damage estimates released last month by NOAA now place the damage from 2011's Hurricane Irene at $15.8 billion, making the storm the 6th costliest hurricane and 10th costliest weather-related disaster in U.S. history. Irene hit North Carolina on August 27, 2011, as a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds, and made landfalls the next day in New Jersey and New York City as a tropical storm. Most of the damage from Irene occurred because of the tremendous fresh water flooding the storm's rains brought to much of New England. Irene is now rated as the most expensive Category 1 hurricane to hit the U.S. The previous record was held by Hurricane Agnes of 1972, whose floods did $11.8 billion in damage in the Northeast. NOAA also announced that the name Irene had been retired from the list of active hurricane names. Irene was the only named retired in 2011, and was the 76th name to be retired since 1954. The name Irene was replaced with Irma, which is next scheduled be used in 2017.
Figure 1. True-color MODIS image of Hurricane Irene over North Carolina taken at 11:35 am EDT August 27, 2011. At the time, Irene was a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds. Image credit: NASA.
At last month's 30th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology of the American Meteorological Society, Paul Ruscher of Florida State University explained how Irene's storm surge came within 8 inches of flooding New York City's subway system, which would have caused devastating damage. At the current global rate of sea level rise of 3.1 mm/year, a repeat of Irene 65 years from now would be capable of flooding the subway system, if no action is taken. Since sea level rise is expected to accelerate as the planet warms in coming decades, an Irene-type storm surge would likely be capable of flooding the NYC subway system much sooner than that. To read more about New York City's vulnerability, see Andrew Freedman's analysis at Climate Central, Climate Change Could Cripple New York’s Transportation, or my November 2011 blog post, Hurricane Irene: New York City dodges a potential storm surge mega-disaster.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Remember seeing the roads buckling? and water line breaks? they still haven't fixed all the leaks yet
Sinkholes in TX make the news (remember the Daisetta sinkhole a few years ago?).
USGS page on sinkholes
Note how they are *not* caused by drought, but rather subsurface drainage of water.
Yea this
Mama's home town.
Daisetta
Daisetta is a small town about 60 miles northeast of Houston and was once a boomimg oil town but now has only 1,000 residents.
Daisetta sits atop a salt dome, a place where oil brine and natural gas are stored underground. The ground is thought to have caved in due to a collapse of the salt dome causing a giant sinkhole.
The most damaging sinkholes tend to occur in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas where salt beds, limestone, and carbonate rock, are common.
From this it sounds like we can be at ease this yr and really not worry about hurricanes. That is some good news. A quite season we all need that, have a great summer with no worries, I hope that's right, cause from what there saying El nino don't really put off bad hurricanes right?
sheri
Good morning admin,
Was getting a weird message when I signed in yesterday eve. After several tries I opened wu in a new tab and was signed in.
This morning my mail was set for normal delivery. I did not do that. ALSO just tried to change my password and my computer wanted to download a file related to member sign in when I clicked to confirm password change. I did not attempt download. Just closed the tab.
Have not ever experienced this on the site and I am wondering if this is a wu glitch from site being worked on or if site has been hacked.
Also, the blog list is constipated - not updating but is allowing members to comment.
bf
Yeah, I'd like to believe they're right too. But from what I can tell El Nino doesn't guarantee a lessening of stronger storms. An end to the drought would be a nice benefit that's for sure.
Neopolitan- Yes I understand that I live in Lower Alabama. I know it only takes one, to ruin someones life, I just meant that it's not gonna be as bad like the last few yrs with all the high predictions that's all. I know what a hurricane can do to you first hand, so my guard isn't down just not anticipating a bad year with LaNina gone.
sheri
I think it's gonna be pretty quite this year to.
sheri
lol
WU has been weird for me also. I use Chrome at home and cannot get into my own blog on Chrome.. even my "halloween" handle cannot get into my own blog..
but I can get into my blog on Internet Explorer..
And I have been in touch with WU Admin 3 days in a row and they cannot fix the problem..
Hi everyone, I am at work now and on IE so I can get on here.. also noticed that nothing is updating in past 14 hours!
SE Florida got a lot of rain the past two weekends, we hope to get some sunshine this weekend..
sure wish points in Central and North Fla get rain because it hurts us when you all don't get it..
Good morning!!
Stan the Man Musial's wife Lil passed at home with family last night at 6 o'clock (Stan's jersey # was 6). They have been married since 1940. Edit: really nice photo gallery on stltoday.com of Stan/Lil photos.
there have been issues with WU and Chrome.. someone from my blog noticed it also..
is that happening to any of you??
My neighborhood received 7.25" of rain Sat, Sun and Mon..... and probably over 2" the weekend before. That is a lot of rain in little over a week.
Same issues here on firefox, so it is independent of browser.
The CONUS has not been hit by anything stronger than Cat 1 (Irene last year) since 2008.
A few depressions or Tropical storms but no hurricanes.
Florida has not been hit since 2005
(but we got hit what 8 times or was it 10 times in 2004 & 2005)
Along with the Barents and Kara seas at record lows.
One must realize while cherry picking that there are often sweet and sour cherries on the tree at the same time.
One cannot judge the quality of the tree based on the taste of a single cherry.
The blog of Charles Fenwick
The recent dearth of landfalling hurricanes in the United States
May 31, 2011
One of the story-lines going into the 2011 season is the recent lack of hurricanes making landfall in the United States. Since Hurricane Ike came ashore in the early hours of September 13, 2008 no hurricane has made landfall in the United States. While this was not particularly surprising in the case of the quiet 2009 season, the 2010 season was amazing for having no U.S. landfalls despite hurricanes being plentiful. In this post we shall review the few sets of consecutive seasons that did not feature at least one hurricane making landfall in the United States...
...On the flip side, when the runs of hurricanes without U.S. landfalls end, it tends not to do so quietly. Similar to how the 1981-1982 stretch was broken by Alicia, the 1930-1931 run was broken by a category four hurricane coming into Texas. 1993-1994 was followed by a 1995 season that had four hurricane names retired, with one, Opal, making landfall in the states as a major hurricane. Finally, the afforementioned Lili of 2002 broke the 2000-2001 streak and caused over $1 billion worth of damage in the course of doing so.
Bonnie TS
Charley
Frances
Ivan
Jeanne
2005 Florida Hits:
Arlene TS
Dennis
Katrina
Tammy TS
Wilma
And had close calls with a few others like Cindy & Rita..
We got about 50 years of storms in those 2 years!
HOUSTON – A seven-month-old baby died after being left inside the back of a hot pickup truck for most of the day in Houston on Thursday, officials told the Houston Chronicle.
Authorities said the baby's father left the child in the car from the time he dropped his older children off at school in the morning, until after his wife called him late in the afternoon to see how their kids were.
Upon receiving the phone call, the man realized he had left the baby in the vehicle all day and rushed outside to his pickup.
The baby had already died, officials said.
Police, who have not identified the baby's parents or the gender of the baby, have launched an investigation into the death, but are yet to lay any charges.
Looks can be deceiving, the PWAT is only around 1.4 and that is here on the west side of Florida, that is very low for as far as needed for thunderstorm activity by Central Florida standards, any storms to pop would be isolated today and rainfall certainly wouldn't be very heavy. It's actually even lower on your side of the state, closer to 1 inch.
PWAT analysis:
I don't understand how you "forget" a baby in a vehicle.
As if that wasn't enough, go all day long without noticing you weren't actually...watching the baby!
Interesting visual
Edit: It appears that I don't know how to post a page--the link was this:
http://hint.fm/wind/
Got people having kids that don't need kids. Dangerous future for America has arrived. Only gonna get worse
From what I remember about sinkholes... settling and foundation issues are caused by dry weather. Sinkholes are more often caused by excessively wet weather, as most sinkholes are related to underground cavern systems being eroded by flowing water. (after all, if they were caused by dry weather, why didn't Texas have massive sinkhole problems last year?)
From Wikipedia:Sinkholes are common where the rock below the land surface is limestone or other carbonate rock, salt beds, or rocks that can naturally be dissolved by circulating ground water. As the rock dissolves, spaces and caverns develop underground. These sinkholes can be dramatic because the surface land usually stays intact until there is not enough support. Then, a sudden collapse of the land surface can occur.
Sinkholes also form from human activity, such as the rare but still occasional collapse of abandoned mines in places like West Virginia, USA. More commonly, sinkholes occur in urban areas due to water main breaks or sewer collapses when old pipes give way. They can also occur from the overpumping and extraction of groundwater and subsurface fluids. They can also form when natural water-drainage patterns are changed and new water-diversion systems are developed. Some sinkholes form when the land surface is changed, such as when industrial and runoff-storage ponds are created; the substantial weight of the new material can trigger an underground collapse of supporting material, thus, causing a sinkhole.
In the southern States sink holes are generally caused by erosion of porous rock. I live in Canada where the biggest culprit is the freeze thaw cycle. This allows water the penetrate into the underground. Then when the thawing really gets going the flowing water gets into the soft spots created and you suddenly get big holes. In cities the flowing water is ussually from water mains that get ruptured with the heaving and subsiding due to the freeze thaw cycle.
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