Hurricane Irma
 

https://weather.com/storms/hurricane...ward-islands-0

Storm is now a Cat. 5 and Florida is under a state of emergency. Current models have it reaching Florida as a Cat. 4 and is unknown if it'll turn north off the east coast or the west coast of the state.

Poor Florida. I suppose when you're a large peninsula that sticks out like a sore thumb down that south, it's to be expected sometimes, but one that strong...? :ohwell:

For their sake, I hope it turns sooner, only skirts the coast, and they end up on the "safer" side of it. Comparatively speaking of what the worst side (north/east) could do if it hits from the gulf side instead. :tsad: (But then at the same time, where does it go after that.)

I trust FL's got this though, they know the drill and doubt most will just sit in place like Texas unfortunately did. Now to just check in on a friend though and see what her plans with her husband and handful of pets is...

Horrible to hear this might hit Florida. Looks like hurricane season is starting off with a bang.

Irma's going to hit both the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico at Category 5 levels.

From the National Weather Service as of 3 hours ago:
Stay safe, everyone.

All I know is that I have a beach house rented next week in Florida so Irma better stay the f&ck out of the Gulf. If it goes in the Gulf and its a Cat 5 it won't even matter if I stay home. I'll still have a hurricane to deal with.

Florida is no stranger with Hurricanes, you been through one, you been through them all.

I know that, but it's still not a good thing that they have to deal with.

That line of thinking is silly, especially considering how they dont experience the same type of hurricane every time.

Add in the fact that it has been, I believe, quite a while since FL has had a major hurricane make landfall, right? You could have a lot of newcomers to the state in that time that haven't seen more than a minor one or tropical storms.

Sure there have been some near misses, like Matthew last year, but skirting the coast to the east is nothing in comparison to a landfall or a bad one on the Gulf side.

Irene (who I keep trying to mistake Irma's name for!) did that to us here. Being on the better side of that thing I was surprised how little impact there was. Being on the "bad" side of Isabel, however, weakened to a TS, in '03 was worse for us, even at the distance it was. Fingers crossed that Irma turns sooner and spares FL the same. Don't want to think about hit hitting anyone else if that happens, but hopefully it might weaken by then.

Yeah, Hurricane Andrew was the last major one they had in 1992 and I doubt a lot of people have forgotten that horrific storm. I would hate for something like this to happen again.

Really, as was said, its not that people who went through it forget, its that 1 million or so people have moved to Florida since Andrew. Those people have no Idea what they're in for.

If you have been through a big one, you don't forget. Mine was Ivan. It made me paranoid about any hurricane that even LOOKS like it might come towards me.

2 more hurricanes are coming. Katia and Jose.

These are the end times, I tell you.

Eh, Katia looks to be a short lived TS affecting Mexico only. (edit: Never mind, guess I saw 'old' info, Katia became a hurricane. That fast. Wtf.) Was surprised to just see that one on a radar map thing I just looked at.

End times, no. Common busy part of the season, yes. Shame Irma's projected path doesn't seem to have shifted much from this morning. :ohwell: Just a little more to the east.

And Jose is now a hurricane, assumed to become major as well. Lovely. And now that they've put a projected path on that one... Are they spreading out so that everyone can have one? (Turn out to sea, jackass...and drag your big sister off with you.)

I'm ready for Hurricane Irma.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJEIm1cWsAE6mJ9.jpg:small

She's bringing the big guns, alright.

Ivan, Irma, Isabel, Irene... I-storms are such hurricane I-holes. :tmad:

I actually wanted to make a joke like that but was afraid people would take it the wrong way. :P

Hurricanes seem to usually have female names or is it just me?

Hurricane names alternate male and female. We've just gotten a run of fairly strong female ones lately.

This sounds like a dumb question, but why do they name hurricanes? Do they do that for tornados and other natural disasters as well?

No. I'm not sure why they name them other than that it is easier than referring to "the second F3 hurricane in the Atlantic of the 2017 season". People would not remember which one it is. So they just give them names. Mention Sandy or Katrina though and they know EXACTLY which one it is!

They started naming them for simplicity of plotting and because people seem to pay attention when they are named. They used to name them by where they did damage, but then you may have had one storm with multiple names and they would have had no idea it was the same storm.

In the 30's or 40's the started being able to track them and decided to name them. The first batch of named hurricanes were named with the military alphabet. (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, etc).

Then they did all female names alphabetically.

Then they changed to alternating male and female names alphabetically. They have six or seven lists that they run through each year. This year happens to be the same list from the year Katrina hit. When a storm is particularly deadly or costly they retire names.

Like the year Katrina hit, if they run through all the names on a list for a certian year, they go to the Greek alphabet.

....weather nerd

Good to know. So then a hurricane will never be named Katrina or Andrew again since those were deadly hurricanes. You learn something new every day.

Yeah Harvey and possibly this one will definitely be retired after this season.

Have we ever even gotten to the Greek names other than in 2005? That was wild. I remember even at the end of the year we still had a named storm. Two that December. Only reason that list stopped was because the year did! :lol: (I'd thought we might start on the next list early in Jan. but they oddly stopped after Zeta died post-New Year.)



So Irma is edging eastward? This is good I hope for a portion of FL, even if just a little?

Three confirmed deaths in Puerto Rico. 70% of people without power, 18% without access to running water, and 42% of the hospitals being operational.

Good thing we have CNN to inform us, that maybe if this hurricane had a masculine name, maybe this gender-biased society would have taken Hurricane Irma more seriously:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/01/health...rnd/index.html

Saw that turn up on Google the other day, and via multiple sources... so it wasn't CNN's study, so why blame them. Not like they're the only ones who reported on it.

And if a study did find that some people seem to stupidly take a storm less seriously based on its name, so be it. Some humans are dumb like that. Survival of the fittest will take care of them.

Undoubtedly similar might happen with softer sounding male names vs more macho sounding. Only an idiot will judge it by its name, but... let said idiot go ahead with it.

Unfortunately Survival of the Fittest really means Survival of the Just Fit Enough To Eek By.

The study on Female Named Storms being more deadly isn't some grand new revelation, it's from a 2014 paper.

You can read a dissection of the paper Here.

Or the paper itself Here.

It important to note that only female presenting names were used to name storms between 1950 and 1978, so that kind of skews the data a bit.

Honestly? There's just way too many variables to consider when one looks at the overall danger of a given storm.

The socio-economic background of the community. The severity of the storm. The infrastructure. Where the people in said community get their information.

I just read a transcript of a hard-right leaning talking head who told people not to worry about buying bottled water, because the stuff from the tap is fine.

Which, I'm sure in their neck of the woods it is...but that's not always the case. And might not be the case after the storm hits.

That was the only year besides the years with no naming convention that the Greek names were used.

There's still alot of play in the track. I see they have moved it back slightly to the west again so they have it running straight up the peninsula again.

I just hope it stays out of the Gulf. For my vacaton and home's sake. If it goes in the Gulf it will stay HUGE. Its already the longest lived Cat 5 in recorded Atlantic history.

Bleh, that sucks that it moved back over. :( Best of luck with this thing...

He really didn't think that through nearly enough. :roll: Sure, if you already have old clean milk jugs or other containers you can fill up, do it. (And some news sources have been suggesting people do.) But as you said, post storm... then what? A little listeria (or whatever is more likely) goes a long way. :sick:

Those unsealed containers will also only keep for so long, of course. Better to use those first and still have some sealed ones for backup later.

Better their GI tract than mine. Honestly, anyone who considers him, or those like him, to be reliable or credible in any way only have themselves to blame.

Here's video of Hurricane Irma from the ISS today, she's HUGE!

The fact anyone is talking about a study based on what named hurricanes are taken more seriously boggles my mind. We just had Harvey which devastated Houston and now Irma is about to unleash on Florida. Who cares. What's next, are we gonna waste time talking about how hurricanes with latino names arent taken seriously like Jose?

Nah, you missed the point. He posted that to be political. "Oh hai guiz! Isn't CNN such fake news! LOL. stupid feminists."

Never mind that plenty of other news outlets posted it as an interesting phenomenon and CNN didn't create the study

Everyone and their mother tried to make Harvey political and even then, that got annoying. Let's stick to what's important here and that's the safety of the people in the southeast.

Maybe they deserve to die due to their own stupidity. :trolleye: A hurricane is a hurricane, their own gender bias to the names doesn't change the danger it brings.

Except that keeping those people safe IS political.
Infrastructure maintenance and upgrades are political.
Disaster relief is political.

All of that stuff comes from somewhere, and has to be paid for somehow.
A bunch of the lawmakers looking for funding for Houston denied similar funding for New York for the damage done by Sandy.

Some are saying Harvey funding will be tied to funding "the wall." That sounds political to me and also reminds me of the following quote.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." -Rahm Emanuel

Everything's always political these days. There's a huge online laugh fest about that CNN story and on the other side, Rush Limbaugh basically said all the coverage if the hurricanes by media was part of a money grabbing conspiracy between the local news and retail stores. TLDR: he says hurricane coverage is fake news.

I am constantly amazed at what can be exploited to fit some narrative these days.

Both sides of the political spectrum have lost their minds.

Everything in our lives is going to be political nowadays. That's just the way things are and we just have to either deal with it or ignore it. I'm definitely more concerned about the safety of others, but certain things are funded by the government such as FEMA.

That's what you get, when technology allows to develop "infobubbles" which unite people based on their "beliefs".

Before, people could be united by their beliefs, but they still were forced to interact with outside world, so their insanity / zelousness was kept in check, either because of ethics or because their day-to-day interactions were not allowed them to become completely brainwashed.

Nowadays, people can create an environment, where they can be surrounded by only like-minded individuals almost 24/7. Which allow their zealousness to grow and fester unchecked. Add to this default teenage maximalism and people who want to use others for their own gain (but not necessarily believing in whatever they are preaching), and you are in one heck of a ride.

Personally, I have grown weary of this left-right tug-o-war, and really want both radical sides of the spectrum to fall under the earth or something, because at this point it's not battle for progress or status quo, its just dickwaving contest, which doesn't lead to anything, but to more division, confusion and hatred. Both sides, have compromised themselves to the point, when they have become laughing stock for normal people, but I guess, it will take time to tide of insanity to die down.

Of course, it doesn't mean that this insanity is something new (idiots were always part of the humanity), but those unstable individuals, who could not influence a lot of people before and were mostly silent, nowadays receive a platform and a way to affect lives of other people. And this is a problem.

Sorry, for being slightly off-topic.