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Title: Hurricane Earl Heads Toward U.S. as Evacuations Begin
Source:
Bloomberg
URL Source: http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news ... 0601087&sid=aRYNDiKdmDGs&pos=8
Published: Jan 1, 2010
Author: Bloomberg
Post Date: 2010-09-01 11:54:25 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 312
Comments: 1
Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Earl, a slightly weaker but still major storm, threatened North Carolina and coastal Massachusetts and prompted the first evacuations as it powered toward the U.S. East Coast. Earl’s maximum sustained winds today dropped to 125 miles (205 kilometers) an hour from 135 mph yesterday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a website advisory just before 8 a.m. Miami time. The system was 780 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, moving northwest and away from the Turks and Caicos Islands at 16 mph. “The worst-case scenario is Earl does make landfall in the Outer Banks and even in New England and brings major hurricane conditions to those places,” John Cangialosi, a hurricane specialist at the center in Miami, said today in a telephone interview. “Our forecast is for this to pass just offshore but it wouldn’t take much of a turn for it to hit land.” North Carolina’s Hyde County declared a state of emergency and ordered mandatory evacuations beginning today for all visitors and residents of Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks. Visitors were also ordered to leave nearby Hatteras Island. A North Carolina hurricane watch was today extended into Virginia and a tropical storm warning was issued for San Salvador Island in the central Bahamas, the center said. “The core of the hurricane will be passing well east and northeast of the Bahamas today and tonight and could approach the North Carolina coast by Friday morning,” the center said. “Large swells from Earl should affect the Bahamas and the southeastern coast of the United States today.” Hurricane Watch Earl, now a Category 3 “major” storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, down from Category 4 earlier, is on a path that would take it just past Cape Hatteras early on Sept. 3 and then to Nantucket and Massachusetts’s Cape Cod before hitting Canada the next day, according to the center. The current track shows the storm going ashore near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, on the morning of Sept. 4, according to the website of the Canadian Hurricane Centre. Hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph reached 90 miles from Earl’s eye and tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph extended as far out as 200 miles, the hurricane center said. Boston Rain Rain from Earl will probably start arriving in Boston tomorrow night, with the worst impact the following afternoon, said Bob Thompson, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s Taunton, Massachusetts, office. The hurricane is expected to pass about 50 to 100 miles southeast of Nantucket with wind gusts of at least 74 mph for the island and Cape Cod, he said. Boston is forecast to receive heavy rain and may see winds in the 39 mph to 73 mph range, he said. “The rain could be heavy enough for some localized urban flooding,” Thompson said. “That could be the biggest impact for Boston.” The U.S. Coast Guard has put shipping in Norfolk, Virginia, on notice. It also warned boat-owners to move their craft to inland marinas and tourists to steer clear of beaches. The hurricane watch, an indication winds of at least 74 mph are possible within two days, now extends from Surf City in North Carolina to Parramore Island in Virginia. A tropical storm watch extends from Surf City, about 135 miles southeast of Raleigh, to the Cape Fear area south of Wilmington. Rough Seas “Hurricane conditions are expected to exist along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts over the coming days producing an elevated risk of dangerous rip currents, high surf and rough seas,” the Coast Guard said in a statement on its website. Watches were discontinued for the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands as Earl moved away from them. Earl may cause insured losses of $100 million, catastrophe forecaster Eqecat Inc. said in a statement on its website yesterday. Losses may approach $500 million if the storm moves 100 miles closer to the mainland, the company said. The two most recent hurricanes to damage Massachusetts were Hurricane Gloria in 1985, which killed 8 people, left 2 million without power and caused $900 million in damage; and Bob, which struck in 1991, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. Bob came ashore near New Bedford and killed 18 people and caused $2.5 billion in damage. Earl is being followed across the Atlantic by Tropical Storm Fiona, whose winds intensified today to 60 mph from 40 mph yesterday, the hurricane center said. Storm Fiona Fiona was about 70 miles northeast of Barbuda and heading west-northwest at 15 mph, the center said at 8 a.m. Miami time. The storm is predicted to pass between Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast. A hit on Bermuda remains a possibility, graphics on the center’s website show. St. Martin and St. Barthelemy in the Leeward Islands were under a tropical storm warning as Fiona approached and watches were in place for Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius. Forecasters are also watching another area of disturbed weather 800 miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands in the eastern Atlantic that has an 80 percent chance of becoming a depression or a tropical storm in the next two days. 
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
The Fujiwara effect is named after Dr. Sakuhei Fujiwara. He was a Japanese meteorologist and the first noted with describing two storms coming together. It was published in a paper he from 1921 in which he wrote about the motion of vortexes in open waters. He explained that when two cyclones, of at least tropical storm wind speeds, come within 900 miles of each other there is a strange effect on their centers. The eyes will attract each other and begin to orbit together at a specific point between the two systems. This attraction will eventually lead to the storms merging and forming a storm of catastrophic proportions. If the storms are of unequal size, the larger one is the more dominant leaving the smaller vortex to orbit around it. Sometimes the storms will stay together, or their interaction may be brief. The final merging of the two storms is rare, but entirely possible. One more wild card: Tropical Storm Fiona. Tuesday night we briefly witnessed a rare occurrence, the “Fujiwhara effect“. The Fujiwhara effect occurs when two storms pass very close to each other and start to influence each other’s path and strength by literally rotating around each other. The phenomenon was named after the Japanese meteorologist who first observed this phenomenon in the Western Pacific Ocean. When one storm is vastly stronger than the other (as is the case with Earl and Fiona), the dominant storm (Earl) may actually even begin to “eat” the weaker storm (seen briefly Tuesday night as a line of thunderstorms passed from Fiona to Earl). Were the Fujiwhara Effect to continue, at the very least, Tropical Storm Fiona may act to nudge Earl slightly farther southwest (towards the coastline), while Fiona slingshots around Earl towards Bermuda. As of 9 a.m. EST Wednesday, the distance between the two storms was growing, limiting the impact of this effect. Strong Cat 4, S/N Carolina Border. Worst East Coast Storm in 50 years. Donna 60. Evac Norfolk to Cape Cod. Reminds me of Katrina and New Orleans strolling Jackson Square.
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