cmooney | September 4, 2007My latest "Storm Pundit" post is up at the Daily Green. Using Wikipedia and outher sources, I've cobbled together the records apparently set or otherwise affected by this storm. It's quite a staggering list:
1. Fastest intensification from a tropical depression to a Category 5 hurricane -- around 51 hours. (This is apparently an Atlantic record only.)
2. Second-fastest pressure fall in 12 hours (50 millibars), third-fastest in 24 hours (63 millibars). Again, apparently this is an Atlantic-only record.
3. Thirteenth full Category 5 hurricane landfall in the Atlantic region. Others…
cmooney | September 4, 2007
Felix has restrengthened overnight, and it's going to hit just as hard as Hurricane Dean did two weeks ago--140 knots, or 160 mile per hour sustained winds. Damage at the coast south of the Honduras-Nicaragua border will be potentially catastrophic, but what may be even more worrying is inland rainfall.
Meanwhile, what a start the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season is off to: The first two storms to reach hurricane strength have also reached Category 5 hurricane strength, and furthermore, have made landfall as Category 5s. We started the year with just three storms on record having hit as full…
cmooney | September 3, 2007Felix's weakening has been fairly pronounced since this morning; it's now a weak Category 4, though the hurricane guys expect a slight bounce-back before landfall.
In the meantime, we're in the waiting phase: The damage will depend upon the precise track, speed, and so on. No one can predict it in any detail, though there are certainly some bad rainfall-related scenarios for Central America.
To pass the time, I pulled together some good links about Felix, which I'd encourage you to check out:
The Flight of Their Lives? It was a hell of a reconnaissance mission into the explosively…
cmooney | September 3, 2007As I mentioned earlier, only three Atlantic hurricane seasons other than this one have recorded more than one Category 5 storm. Those seasons are 1960 (Donna, Ethel), 1961 (Cleo, Hattie), and 2005 (Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma). But here's what makes 2007 distinct: Each of the year's first two storms to reach hurricane strength have also reached Category 5 hurricane strength. You certainly don't see such a phenomenon with any of these other years.
I'm not sure exactly what to make of this particular record, but it seems unlikely to be equaled any time soon.
cmooney | September 3, 2007Here's a detail that I missed:
Felix now holds the record for shortest time for an Atlantic storm to intensify to Category 5 strength. Felix required just 51 hours to reach Category 5 strength after it started as a tropical depression. That is a truly remarkable intensification rate, considering most tropical cyclones take 3-5 days to organize into a Category 1 hurricane.
As I said in my last post--you can look at these anomalies and just shrug, but Thomas Kuhn knew well that if you get enough anomalies, you sometimes get a paradigm shift.
cmooney | September 3, 2007With a storm like Felix out there, I've been spreading it around in terms of my blogging. I've just posted about the storm at both The Daily Green and The Huffington Post. Here's the gist from the latter post:
To be sure, it might be the case that there's a natural up-and-down cycle in the Atlantic for intense hurricanes, and we're only now seeing a peak comparable to the 1960s. Some scientists would argue that point, and [you'd] only have to reclassify two hurricanes from the 1960s in order to have just as many Category 5 hurricanes during that decade as we've seen so far during the 2000s.…
cmooney | September 3, 2007
Here's some data I recently compiled. First, concerning Hurricane Felix:
* After not having once since Andrew in 1992, we are now expected to see two Category 5 Atlantic basin hurricane landfalls in the space of 2 weeks.
* Hurricane Felix reached Category 5 on September 2, just 13 days after Hurricane Dean reached it on August 20.
* Both hurricanes are stronger than anything seen in the Pacific this year, even though Pacific typhoons are generally more frequent and powerful than Atlantic hurricanes.
* 11 am ET, Sunday Sept 2: Felix was at 90 knot maximum sustained winds. By 8 pm ET, Sunday…
cmooney | September 2, 2007I'm flabbergasted. So are the forecasters. These are their words, and they should be read in their entirety:
THERE HAS BEEN RAPID STRENGTHENING OF THE HURRICANE TODAY. FELIX HAS A SPECTACULAR PRESENTATION ON SATELLITE IMAGES WITH A WELL-
DEFINED EYE EMBEDDED IN A CIRCULAR CENTRAL DENSE OVERCAST. THE HURRICANE HUNTER CREW REPORTED A STADIUM EFFECT IN THE EYE AND THAT
THE EYE DIAMETER HAD SHRUNK TO 12 N MI. THE AIR FORCE PLANE ALSO MEASURED A PEAK 700 MB FLIGHT LEVEL WIND OF 132 KT AND...FOR A SYSTEM OF SUCH CONVECTIVE VIGOR...THE 90 PER CENT RATIO OF SURFACE TO FLIGHT LEVEL WINDS SHOULD…
cmooney | September 2, 2007
Whoa boy. And the intensification very likely isn't over yet. In fact, as I note in the latest Storm Pundit column, the Caribbean only gets more conducive to hurricane strengthening as you head further west; and indeed, there's a deep patch of warm water ahead of Felix:
How strong will Felix get? I'm thinking at least a Category 4...
cmooney | September 2, 2007
Here's the now-Category 2 storm, forecast to follow a similar track to that of Hurricane Dean last month--almost straight across the Caribbean towards the Yucatan, Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
The official forecast says Felix will reach Category 4 strength along the way. Any track change could of course implicate the United States. More soon....
sheril | September 1, 2007A few weeks ago, I reported the possible disappearance of the Yangtze River dolphin when Biological Letters published an article suggesting this may be the first human-caused extinction of a cetacean species. And would you know it, according to The New York Times, a baiji dolphin was filmed in the Yangtze River this very week. Good news for marine mammal enthusiasts everywhere. Then again, Bigfoot's sighted quite often too.
cmooney | August 31, 2007This is pretty troubling. NASA is reportedly requiring longtime career scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center to go through FBI screening similar to what you need to get a security clearance. The new scrutiny is allegedly pursuant to a Homeland Security directive, but that directive seems to allow considerably more leniency than NASA is in fact applying to these top labs, which do very "little or no" classified work. Employees are, in turn, suing NASA over the new strictures.
I'm just reporting what others have reported--in this case, my source is The…
sheril | August 31, 2007Since Monday's foray into the realm of religion, many readers have responded regarding:
I just don't think these [atheist] books provide folks reason to notice they were atheists all along without a shepherd. Wouldn't that liken PZ to Abraham? Or dare I say it, Jesus?
Of course, this was only in jest and PZ knows we thoroughly enjoy his style and wit. But Michelangelo's Creation of Adam in Chris' post yesterday inspired us to recognize another obvious comparison...
It's uncanny. Coincidence? You decide.
cmooney | August 31, 2007In which I discourse about hurricanes and global warming with Sarah Goforth of Discovery News:
What do folks think of the ending, where--following my lead--the video contrasts the number of Category 5 storms between 1970 and 2002 (8) with the number between 2003 and 2007 (7)? My own view is that while we shouldn't make too much of a comparison like this, it is still worrisome...
cmooney | August 30, 2007
This is the picture--suspiciously resembling my colleague and Scibling Matt Nisbet--that runs alongside our two and a half page letters exchange (PDF) in the current issue of Science. Essentially, there are four letters reacting to and criticizing various aspects of our "Framing Science" policy forum article from April (PDF). And then there's our lengthy response--which you can read in its entirety over at Nisbet's blog. (To get the other letters you'll need a subscription, at least for the time being.)
Some familiar issues arise here--for example, one letter writer incorrectly likens…
cmooney | August 30, 2007
[God: "Go ahead, make my day."]
I have been staying out of the science and religion mess lately--although I think it's already known that while I'm personally non-religious, I agree with Nisbet that going head-on at people's faith probably isn't a very good strategy if you want to defend the teaching of evolution in the USA.
But in any event, what harm can come from a tiny little post? (Grinning fiendishly.)
So here's my contribution: I merely wish to point out a good analysis of polling data over at Pew that strongly supports the broad Nisbet perspective. The gist: The American public doesn…
sheril | August 30, 2007During our casual 3.5 hour dinner last night, Bora and I got to wondering...
Why isn't North Carolina's Research Triangle in grand prize destinations for the 500,000 comment contest? Winner receives a 5-day trip to the greatest science city in the world and the three contenders are Boston/Cambridge, MA, San Francisco, CA, and Cambridge, UK. Not a bad selection by any means, but the Triangle is home to cutting edge science and policy institutes, top tier universities, governmental agencies, leading tech companies, and more groundbreaking research in one area code than anywhere else I can…
sheril | August 30, 2007In January of 2003, I sat in Joe Kelley's seminar at the University of Maine as he foretold the devastation that was to come to New Orleans. I'd never heard this chilling story before and listened intently as he explained that as far back as when The Big Easy flooded in the 1920's, scientists realized that the Mississippi Delta would continue to change its course (rivers have a habit of doing that you see). I began to understand that over time, the already vulnerable city faced increasing threat and felt dizzy amid the whirlwind of so many alarming facts and figures.
The levees are…
cmooney | August 30, 2007
[Matt Nisbet battles PZ Myers (artist's rendition).]
Uh oh. There is some heavy talk coming out of some folks about this Minnesota thing in September.
Greg Laden:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Scoundrels and Aristocrats ...
... In this corner, we have Author and Journalist Chris the Madman Mooney.
... In this corner, we have American University Professor Matthew The Knucklebreaker Nisbet
... and in this corner we have Anthropologist Greg Prettyboy Laden.
And it gets better: Now PZ might be coming:
There is going to be a melee in Minneapolis, a testicle-twister in the Twin Cities,…