Ernesto and John and Ioke, Oh My!

Here in DC, Ernesto's outmost bands seem to have moved in overnight. It's much cooler than it has been in ages and I expect the rain will be getting steadily worse. Which is fine by me: I plan on staying indoors and getting work done, both on the current book project and in anticipation of the upcoming RWOS paperback book tour. This Labor Day weekend seems the perfect one for it.

By contrast, last night I met a group of folks who said they were heading down from D.C. to the Outer Banks today to enjoy a more traditional Labor Day weekend--which means, driving into the heart of Ernesto. Good luck to them, is all I can say. They may be in for an adventure.

An interesting question, of course, is whether Ernesto was actually a hurricane at landfall. Pressure dropped all the way down to 988 millibars in one measurement, although maximum sustained winds were never more than 70 mph--at least according to the lastest estimates. But storms are frequently upgraded in post-season analyses; Hurricane Emily of last year, for example, was upgraded from a Cat 4 to a Cat 5. I wouldn't be at all surprised if something similar happened with Ernesto.

Hurricane John, meanwhile, is planning to crash a lot of vacations to Cabo, and it looks like the storm will lead with its powerful right front quadrant. Once again, the question is, how strong will John be at landfall later today? As of the latest analyses, John had re-intensified and was being called a Category 3--at least for the moment. A Hurricane Hunter has been dispatched to gather better data. But the point is, if John continues to intensify before landfall later today, the damage toll could leap much higher.

Finally, as far as Ioke goes, we've been having a little chat based on my prior post which noted that this sucker may ultimately hit Japan (albeit in a weakened state). I wasn't predicting a disaster; I was merely voicing my amazement that Ioke, having originated south of Hawaii, may actually make it all the way across the western Pacific to make such a landfall.

But then I did some research, and it turns out that long tracks like this are hardly unprecedented in the Pacific. Hurricane John, of 1994, started out in the eastern North Pacific, crossed the entire Central Pacific basin, wound up in the western North Pacific basin where it was christened a typhoon, and then moved back into the Central Pacific again--covering a total distance of something like 8,000 miles in 31 days. Ioke hasn't done anything like that yet....the records it breaks will I suspect lie in other areas.

Incidentally, a wiki now exists for Hurricane Ioke and it lists these records:

* Ioke was the first Category 5 hurricane ever to form in the Central Pacific and reach that intensity while still in the Central Pacific. It was also only the fifth Category 5 hurricane on record in the Central Pacific (the other four formed in the Eastern or Western Pacific), and the first one since Hurricane John in 1994.

* Ioke was the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Central Pacific with a recorded pressure at its peak of 920 mbar (27.179 inHg).

* Ioke tied Hurricane Emilia of 1994 by reaching Category 5 status twice, both as hurricanes in the Northern Pacific east of the International Date Line. Ioke would go on to restrengthen to a Category 5-equivalent typhoon.

Still no clarification on the record for longest lifetime at Cat 4 intensity or above....

PS: No news yet either, as far as I can tell, about exactly what is left of Wake Island now that Ioke has passed....military planes will be checking it out soon enough.