Tag: hurricanes

  • I Need My Sharpie. Where’s My Sharpie?

    I Need My Sharpie. Where’s My Sharpie?

    Because who does not recall the great Sharpie forecast track by the National Hurricane Center (NHC)? Earlier this summer, in the middle of the hurricane season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) NHC released a new, experimental warning cone map. For those unfamiliar, these are the maps that have a white and white-shaded forecast…

  • Double Your Hurricanes, Double Your Fun

    In a first, the Gulf of Mexico basin has two active hurricanes simultaneously. Unfortunately, they are both likely to strikes somewhere along the Louisiana coastline within approximately 36 hours of each other. Fortunately, neither is strong as a storm named Katrina that caused a mess of things several years ago now. Over the last few…

  • The Map

    I mean come on, guys, did you really expect me to not touch this one? Well we made it to Friday, and naturally in the not so serious we have to cover the sharpie map. Because, if the data does not agree with your opinions, clearly the correct response is to just make shit up.…

  • We’re All Just Palm Trees and Patio Furniture in the Wind

    For all my American readers, I hope you all enjoyed their Labour Day holiday. For the rest of you, today is just a Tuesday. Unless you live in the Bahamas, then today is just another nightmarish day as Hurricane Dorian continues his assault on the islands. The storm will be one for the record books when…

  • New Orleans Dodges a Bullet

    Hurricane/tropical storm Barry has been dumping rain along the Gulf Coast for a few days now. But prior to this weekend, the biggest concern had been for the city of New Orleans, which sits besides the swollen Mississippi River. The river was running already high at 17 feet above normal, and with storm surges and…

  • First Florence, Now Michael

    You may recall a few weeks ago there was a hurricane named Florence that slammed into the Carolina before stalling and dumping voluminous amounts of rain that inundated inland communities in addition to the damage by the storm surge in the coastal communities. At the time I wrote about a New York Times piece that…

  • All the Crazy Models

    Over the last several weeks we dealt with the impact of a few hurricanes from H to K, i.e. Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Katia. Now that the Atlantic basin has quieted a wee bit, it is time we get back to the lighter side of things. So we turn to xkcd and its look at ensemble…

  • How Big Was Irma?

    Like many Americans I followed the story of Hurricane Irma over the weekend. One of my favourite pieces of reporting was this article from the Washington Post. It did a really nice job of visually comparing Irma to some recent and more historic storms, such as 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. It can be difficult to truly…

  • Irma’s Impending Arrival

    Your author is on holiday today and is actually writing today’s post on a Thursday night train to Boston. But by the time he returns late Sunday night—a Monday morning post is not guaranteed—Hurricane Irma will have likely made landfall somewhere along the Florida coast. Thursday the Guardian published a nice article looking at the…

  • Hurricane Winds

    Irma swept the northern coast of Puerto Rico last night after devastating some of the Leeward Islands. What’s next? Well after the Turks and Caicos, Cuba, and the Bahamas we are probably looking at a Florida landfall. (Though in the last 24 hours the track has shifted ever eastward so Tampa Bay looks fine from…