Major Hurricane Irene

For all of you insensitive people who are spouting "overhype" nonsense, this WP article is about my home town.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/hurricane-irene-hit-hard-in-st-marys-county-md/2011/08/29/gIQAKP8JoJ_story.html

Hurricane Irene hit hard in St. Mary’s County, Md.

By Aaron C. Davis, Published: August 29

Talk that Hurricane Irene was overhyped didn’t sit well on Monday with many in Southern Maryland, especially those with newly totaled cars and cratered homes along Town Creek Drive in St. Mary’s County.

Recalling the terrifying bursts of wind and rain that lashed the peninsula Saturday night, residents on Monday recounted how hundreds of towering trees crashed like dominos through the mile-long neighborhood. Cars and campers, boats and barns were crushed like toys as children screamed and families huddled for safety from the howling wind and torrential rain.

Cut off from much of the wider world on Sunday by those felled trees, the scene in parts of Southern Maryland on Monday showed that Irene brought pockets of destruction to the Washington region as severe as any storm in recent memory.

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is scheduled to tour some of the hard-hit areas of Southern Maryland on Tuesday.

No fewer than 50 trees could still be seen sprawled across the roofs of homes in a six-block stretch. Southern Maryland residents — many expected to be without electricity or running water for a week or more — worked relentlessly on Monday to seal up and dry out waterlogged homes and begin what promised to be an even longer slog to deal with insurance claims and the slow task of rebuilding.

“I hear on the news that people are saying that this was nothing. That’s wrong. This was huge for us,” said Saida Byrne, 41, whose home on Monday was buckling under the weight of five oak trees still leaning against the roof and back wall. “Our huge deck is gone, the air conditioner is gone, and the roof — that will be gone if we can’t move these trees soon. I can hear it cracking.”

Byrne and her three children were in their living room in the California, Md., neighborhood watching a tree fall just short of their next-door neighbor’s house when they heard the first oak crash onto their home. Byrne said she and her panicked children huddled near the front door until they finally fell asleep sometime after 2 a.m.

“It was 10 times worse than Isabel,” said Lisa Delahay, 45, referring to the 2003 storm that is the Washington region’s hurricane benchmark.

“It must have been a tornado, must have — it looks like a war zone out here,” added her husband, Allan Delahay, an aircraft maintenance supervisor at the nearby Patuxent Naval Air Station. A V-shaped line of at least 15 trees fell on the Delahay’s 3 / 4-acre property. The last one ripped through their garage, pounding the family Lexus and sending rain gushing into the rafters above the kitchen. “The whole roof is going to have to be replaced.”

The National Weather Service said it had recorded no tornado, but that a trained spotter observed a funnel cloud.

“In all my life, I’ve never seen a rain like that — and I’ve spent 20 years on a ship and seen plenty of storms,” said Jim Tiburzi, 87, as he picked away at the six-foot-tall root ball of a fallen oak tree from Washington state that he had planted more than four decades ago.

Wearing a “World War II veteran” baseball cap and listening to Kenny Rogers on his car radio, Tiburzi worked to fill in the crater left by the roots while his son manned one of dozens of chain saws buzzing in the neighborhood.

St. Mary’s officials said 22,000 residents remained without power as of Monday evening, but they hadn’t yet been able to catalogue all the damage to homes or calculate the estimated cost of the damage in what may be the region’s hardest-hit area.

Del. John L. Bohanan Jr. (D-St. Mary’s), who toured Southern Maryland with other lawmakers by helicopter on Sunday, said that because the storm produced little flooding, the damage was hard to see from the air.

He said it seemed that the 10 or more inches of rain that fell in parts of St. Mary’s, combined with sustained winds, produced the most damage.

“It just uprooted a lot of trees, and in wooded neighborhoods that damaged a lot of homes,” said Bohanan, who counted 51 fallen trees on his one-acre property.

For some, there was little solace in knowing the damage was contained to their corner of the world.

“You drive down the road and there is nothing, no damage until here. Why us? It makes me want to cry,” said Marzene Ichniowski, who said that she and her husband had diligently pruned or cut down trees after Hurricane Isabel damaged their house. “We thought we had gotten them all, but there are always more that can fall, I guess.”

Ichniowski and her husband used their gas-powered grill to cook for two days but were preparing to send their five children to a friend’s home until the power returns.

“After Isabel, it took nine days to get our electric back. Who knows how long it will be this time.”

Six of the seven homes on her cul-du-sac had major tree damage, but her neighbors had found a bright spot.

Chuck Thorne’s Harley-Davidson Roadster had somehow escaped without a scratch when a 100-year-old tree fell on his shed. Its new nickname might be “Lucky,” he said.

Most, however, agreed that even all that had been lost could be replaced.

“The important part,” Byrne said, “is that everyone is safe.”
 
Not until everyone reports back! Power company around here is saying they might take until September 5 for my work but I think (hope) they're just giving themselves a lot of wiggle room.
 
The next hurricane Katia didn't take long to form on the heels of Irene. The forecast is that it will develop into a major category 2-3 hurricane within the next 2-3 days.

Here's the updated track for the different models.

storm_12.gif


So far it looks to be bouncing off to the north into colder waters before it hits any landmass.
 
The next hurricane Katia didn't take long to form on the heels of Irene. The forecast is that it will develop into a major category 2-3 hurricane within the next 2-3 days.

Here's the updated track for the different models.

storm_12.gif


So far it looks to be bouncing off to the north into colder waters before it hits any landmass.

Well, Katia's track is highly dependent on whether or not Lee forms in the gulf.

Right now, most models I believe are forecasting Lee to form in the gulf, and due to weak steering currents, it will just kinda meander there for a week or so (mind you in the bathtub warm waters, it will easily form into a hurricane). If it does that, and it if strengthens enough, then from what I've heard, it's outflow will be strong enough on its eastern side to create a sort of ridge of warm, dry air over Florida and Cuba. If it does, Katia's going fishing in the Atlantic.

However, if Lee doesn't form, Katia does have a small chance of targeting the U.S, if it stays low enough in latitude. The steering currents and the ridges at one point my favor a route in Georgia/S.C., but it's not all too likely.
 
Well, back at work. I drove by last night at 11 to check for streetlights, as I had done at 10 the night before, they were out. It's damn creepy here without them. It's always lit around here, it's the city, very curious to see it in the dark. The power was back this morning at 7, so the better part of three days without. I'm that much happier about not having lost it at home.

I love love love how much attention the little midget squirts get after a headlining storm. A category 3 can mess up the Caribbean and hardly make the news, but anything, even a doomed barely-a-tropical-depression, gets a mention if Americans got wet. I would rather get a cyclone update every day throughout the season. It would really help peoples' perspectives.
 
I would not mind a cat one to hit Texas and head inland towards Austin, we could use the rain, not cat 3 or higher please. Too bad all the hurricanes that hit Texas either stay south, or turn and booked it up the Mississippi river.

As for over-hyping the potential damage to New York City, well over-hyping there is no hope, if you do it your over-hyping if you don't your unresponsive.
 
Was stuck at girlfriend and couldn't get home for several days because of flooding. Finally back home.


As far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as over-hyping. Either you prepare or you don't. According to the some "people" either its the worst thing in history or its "hype".
 
Lucy, I asked my landlord today where his cottage is and he said Charlestown, and it was undamaged. He checked yesterday.

We still have spotty damage today. Mom just called and said part of a tree fell in her driveway today.
 
That's some luck! The south coast got a whoopin'.


Dr. Jeff Masters on hype:

Recovery from the destruction left behind by Hurricane Irene continues in the mid-Atlantic and New England states today. Irene's storm surge, winds, and record rains likely did $3 - $6 billion in insured damage to the U.S., according to AIR-Worldwide. Since actual damages are typically double insured losses, Irene's total price tag will likely be $6 - $12 billion, making it one of the top 20 most expensive hurricanes to hit the U.S. Irene will be one of the most expensive Category 1 hurricanes ever; the record is held by 1972's Hurricane Agnes, which did $11.8 billion in damage (2010 dollars.) As AIR Worldwide notes in their press release, part of this damage is due to the costs of evacuation for the 2 million people that were evacuated. It costs approximately $1 million to evacuate each mile of U.S. coast warned (Aberson et al., 2006). This number will be higher for more densely populated areas of the coast, such as Miami, and may be a factor of six lower for the North Carolina coast (Whitehead, 2003). So were we over-warned during Irene? Could the costs of the storm been lower due to better forecasts and fewer evacuations?

irene_forecast.png


Figure 1. The National Hurricane Center forecast for Hurricane Irene issued five days before it hit Long Island, NY, compared with the actual track of Irene. The landfall locations along the coasts of North Carolina, New Jersey, and New York were pretty much spot-on, though the time of arrival was off by a few hours. The NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory has a nice satellite animation of the storm's track superimposed on the NHC's cone of uncertainty forecast.

Well, the official NHC track forecast for Irene was remarkably good; the 5-day forecast was pretty much spot-on for landfall locations, though the timing of when the storm would arrive at the coast was off by a few hours (Figure 1.) This remarkably accurate forecast undoubtedly reduced the costs of unnecessary preparations, and probably saved many lives. NHC track forecasts have improved by over 50% since 1990. The average error in a 24-hour forecast was about 105 miles in 1990, and has averaged near 50 miles the past few years. NHC director Bill Read stated in a interview this week that had Hurricane Irene come along before the recent improvements in track forecasting, hurricane warnings would have been issued for the entire Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina coasts. At an average cost of $1 million per mile of coast over-warned, this would have cost over $700 million. We can credit the investments made in hurricane research, improved satellites, and better computer models for the majority of this improvement. When we consider that government funding for hurricane research has averaged $20 million per year during much of the past two decades, the roughly $200 million spent on hurricane research over the past 20 years was paid back by over a factor of three during just one storm. According to a 2007 presentation at the 61st Interdepartmental Hurricane Conference, the improved hurricane forecasts between 2000 - 2006 resulted in savings of $3 billion compared to what the forecasts of the 1990s would have cost.

Read the rest (about intensity forecasts) at his blog.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1910
 
Hurricane Cost Seen as Ranking Among Top Ten

By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: August 30, 2011

Hurricane Irene will most likely prove to be one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the nation’s history, and analysts said that much of the damage might not be covered by insurance because it was caused not by winds but by flooding, which is excluded from many standard policies.

Industry estimates put the cost of the storm at $7 billion to $10 billion, largely because the hurricane pummeled an unusually wide area of the East Coast. Beyond deadly flooding that caused havoc in upstate New York and Vermont, the hurricane flooded cotton and tobacco crops in North Carolina, temporarily halted shellfish harvesting in Chesapeake Bay, sapped power and kept commuters from their jobs in the New York metropolitan area and pushed tourists off Atlantic beaches in the peak of summer.

While insurers have typically covered about half of the total losses in past storms, they might end up covering less than 40 percent of the costs associated with Hurricane Irene, according to an analysis by the Kinetic Analysis Corporation. That is partly because so much damage was caused by flooding, and it is unclear how many damaged homes have flood insurance, and partly because deductibles have risen steeply in coastal areas in recent years, requiring some homeowners to cover $4,000 worth of damages or more before insurers pick up the loss.

This could make it harder for many stricken homeowners to rebuild, and could dampen any short-term boost to the construction industry that typically accompanies major storms, Jan Vermeiren, the chief executive of Kinetic Analysis, said in an interview.

“Especially now that the economy is tight, and people don’t have money sitting around, local governments are broke, and maybe people can’t even get loans from the banks,” Mr. Vermeiren said.

The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut sought expedited disaster declarations from the federal government on Tuesday, which would pave the way for more federal aid. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York wrote President Obama that he had seen “hundreds of private homes either destroyed or with major damage and an enormous amount of public infrastructure damage.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey wrote the president that “immediate federal assistance is needed now to give New Jersey’s residents a helping hand at an emotionally and financially devastating time.”

Flooding and widespread power failures tied to the storm continued to affect tens of thousands of people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Tuesday. And rivers and inland streams were still rising in New Jersey and Connecticut, forcing the evacuation of thousands of homeowners.

“I think this is going to end up being a bigger event than people think it is,” Connecticut’s governor, Dannel P. Malloy, said at a news conference. He added: “All of this is massive in scope. What the final dollar amount is, I don’t know.”

Officials in states up and down the Eastern Seaboard said that it was far too early to tally up the damage, and that they were still focused on clearing debris, restoring power, trying to reopen flooded roads and bridges, and, in some areas, helping stranded people.

In southern Vermont, the National Guard airlifted food, water and other supplies on Tuesday to hundreds of people who were stranded in 13 towns that have been cut off by floodwaters since Sunday. Mark Bosma, a spokesman for the Vermont Division of Emergency Management, said most of the isolated towns had no electricity and none had potable water because floodwaters had overwhelmed local sewage and water treatment plants.

“I think it’s probably a very scary thing to not know when you can get out of town and to have a water system that’s not working and a general store that has run out of bottled water,” Mr. Bosma said. “People are extremely nervous about being isolated.”

More than 260 roads and 30 state bridges remained at least partly closed Tuesday because of the flooding, which in some areas remains a threat as larger rivers, like the Connecticut, are expected to continue rising until at least Wednesday as they gather runoff and flow from tributaries, officials said.


MORE HERE


So if it's among the top 10 costliest disasters ever, it's not an over hyped storm.
 
Oh, don't worry. Homeowners will and moan to the Federalies and get some federal bailout to cover their backsides for their willful decision not to get flood insurance.
 
Places are flooding that haven't flooded in the past 100 years. How likely were they to know that they needed flood insurance even if the government wasn't involved?
 
Places are flooding that haven't flooded in the past 100 years. How likely were they to know that they needed flood insurance even if the government wasn't involved?
Live near the coast at ALL, or river, or lake, etc, get flood insurance.

So you do think the feds should be bailing people out who made a willful choice not to get flood insurance for their homes?
 
Live near the coast at ALL, or river, or lake, etc, get flood insurance.

So you do think the feds should be bailing people out who made a willful choice not to get flood insurance for their homes?


No, I would certainly make changes to the insurance system. I would require every property owner in the country to have natural disaster insurance based on the risk by that location.

However I would also recognize that that would never be sufficient to solve the problem in a major disaster.
 
So if it's among the top 10 costliest disasters ever, it's not an over hyped storm.

The only reason for that is the places it hit. Overall it was not a bad storm in comparison to what it could have been. The damage is much less than what was predicted, so there some good.
 
The only reason for that is the places it hit. Overall it was not a bad storm in comparison to what it could have been. The damage is much less than what was predicted, so there some good.


Yes and no. Yes, in that such storms are uncommon in the Northeast, and so there's less in place preparation for them. And much of the area hit is densely populated. And so many people and properties were affected. But no, the storm was huge. And it hit and caused damage in a vast area. Irene may have been down to a tropical storm by the time it reached New York, but it still brought storm surge and rain far in excess of what the area could handle. Vermont, that never sees a hurricane, had the worst floods in a century there was so much rain. New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut got more rain in a day than we usually get in 2 months. There's just no place for rain quantities like that to go except flash floods. The death toll might not have been particularly bad, and you can chalk that up to both preparation due to warnings and the weakened wind. But the damage overall, from North Carolina to Vermont, really is a huge deal.
 
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