Milton, that is.
BTW if you say one word about the lie of "climate change" (yes, the climate is always changing, no, we're not doing it) or "the government is aiming hurricanes at red folks" you will be blackballed from my life and anywhere I can influence and you don't get to take it back either. Think long and hard before you run that shit around me; I lived in Florida for 20 years, including 2004 which was a "oh its a new week and there's another fucking hurricane coming" year.
As for this storm being "unprecedented" no it isn't. Nor is it likely (at all) to maintain its monster status all the way to impact. Doesn't matter; its going to suck and, if it goes where I think it will if you're around Tampa its going to suck badly. Tampa is blessed to a material degree with geography in the way the coastline lays but a straight-in west-to-east path that goes in just north of town will hose people badly due to the bay getting water rammed up it, which is exactly what it looks like is going to happen.
That has happened before but the last time it did there were a lot fewer people. And further, the barrier islands in the area were and are, well, barriers. Now they're full of very high-value homes and such. Well, as of today they are anyway. Get back to me in a couple more days on that.
Florida has two basic problems: The two "economic drivers" are tourism and construction. The former is ok but subject to economic downturns, of course, but the latter is subject to corruption, that's been a huge problem all the way back to "swamp land sales" and today its found in alleged standards that aren't followed and nobody goes to prison when it happens. In addition there has been a "re-pricing" of plenty of places that were originally concrete block (good) and considered entirely reasonable to fill up with water and sand when the storm comes, then be shoveled out and the contents discarded when originally built -- but then they got all dolled up and sold for 20-50x their original price and "value." The problem is that they're still at the same 5' elevation off the water they were before and thus the same thing happens when the surge shows up but now the damage is ridiculous and after a few rounds on that bull nobody wants to write insurance since the next loss is definitely going to come. Big shock, right?
Again if the place was $100k and the contents considered disposable nobody would really care much. Yeah, its a risk but the $10k you lose between the shitty furniture and shoveling out and pressure-washing the cinderblock is the price of living in paradise and thus you suck it up and pay. But when that same place is all dolled up and now sells for $2m or more with a half-million or more in contents on top of it you have a different story and much wailing -- or worse, you bought the cinderblock place, got out the Cat D8 and put up a $3-5m Taj Mahal where the "we know it will get full of sand when the storm comes" thing once stood.
The boat situation has gotten untenable as well. Guess what -- boats in unprotected places during a storm turn into pinballs. If they just sank well that would be on you but that's not what happens; they get loose and wreck everything they hit. Unfortunately most of the marinas of reasonably recent construction are not in protected places -- after all, we need mooooaaar of them because people want boats, and so up they go. Then the storm comes and every boat in there gets destroyed -- and that problem is made worse when the owners do not live there and thus can't, several days in advance when the first hint of trouble appears, move the boat out of the range of danger, which is often the case -- or they just choose not to! Oh yeah, insurers all demand (these days) written hurricane plans but that doesn't make the 25 ton pinball not bash around for 8 hours if the dude isn't there. I saw plenty of that in my 20 years, including some vessels that appeared to me to be intentional sales to the insurance company -- of course I can't prove it -- but the ground tackle and/or lines they were using were either the product of someone's Three Stooges level of competence or intentional and again, it doesn't matter which if you're on the receiving end of said pinball. (BTW I took zero damage from the storms to my vessels in the years I lived there and no, it wasn't blind luck either -- well, except for the kicked-off tornado during Ivan I saw on TV headed straight for where she was that could have easily gotten Gigabite despite my best efforts. God missed, thankfully.)
When it comes to the politics of this its really quite-simple on a state political level: They all love the wreckage. Oh there is plenty of crying for the camera and stern-eyed concern but the truth is much simpler when you get down to it: GDP is GDP and every dollar spent on rebuilding someone's illegally-signed-off construction which didn't actually meet requirements, and then is permitted to be put back together right where it was as it was is a dollar of the "economy" that the state claims is "booming." The part they forget is that the "boom" came in the form of a hand grenade up your ass as a consequence of all the grift and fraud in the first place including the permitting that never should have allowed said Taj Mahal style construction, particularly on barrier islands. Never mind the ambulance chasers in the form of "public adjusters" and similar bullshit that always show up after these storms. And can we talk about the deliberate interference against reasonable mitigations run by, for example, municipalities that do not encourage or even require that all trees within the fall line of a residential roof be cropped back to below said point or removed? Indeed some even go so far as to prohibit taking said trees out or require pre-approval and permits to do so -- on your own land.
At least I didn't have that problem where I lived -- Mr. Saw got some use right after I bought the place down there and a few years later, when Ivan showed up, I was glad I did. I don't know if those trees would have come down and hit the house or not but they can't if they're not there and if they are there, and do come down on your roof, you're boned.
I left Florida about five years ago for these reasons. No, storms were not going to get more-intense, but the stupidity and grift was going to continue to be a problem, that insurance issues it causes were accelerating and like it or not I was going to be forced to pay for it if I remained. There are no "grift-free" places in this country and corruption is everywhere but there are those places that have more of it than others, and some that have structural incentives in their economy for it to explode exponentially, and sadly Florida had turned into that over the previous 20 years.
Two days ago I called the most-likely impact location to be between Hudson and Crystal River while plenty of "professionals" were wishcasting it south so Tampa would be on the "cleaner" side and, while it would still take a beating, wouldn't get the crazy surge. I called it like I saw it and it looks like its going to verify, but there is still plenty of time for me to be wrong. The southern end of my expected impact envelope is about as bad as it gets for Tampa Bay and its environs (e.g. Clearwater Beach and south all the way into the inlet) and a bit north won't help much. Inland this thing will track pretty close to Orlando; we'll see what it does there as well.
As for strength the good news is that it likely peaked last night -- and as it comes in closer while it will expand in size it should run into a buzzsaw of shear that should do some serious damage to maximum wind levels. Unfortunately that will do little or nothing when it comes to surge up the bay in particular and who knows what sort of actual construction integrity you have under that pretty roof particularly in the Tampa area which hasn't been "tested" it his regard. My bet: There will be plenty of roofs flying around in pieces testing the integrity of your window protection (and possibly wall construction integrity as well.)
If you're where you can get nailed by that get out. Take a look around the Treasure Island Causeway at all the boats and tell me whether you'd like a few dozen of them to play pinball with your house, because that is exactly what is likely to happen.
The exception is if you've ridden out a decent storm in previous years and you're comfortably above the expected surge level where you are. Unfortunately for Tampa proper they haven't been hit with anything material in a very long time so exactly zero of their buildings have been battle-tested. This is not true further south and north of course, but it sure is within Tampa and the immediate surrounding area.
I ain't liking this one.
I want heads.
The "climate screaming" garbage is once-again screwing people -- specifically, hurricane Helene.
That was not a Cat 4 at landfall. There were chasers on the air live that went through the eyewall at Perry, which is a bit more than 10 miles from the coast. I know exactly where they were as I've been there. I watched them live while at the same time having a live radar view up as the eyewall went over them.
They were standing unassisted in the alleged "130mph winds" a few minutes before the eye got to them.
Further both before and after the trees were all still up and so were business signs. Yes, there was a very-dramatic video of a shed that blew across a road. It appeared to be one that was for sale at a hardware store or similar that was unanchored and of course has nothing in it for ballast; it got blown around as would be expected in winds of 70mph or so.
By the way the cops were still out (with their lights on) and they don't stay out in those sorts of winds because none of those departments want to lose their people or cop cars from flying debris -- so when it really gets going they call all the cops back to their nests and if you need 'em -- well, too damn bad they'll come when its over.
Surge was, as expected, pretty nasty. If your residence or business is 5' off the water and the predicted surge is 8' you might think you're going to maybe take 3' of water. Nope; you are going to take 3' of water plus whatever the waves are on top of that, and if the wind is blowing 70mph and you have a bunch of open fetch (miles) over which it blows you'll get another 3-5' of waves on top and by the way water in size like that will smash through structures. Interestingly enough in Steinhatchee, which took the surge and was a near-direct hit on the coast there were plenty of places that were built with basically no freeboard and were dismounted and thrown around -- but all their roofs were still on and so were the walls!
You can mitigate the wave action (e.g. with a kneewall or similar) but not the flooding; if whatever you have gets overtopped the water is coming in. That's how it works. The people who built fish camps and similar there -- and on Mexico Beach -- decades ago knew this and were fully aware of the risk -- that they'd get destroyed when, not if, the storm comes. Thus what they built had little value and was easily replaced. Then people show up and start bidding the existing places up and putting $500,000 structures there which is fucking stupid and of course they get destroyed.
Muh climate change! No, you are a fucking lunatic and hate money. I know you want to make that my problem but it isn't and if you don't cut that shit out and accept the consequences of your own actions I'll feed your ass to an alligator -- ass-end first, so you can enjoy being consumed before you die.
How about Tampa? The claims of "unprecedented surge" are lies. Tampa has a roughly 2-2-1/2' tidal range and all these lying pieces of shit were taking the peak surge numbers off MLLW -- that is, mean LOWER LOW water or the unusual (but not unprecedented) LOW TIDE LEVEL. The claims were that the 6'ish surge was "unprecedented", which it isn't -- Tampa hasn't taken any sort of real hit in roughly 100 years and its simply due to the way the coastline lies there and that a storm has to come in just north of or directly up into the inlet to screw the town with flooding. If it comes in south so the bay is on the outflow side it sucks the water out instead of ramming it in. But 100ish years ago exactly that happened and it of course has before, but all of this was before air conditioning and few people wanted to live there before there was air conditioning, especially in the summer and early fall months because its hotter than Hell.
Take 2-2-1/2' off the "breathless" reported figures, by the way, and you have a 4' elevation of the water level above the expected and ordinary, every-day high tide level. If you are stupid enough to put something of value below that and which cannot withstand being inundated on the bay you deserve what you get.
But probably the most offensive was the ridiculously widespread claims of threat inland. Scream too many times and nobody listens when they should. For example the local news here claimed we were going to get 8" or more of precip and hurricane force winds. Bullshit. We did get a decent storm in front of the hurricane (which had nothing to do with it; it was a bog-standard cold front) with a few inches of rain but that had nothing to do with Helene. There was no deluge and no hurricane-force winds exactly as I explained to the people in a bar a couple of nights ago would not happen -- and why. Simply put we have a mountain range between the storm that was coming and us; not only will that lift the air (which then condenses as it cools) but the windfield had zero odds of being at hurricane force by the time it got here.
The problem was that there really was a risk on the southern side of that mountain range and up toward Unicoi (and further NE where you're on the INCOMING side of the storm) for very high rainfall amounts which did materialize. Helene was very fast-moving, which isn't that unusual but most of the time tropical systems cross Florida and exit off the East coast. This one went north right up into the mountain range here -- and was forecast to do so because the front that preceded it getting here was forecast to lift out and leave a cut-off low behind -- and it did. The area around Asheville got pounded but here, once again when it comes to the results human stupidity was and is largely involved. If you look at the land around the French Broad River it is very clear that there is a large floodplain associated with it. How the hell do you think it got there? Do you think the Biltmore was put on the top of the hill because the owners were stupid or do you think they knew damn well that putting it right down on the river would result in it being flooded and severely damaged when, not if, the river blew its banks due to heavy rainfall up in the nearby mountains which does happen from time to time? Oh by the way the river arts district, which flooded badly, was abandoned by the former industrial users and thus was taken over by the artsy folks because..... it flooded. Duh.
I mean, I get it -- building right on an inland river in a mountainous area's valley is pretty. Where the hell do you think the water that falls on the mountain is going to wind up? Answer: If there is enough of it all that rain will come right through your living room, and there's a crap ton of both commercial and residential structures in said areas in Asheville and this region generally.
No, this is not "unprecedented"; if you think it is you can't be bothered to look at the terrain which is clearly a floodplain. Why do we call it a floodplain? Because it floods. I know, I know, it hasn't in a long time but if you have even just one working eyeball the risk is obvious on casual observation.
Every single person with an IQ larger than FIVE has seen a downspout off a roof during a heavy rainstorm. On the ground in the area, its wet and you're getting rained on. Coming out of the downspout is a deluge. How does a mountain compare in size to your roof and by the way scale it up in your head and then come talk to me about that river in the valley.
Should we regularly and with a straight-face focus on the real places where high risk is when a storm approaches? You bet. The land in front of a mountain range where a storm is headed toward is going to get the bulk of the moisture; you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand why -- just go hike the mountain, realize that it is cooler up there than at the bottom and as air cools the water carried as vapor condenses and it rains. In addition if you have rivers, streams and areas that clearly were the runoff path below a mountain, and you usually do, where do you expect the water that falls on said mountain to end up? This was no exception and reality is that those who build high-value structures on flood plains and adjacent to streams and rivers in a mountain valley should expect them to get flooded. When Sarah and I were out west and came across the Teton Pass I saw an utterly insane display of that stupidity next to the river on the Idaho side; the number of people who built in what was very clearly a first-level flood plain (with a second bank above the house!) was astounding. Most of these structures were quite-new and very expensive. I highly doubt a single one of them could be bought for under $1m. Dumb; when the water comes up, and it will, every single one of them is going to flood and by the way that's in the valley of the west side of the mountain range there and weather tends to travel from the south and west in the United States.
We do serious damage to public confidence when we scream about things that are just flat-out crap particularly when we dilute focus from where attention should be placed, which in this case means two things: Surge and facing-the-storm areas of mountains specifically the valleys under them where all the water is going to run when an incoming storm gets lifted, cools and the water condenses out as rain. Helene was a hurricane, that's for sure. But there sure as hell were not sustained 100+mph winds at Perry. No way, no how, period. I don't give a crap what some jackass claims they measured with a dropsonde; all that matters to people is the wind on the ground and this was in no way a Cat 4 storm -- not even close.
We spent all of our breathless screaming over bullshit while ignoring the very real issue that was about hit people in the face. Yeah, there were warnings but if you scream about the entire world when the real risk is in one or two places you get ignored by everyone and then people get seriously screwed or die.
I went through Ivan at my house in Niceville. That was the real deal and I know damn well what that sort of windfield looks like on the ground because I went through it and, in the middle of it, went out the back garage door in the lee of the building to shut down the outside breaker panel after power was lost to protect against possible shorts that might be present when power came back up. I foolishly stuck my head (wearing a dive mask for protection of my eyes) around the corner after doing so and but for being quick-handed that mask would have wound up somewhere in Alabama. There is no way what came in at Perry was anywhere near that and I'm tired of the breathless screaming from climate alarmists who bullshit their way through every single fucking storm that shows up and tells us all that its "unprecedented" when those of us who have gone through these damned things, and I did so for 20 years, know they're full of shit and would like to see them all fed to alligators or sharks to shut them the fuck up.
And yes, I bought my place in FL knowing the risk and accepting it. Part of my selection criteria was the specifics of that structure and where it was to attempt to mitigate said risk. I was successful in doing so; many others who made somewhat different choices were not. Had I failed that would have been nobody else's fault or responsibility -- it would have been mine. When I moved here I made similar observations and choices. In other words it was my responsibility both times for either good or bad, not some imaginary "insult" that I lay off on my next door neighbor driving an SUV.
Finally, as to Asheville and the rest of Western NC and its infrastructure -- particularly communications. Who the fuck put the data concentration points, necessary for any of today's Internet (on which all cellular communications rides today) where they can flood? I'll tell you who -- idiots. Second, if I hear one more person telling me that we must de-carbonize I'm going to rip their head off right there and shit down their neck. Every single bucket truck now heading there to fix things runs on diesel. So do all the rest of the earth-moving gear to rebuild the roads and all the chainsaws run on gas. Oh by the way one of the reasons the cell towers are down is that they have no power and of course that area is full of people who "hate oil" -- well, how would you like a nice diesel backup generator at the tower right about now? And while you're at it find the assholes who put the switch infrastructure and repeaters for the fiber in the area where they can flood and who also bitched about having big enough backup generators and their fuel supply because that isn't "green" and thus they have neither, said facilities have no long-duration backup power and you have no communications. String every one of those blue-haired idiots up once you get done clearing the roads and restoring power.
Oh, and if you prefer a video rant -- here's a drunken podcast!
"Warmest ever since humans!"
In the coming years, however, it is not only the Tyrolean glaciers that will probably reveal some old artefacts. Bachnetzer and colleagues from the BDA recently compiled a collection of information on all 17 known glacier-related sites nationwide. If the finds are made of organic material, they will not last long without ice preservation, emphasized the high mountain archaeologist.
The long-standing view that there was little to be gained for his trade in the mountains is now a thing of the past. Today it is clear in many places that these harsh natural areas were repeatedly visited in the past for hunting, high pastoral farming or for the extraction of raw materials when the climatic conditions were favorable or warm. At the entrance to the Taschach Valley there is even evidence of human presence from the Middle Stone Age, said Bachnetzer.
As I've pointed out repeatedly no, the temperatures of today are not in fact the only time in human history it has been warmer than some point in the reasonably-recent past. And I assure that at the time when this occurred, which is documented fact to have occurred because archeology is not "rods from the Gods", but rather humans tromping in places and building things, those who claim that the current climate trends are "unprecedented" in human history have been proved lies.
Further, I assure you that the cause of the previous warm time was not people driving around in SUVs, burning coal for electrical power and similar. This of course is known fact because such technological advancements, at that time, did not exist.
Obviously humans did not cause those climate events.
Second, there is a new study out on an attempted reconstruction of the planet's mean surface temperature and it proves man isn't the prime driver, simply because man wasn't there. It also proves that both the range of temperature is much wider than some had assumed and much more-variable; that is, unlike some previous beliefs that as time has gone on while we've had ups and down the trend was one-way that's refuted by this study. We obviously do not understand exactly what drives this cycle but we now do know what doesn't -- humans. Further, we also know that said cyclicality occurs on long timeframes and is much larger than previously believed, so the little blips that we now blame on humans have been misplaced at best and if maintained now are frauds.
So to those who claim we're the cause of the current warming trend and your claim offered as "proof" is that at no time of human habitation of this rock has it ever happened before: Would you care to revise your obvious false statements as errors, or shall we eat you as corrupt and evil bastards who, refusing to admit error, really had some agenda other than "science" and the benefit of humanity in your prognostications? Exactly how much money do you have to extort and how much damage to the economy on a global basis do you have to impart before you should be executed for what you've imposed on others through your vehemently-spread falsehoods and claims of human-caused doom? The answer as to how much damage you can do to the global economy and people of the world under false pretense without having your entire genetic line extinguished is not infinite, but I'll let you ponder the question for a while because at this point what can no longer be maintained is that the current climate is "unprecedented" in human history and thus we caused it and the only "answer" is to ruin both our economy and human lives. That claim is now known, on a factual basis, to be false and I for one am contemplating whether it is time to fire up the smoker. With carbon-based fuel, of course.