Peak sustained winds of 180mph. Yikes.
National Hurricane Center says Irma is the largest hurricane ever recorded over the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico.
Normally, they have to hit the warm waters of the Caribbean/Gulf to get that big.
stusser
2676
Wow, that’s like a sustained tornado that will sit on top of you for hours. Scary.
Not nearly as dramatic as the flooding and winds that the gulf states are facing, but we’ve got another air quality advisory in western Washington today. Started getting hazy again from fires in the Cascades, and the moon was blood red last night. Even saw ashes drifting through the air on my way to work this morning.
Razgon
2678
I live in Denmark - a country without earthquakes, tornados, or anything remotely resembling the stuff you guys are getting. Usually its “just” something on the news - but reading about this here makes it way real, and kinda scary, and I am not even in harms way.
Stay safe everyone - You guys are the best!
RichVR
2679
Okay. I’m officially frightened.
I’m currently in Ohio; similar situation, although we get the occasional rare tornado. My son is heading over to Scotland later this week, where the worst thing he needs to worry about is rain, overcast skies, and catching a general loathing of Londoners. That said, other family and friends are in harm’s way. I just keep repeating “GTFO”
Technically speaking, it’s the forces that are preventing Ir a from turning north. There’s a pressure ridge preventing that from happening.
Massive drop in pressure overnight (from 966 to 931 iirc), and the winds strengthened far more than predicted. obviously, how much it interacts with land masses over the next few days will help determine how strong it remains before plowing into Florida (as is likely)
My son lives in Orlando. I just bought him a ticket to fly back home to California for awhile and hang out with dad. This one looks terrifying.
Previous update said falling pressure. Surprise, 926 now and winds at 185. Keep this trend in mind. This storm is defying expectations of the models. As noted above, this is the strongest storm they have ever measured outside of the Caribbean or gulf. There’s every reason to think that the models might not be super accurate (because uncharted territory).
Smart move. Holy shit, the models are starting to converge, and Irma is going to smack the living hell out of Florida.
My only solace so far is the models tend to say that by the time it hits Florida it’s down to a cat 3 or barely cat 4. By the time it reaches mid Florida it should be a lot slower, land always slows them down.
Still, I’m concerned.
I was watching the GFS models today and they’ve actually widened a bit since this morning, when most of them agreed the storm would go straight up the middle of the state. More than a couple now see it staying just off the coast (which would still be terrible).
I wondered how land affected them as well. I was reading about Wilma, which went across the state horizontally, and read that it exited the state with 110 mph winds.
Enidigm
2687
Look at it in Google Earth Weather layer, it’s downright astronomical.
Thoughts to the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. They’re about to get erased from the map.
There’s also a disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico that the National Hurricane Center gives a 70% chance of forming a “cyclone” in the next 48 hours. W - T - F.
If only we could move all these climate change denialists to one of those islands before landfall…
One can dream.
Enidigm
2689
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Staying just off the coast is worse, generally, because the storm won’t weaken as much if the eye remains over water.
@arrendek that’s what I was referring to earlier. This storm is trending above predictions. I wouldn’t count on it weakening that much unless it interacts with Cuba in a major way or something of that nature. Conditions are pretty favorable right now (low wind shear, warm waters, etc)
No, I’m not a forecaster, and I don’t think I know more than they do, but in a sense, there are handcuffed by having to give a single forecast. That’s why I find reading the forecast discussions so fascinating where they can diverge a little bit and talk about nuances like what individual models suggest and all sorts of other details.
stusser
2691
Supposedly it’s so strong they’re picking it up on seismographs now.
What’s crazy is no major hurricanes hit the US for 12 years. I always forget that was the Katrina year and we had 3 major hurricanes in 2005. They seem to come in bunches.
God my friends with family in PR are losing their minds right now. Luckily for most it’s a very limited smattering, but one woman’s got basically her whole clan down there right now, apart from her older brother.
Similarly, the people my gf stayed in touch with after a long summer on Saba are also terrified right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel very strongly for the @RichVR’s of the world and hope our Floridian friends stay safe, but this is not a great time to be living in the Caribbean :-/
