Now Cat 4 Michael
- Thread starter DFSNOLE
- Start date
Only difference is the population centers were much larger for Andrew.
The population of Homestead was only about 30,000 when Andrew hit. While it was a powerful storm, it was not big. 50-75 miles north and your statement would've really been true.
That would put it about 25x larger than Mexico Beach...
What got waxed in Mexico Beach seems to me to be a function of storm surge. The destruction at Homestead was wind related, right? Was it tornado(s), or just the eyewall + subpar construction?
The wind field was larger in Michael with the strongest being on the northwest side of the eye which was near Panama City. Michael also maintained its strength for miles inland. Its was a Cat 3 over Mariana and still a hurricane in Georgia.
There is virtually no beach dune in Mexico Beach combined with it hitting near high tide made the efforts of the storm surge much worse.
I've been reading about Integrated Kinetic Energy as a big picture measure of storm strength - the calculation takes into account the aggregate force of wind and water over the full geographic scope.
Using this tool Hurricane Andrew despite its incredible wind intensity is shown to be less powerful than others since it was compact.
Integrated kinetic energy (IKE) and intensity of several historic U.S. landfalling storms. IKE is shown by the red bars, while the intensity is shown in the purple diamonds.
Sandy packed more energy than Katrina at landfall
The horrific storm surge flooding in New Jersey and New York caused by Sandy was almost perfectly predicted well in advance, but was more extreme than the average person might expect from a minimal hurricane. That’s where Sandy’s immense size comes into play.
There is a metric that quantifies the energy of a storm based on how far out tropical-storm force winds extend from the center, known as Integrated Kinetic Energy or IKE*. In modern records, Sandy’s IKE ranks second among all hurricanes at landfall, higher than devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina, Andrew and Hugo, and second only to Hurricane Isabel in 2003.
The above chart compares IKE and intensity for storms at the time they struck land (in the U.S.). Not all historic storms can be included because a detailed wind field analysis (required to compute IKE) is unavailable for storms in the distant past. But this chart shows the majority of high-ranking modern cases.
Sandy’s IKE was over 140 Terajoules (TJ, 1 TJ = 1 trillion Joules = 277,778 kilowatt hours), meaning it generated more than twice the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. At any given moment, many hurricanes contain more energy than an atomic bomb in their surface winds alone (even excluding winds at higher elevations and latent heat energy).
Though way down on the scale, I include Andrew and Charley in the chart to show how their small IKE contrast their high rankings on the Saffir-Simpson scale which is based solely on peak sustained winds. This demonstrates small intense storms generate far less energy than large weak storms.
Why does IKE matter?
It has been demonstrated time and time again that the storm surge generated by a hurricane is not very well correlated with the storm’s intensity or peak winds, but rather the storm’s size - which the IKE metric captures. The area over which strong winds blow across the ocean is strongly related to the resulting storm surge potential.
Recall, the storm surge is the increased water level along the coast caused by winds continuously bulldozing the ocean onto the land. It builds long before a storm makes landfall. It simply raises the mean sea level from its normal level by a few to over 25 feet. Large violent waves typically occur on top of the storm surge.
* For a thorough introduction and detailed description of IKE, please read the 2007 article by Mark Powell and Timothy Reinhold. To calculate IKE, a high-resolution gridded wind field is created using all available aircraft, satellite, buoy, and ship data. Then, all grid points with surface wind speeds of 35 knots (or about 40 mph) or higher (tropical storm force) are identified. The wind speed at each of those points is squared, summed, and scaled, resulting in a single value, measured in tera-Joules.
Though way down on the scale, I include Andrew and Charley in the chart to show how their small IKE contrast their high rankings on the Saffir-Simpson scale which is based solely on peak sustained winds. This demonstrates small intense storms generate far less energy than large weak storms.
Why does IKE matter?
It has been demonstrated time and time again that the storm surge generated by a hurricane is not very well correlated with the storm’s intensity or peak winds, but rather the storm’s size - which the IKE metric captures. The area over which strong winds blow across the ocean is strongly related to the resulting storm surge potential.
Recall, the storm surge is the increased water level along the coast caused by winds continuously bulldozing the ocean onto the land. It builds long before a storm makes landfall. It simply raises the mean sea level from its normal level by a few to over 25 feet. Large violent waves typically occur on top of the storm surge.
Cartoon showing mean sea level, normal high tide sea level, a 15’ storm surge coming between high and low tides, and a 17’ storm tide resulting from a 2’ lunar high tide plus the 15’ storm surge.
In the figure below, two hurricanes (Charley ‘04 and Sandy ‘12) are shown side-by-side at the same scale. The color contours highlight wind speed, and are shaded identically. Charley was a Category 4 hurricane, while Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane (technically, it may have just transitioned to an extratropical cyclone an hour before landfall, but that’s an academic difference that people on the ground don’t care about), but clearly Sandy’s wind field extended over a larger area, even though its peak winds were much weaker. As such, Sandy’s IKE was 7 times Charley’s and had a much more massive storm surge.
Brian McNoldy is a senior researcher at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
Using this tool Hurricane Andrew despite its incredible wind intensity is shown to be less powerful than others since it was compact.
Integrated kinetic energy (IKE) and intensity of several historic U.S. landfalling storms. IKE is shown by the red bars, while the intensity is shown in the purple diamonds.
Sandy packed more energy than Katrina at landfall
The horrific storm surge flooding in New Jersey and New York caused by Sandy was almost perfectly predicted well in advance, but was more extreme than the average person might expect from a minimal hurricane. That’s where Sandy’s immense size comes into play.
There is a metric that quantifies the energy of a storm based on how far out tropical-storm force winds extend from the center, known as Integrated Kinetic Energy or IKE*. In modern records, Sandy’s IKE ranks second among all hurricanes at landfall, higher than devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina, Andrew and Hugo, and second only to Hurricane Isabel in 2003.
The above chart compares IKE and intensity for storms at the time they struck land (in the U.S.). Not all historic storms can be included because a detailed wind field analysis (required to compute IKE) is unavailable for storms in the distant past. But this chart shows the majority of high-ranking modern cases.
Sandy’s IKE was over 140 Terajoules (TJ, 1 TJ = 1 trillion Joules = 277,778 kilowatt hours), meaning it generated more than twice the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. At any given moment, many hurricanes contain more energy than an atomic bomb in their surface winds alone (even excluding winds at higher elevations and latent heat energy).
Though way down on the scale, I include Andrew and Charley in the chart to show how their small IKE contrast their high rankings on the Saffir-Simpson scale which is based solely on peak sustained winds. This demonstrates small intense storms generate far less energy than large weak storms.
Why does IKE matter?
It has been demonstrated time and time again that the storm surge generated by a hurricane is not very well correlated with the storm’s intensity or peak winds, but rather the storm’s size - which the IKE metric captures. The area over which strong winds blow across the ocean is strongly related to the resulting storm surge potential.
Recall, the storm surge is the increased water level along the coast caused by winds continuously bulldozing the ocean onto the land. It builds long before a storm makes landfall. It simply raises the mean sea level from its normal level by a few to over 25 feet. Large violent waves typically occur on top of the storm surge.
* For a thorough introduction and detailed description of IKE, please read the 2007 article by Mark Powell and Timothy Reinhold. To calculate IKE, a high-resolution gridded wind field is created using all available aircraft, satellite, buoy, and ship data. Then, all grid points with surface wind speeds of 35 knots (or about 40 mph) or higher (tropical storm force) are identified. The wind speed at each of those points is squared, summed, and scaled, resulting in a single value, measured in tera-Joules.
Though way down on the scale, I include Andrew and Charley in the chart to show how their small IKE contrast their high rankings on the Saffir-Simpson scale which is based solely on peak sustained winds. This demonstrates small intense storms generate far less energy than large weak storms.
Why does IKE matter?
It has been demonstrated time and time again that the storm surge generated by a hurricane is not very well correlated with the storm’s intensity or peak winds, but rather the storm’s size - which the IKE metric captures. The area over which strong winds blow across the ocean is strongly related to the resulting storm surge potential.
Recall, the storm surge is the increased water level along the coast caused by winds continuously bulldozing the ocean onto the land. It builds long before a storm makes landfall. It simply raises the mean sea level from its normal level by a few to over 25 feet. Large violent waves typically occur on top of the storm surge.
Cartoon showing mean sea level, normal high tide sea level, a 15’ storm surge coming between high and low tides, and a 17’ storm tide resulting from a 2’ lunar high tide plus the 15’ storm surge.
In the figure below, two hurricanes (Charley ‘04 and Sandy ‘12) are shown side-by-side at the same scale. The color contours highlight wind speed, and are shaded identically. Charley was a Category 4 hurricane, while Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane (technically, it may have just transitioned to an extratropical cyclone an hour before landfall, but that’s an academic difference that people on the ground don’t care about), but clearly Sandy’s wind field extended over a larger area, even though its peak winds were much weaker. As such, Sandy’s IKE was 7 times Charley’s and had a much more massive storm surge.
Brian McNoldy is a senior researcher at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
Mexico Beach looks very much like the path mowed by the eye of Hurricane Andrew from Biscayne Bay to the FL Turnpike just parallel to Campbell Drive, between Campbell Drive and Florida City. A year to the day later, it still looked like a large lawn mower had just gone through there. You could see the water from the turnpike with nothing blocking your view. 10 years later there were rebuilt houses and no trees that stood out. Now the trees have finally filled in and the path no longer stands out relative to the proximate area.
SW 88 Street is Kendall Drive. As you can see, the eye wall went as far north as SW 88 St. The next day we heard that everything south of Kendall Drive was like a war zone. This is the first graphic I have seen that shows exactly why the cut off for heavy destruction was along that street. North of Kendall Drive there was far less damage. We were 3 miles north of Kendall Dr and only had a couple of broken roof tiles that weren't noticeable other than by close inspection.
Wind speeds going north from the eye
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@squiffynole It will be interesting to see where Michael ranks on the scale.
Awesome in a bad way. I saw some of the devastation in Kendall, the Countryside subdivision was ripped to shreds almost every house had its garage door punched in and roof lifted off.Mexico Beach looks very much like the path mowed by the eye of Hurricane Andrew from Biscayne Bay to the FL Turnpike just parallel to Campbell Drive, between Campbell Drive and Florida City. A year to the day later, it still looked like a large lawn mower had just gone through there. You could see the water from the turnpike with nothing blocking your view. 10 years later there were rebuilt houses and no trees that stood out. Now the trees have finally filled in and the path no longer stands out relative to the proximate area.
SW 88 Street is Kendall Drive. As you can see, the eye wall went as far north as SW 88 St. The next day we heard that everything south of Kendall Drive was like a war zone. This is the first graphic I have seen that shows exactly why the cut off for heavy destruction was along that street. North of Kendall Drive there was far less damage. We were 3 miles north of Kendall Dr and only had a couple of broken roof tiles that weren't noticeable other than by close inspection.
Wind speeds going north from the eye
Btw Andrew was a personal tipping point we decided to wrap up a 10-year sojourn in SW Florida and return to the safety of Tallahassee. Wrongo on the safety.
Workwise I saw how the administrative % from federal response and relief dollars transformed the state EOC, the place used to be in a basement off south Monroe Street after Andrew came a modern building, modern staff and cutting edge work on preparedness planning, training, resource development, LMS and regional evacuation studies.
This is an aerial of the condo I built on the Gulf in Mexico Beach. I was waiting for one of those helicopter or drone videos to show it. From what I've been told, it lost some metal roof panels on the gulf side and that's about it. I'm long beyond warranty but it feels good to know it did so well.
What's Defuniak like?
I have a site where the router isn't responding, do you know if you guys had power outages, or still do?
I have a site where the router isn't responding, do you know if you guys had power outages, or still do?
We're fine here. Lost power on Wednesday but everyone was back up by Thursday afternoon. Like most of Walton County, you would never know there was a devastating hurricane just a county away.
I live in Killearn and only suffered minor roof damage. My mom lives near lake shore off Timberlane and Meridian. There were 13 houses with trees in them at her neighborhood. Mind you the trees were in the houses and not on.
I cannot imagine what Tallahassee would look like had Michael been 50 miles east of where it went.
I cannot imagine what Tallahassee would look like had Michael been 50 miles east of where it went.
Four of us at work took a two truck caravan to East Jackson county with supplies. Our office of 8 raised 600 bucks and the company matched 600.
It was very sobering how bad things look a mere 40 miles west of Tallahassee. We ended up in Sneads and found a distribution center manned by city folks and National Guard troops.
They were so grateful. They were down to a 1/2 pallet of MREs and a pallet of Gatorade with lines of citizens driving up. Just about every structure is damaged. I would say minimum 25 percent trees gone with many areas closer to 75. Live oaks that made it have almost no leaves. This is Sneads Grand Ridge area almost in Georgia. I am sure Bristol Blountstown and Marianna are worse. The Calhoun, Liberty and Jackson county folks are going to need to be adopted by Tallahassee folks who were blessed to get through this. This was a once in a 200-500 year event there. Here are items people need according to local officials:
NEEDED ITEMS:
Here are some observances from Facebook post that sums up the situation for these non coastal counties well:
“Below is a FB post from a neighbor of mine from Blountstown if you want to donate to one of our region’s communities...
Thank you to those who have reached out asking how you can help my hometown of Blountstown. Calhoun County has set up a central distribution center that all shelters, churches and local emergency agencies are using to gather and distribute needed supplies. A list of what they currently need is below.
We are working on securing space to accept donations in Tallahassee and transport to the CalCo distribution center. In the meantime please comment or message me if you would like to donate. It is difficult to understand what they are facing until you see it firsthand. Businesses won't be able to operate for months, which means people can't work. Many people are homeless now, and the "lucky ones" won't have power for at least a month and most likely more. The economy and infrastructure are gone for now, but with your help, the wonderful people of the area will rebuild.
NEEDED ITEMS:
• Diapers
• Flushable wipes
• Formula
• Shelf-stable milk (does not need refrigeration)
• Paper plates, cups, napkins and utensils
• Paper towels
• Batteries
• Flashlights
• Non-perishable food items (that can be easily prepared without electricity)
• Bread
• Tarps
• Fans”
It’s bad, and not getting the same level of attention as coastal areas.
It was very sobering how bad things look a mere 40 miles west of Tallahassee. We ended up in Sneads and found a distribution center manned by city folks and National Guard troops.
They were so grateful. They were down to a 1/2 pallet of MREs and a pallet of Gatorade with lines of citizens driving up. Just about every structure is damaged. I would say minimum 25 percent trees gone with many areas closer to 75. Live oaks that made it have almost no leaves. This is Sneads Grand Ridge area almost in Georgia. I am sure Bristol Blountstown and Marianna are worse. The Calhoun, Liberty and Jackson county folks are going to need to be adopted by Tallahassee folks who were blessed to get through this. This was a once in a 200-500 year event there. Here are items people need according to local officials:
NEEDED ITEMS:
Here are some observances from Facebook post that sums up the situation for these non coastal counties well:
“Below is a FB post from a neighbor of mine from Blountstown if you want to donate to one of our region’s communities...
Thank you to those who have reached out asking how you can help my hometown of Blountstown. Calhoun County has set up a central distribution center that all shelters, churches and local emergency agencies are using to gather and distribute needed supplies. A list of what they currently need is below.
We are working on securing space to accept donations in Tallahassee and transport to the CalCo distribution center. In the meantime please comment or message me if you would like to donate. It is difficult to understand what they are facing until you see it firsthand. Businesses won't be able to operate for months, which means people can't work. Many people are homeless now, and the "lucky ones" won't have power for at least a month and most likely more. The economy and infrastructure are gone for now, but with your help, the wonderful people of the area will rebuild.
NEEDED ITEMS:
• Diapers
• Flushable wipes
• Formula
• Shelf-stable milk (does not need refrigeration)
• Paper plates, cups, napkins and utensils
• Paper towels
• Batteries
• Flashlights
• Non-perishable food items (that can be easily prepared without electricity)
• Bread
• Tarps
• Fans”
It’s bad, and not getting the same level of attention as coastal areas.
I’ve got a trailer headed up to PC Thursday. Was able to pull some strings with some Elks brothers and sisters, they came thru big time. Between that and my crew at work we’ve got a really good haul already. Will hopefully bring a some much needed relief to those effected.
*If by chance anyone is in The Villages/Wildwood area and would like to drop by anything to send up please reach out to me.
*If by chance anyone is in The Villages/Wildwood area and would like to drop by anything to send up please reach out to me.
Seems like PC is getting all the aid. What about the other devastated areas like what noleclone is talking about?
There are citizens and relief workers everywhere. The main problem is the system is overwhelmed. Panama City is getting most of the press because it's the largest population center affected making it the most photogenic.
Having just driven through it (technically I’m still kind of in it as I’m waiting on some road crews to clear 77 to get to Chipley), Panama City and Lynn Haven need the most help by far. PCB you can barely tell was hit by the hurricane other than some roof damage here and there. Marianna was hit hard but there’s practically no one who lives there so they don’t need a ton of help as there’s not a ton to fix. Mexico Beach is in essence gone, so there’s not a lot of help needed as there’s little left.
Panama City and Lynn Haven however have a ton of residents and I would say 99% of buildings (including mine) have roof damage in PC and 80% in Lynn Haven. And I’d say 25% of the buildings in Panama City have suffered some form of structural damage from walls blown in, portions of the top of the structure connected to the roof ripped off, to all the way completely destroyed. And I’d guess that’s also true of about 10% of the buildings in Lynn Haven.
I’m going to post a couple of videos of some of my travel on Facebook and might look to see if I can find a way to post them here. And I couldn’t go to the areas totally devastated, just the “safer” areas. They still have Marshall law declared.
I was there the past several days as well. Pretty accurate post above, except I’d say that 90% of the business buildings in PC have some sort of structural damage and pretty much the same goes for Lynn Haven, which is really only 1 street.
Here in Tallahassee we just had 2 pines and a sweet gum tree snap in half, none on to the house just large branches. Power was out Wednesday afternoon until Saturday around lunch. Had a generator for fridge and fans but finding gas on Friday was a hunt. My brother lives off Buck Lake by Costo and never lost power.
My wife's grandmother lost her house in Mexico Beach. She lived right on 98 and her porch roof flew back and crushed her bedroom, she was in Dothan staying with family. They were able to get back to the house Friday and get most of the stuff out they were hoping to. My wife has other family in Port St Joe, some are still there and some have gone to Wewa to stay with family.
She went down yesterday and dropped off gas and cash to her family in St Joe and Wewa before heading over to PC for work. Almost a third of her accounts are in Panama City so she's over there checking on the status of the offices she hasn't heard about yet.
My wife's grandmother lost her house in Mexico Beach. She lived right on 98 and her porch roof flew back and crushed her bedroom, she was in Dothan staying with family. They were able to get back to the house Friday and get most of the stuff out they were hoping to. My wife has other family in Port St Joe, some are still there and some have gone to Wewa to stay with family.
She went down yesterday and dropped off gas and cash to her family in St Joe and Wewa before heading over to PC for work. Almost a third of her accounts are in Panama City so she's over there checking on the status of the offices she hasn't heard about yet.
Anyone see that amazing pic of Mexico Beach looking like a wasteland with one house standing intact? Whoever built that house did some job.
Sometimes it’s just pure luck. A gazebo I built with the help of two friends survived 100% intact and my two story medical building survived other than roof damage and an awning ripped off, meanwhile buildings on the same road were demolished down to their foundation and the Audubon forest next to us is nothing but broken shards.
There was an article about that house ( at work so won’t look it up), and supposedly the added features that allowed survival only added $30K to the cost.
Hard to believe if true, but insurance should offer dramatically lower rates to this type of construction. Carrot rather than stick, perhaps.
Of course, you can see by the pix that this was no ordinary house to begin with.
Guess I should preface that with, we put together our supplies with the intent to aid our team members and their families in Panama City. And then obviously spread the love from there in whatever capacity they’re able (neighbors, friends, whoever’s in need).
I went out to Bristol and Blountstown on Sunday. Seems like every tree was either downed or leaning north. Luckily none of my family had major damage. My Grandma's shed and screened cook shed is completely gone. My parents house had their railing blown off. Our neighbor told us that there were 3 foot waves on Lake Mystic.
Bristol seemed to be in much better shape than Blountstown. Long recovery process for both.
Bristol seemed to be in much better shape than Blountstown. Long recovery process for both.
That house was on ABC World News last night. The guy built it to withstand 250+ mph winds. He seems like a genius now but....would you want to be the only one left in town? Kinda eerie to me.
After a forest fire, probably not.
On a beach, maybe wouldn’t be too bad once the debris is cleared. I bet he buys the lots around him.
While Homestead was and still is relatively small, the hurricane affected areas to the not too distant north that were much more heavily populated. Kendall, Sunniland (today Pinecrest) and Perrine (today Palmetto Bay) sustained heavy amounts of damage.
What you say about the storm landing further north and doing much more harm is true. In the 24 hours prior to the storm, it was expected to make landfall at Aventura near the Dade - Broward county line. Fortunately, the shift to the south save a lot of lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew#Florida
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
I found this video, a few minutes ago, of the same house from the Brett Adair storm chaser guy who nearly got himself swept away in the storm surge. He has an entire playlist of videos from during and after the hurricane.
I was in WPB at the time. I had a houseful of people staying with me because we were expecting some kind of hit. We went to bed expecting the worst. The next morning I went outside to find nothing but could clearly see the edge of the storm clouds to our south.
Watched this Interview after from Bret after the drone video of the house that couldn’t be blown down.
It’s the most accurate on point interview I’ve seen. I talked with a lot of folks who stayed during the storm and all of their stories were eerily the same as this ladies.
It’s the most accurate on point interview I’ve seen. I talked with a lot of folks who stayed during the storm and all of their stories were eerily the same as this ladies.
I'm curious what happened to this house on St George Island
https://www.wtsp.com/video/news/nat...rge-island-from-hurricane-michael/507-8278618
https://www.wtsp.com/video/news/nat...rge-island-from-hurricane-michael/507-8278618
When I was in the EOC, the NHC was saying that area should expect a storm surge of 8'-10'. That was more destructive than the wind.
I have a cousin in Lynn Haven. We have not been able to reach him as of yet, so I don't know how he fared. He works at one of the hospitals in PC, which suffered a lot of damage.
@DFSNOLE ...do you know any Relief Supply Drop off Places for Marianna/Sneads Area close to I 10?...I feel like they are being neglected up there compared to PC and I want to load up the car on my next trip to FWB and drop off a bunch of stuff.I know they need it as I've made the drive twice post Michael and no words can describe the destruction even 50 miles north of Panama City
