Having just lived through Harvey, I cannot stress enough that if you are in a position to evacuate, please do so. We were lucky to narrowly escape flooding in our home, but for 3 days we had no water, septic or power(need power for the other 2). The flooding had us stuck in our neighborhood but we were able to kayak out to safety. In addition to high winds(which Houston fortunately avoided) flooding is very dangerous. Those in the path of Irma should expect both. Again please evacuate if you can.
I was in Hugo in 1989 where I had no power for over a week (and was lucky). I totally agree. Residents in the Southeast should start preparing today while supplies are still in the stores. Board up your windows. Bring in outside lawn furniture and decorations so they don't become missiles. Go visit relatives or friends. If you can't leave (and you really should..) have water and shelf-stable food for a week (NOT bread, milk and steaks). Get your prescriptions refilled. Scan your insurance policy if you don't already have a PDF. Make a video with timestamp of your house and all your possessions.
The suggestions at https://www.ready.gov should be considered a starting point, as they assume that relief will arrive sooner than recent storms have proven.
EDIT: Get your off-site backup started so you'll have time to Fed-Ex it out of town. If you have a business, make sure your employees will be fine, then start your continuity plans. Which should include some cash to pay bills in case the power goes out (no ATMs, no card machines).
Floridians, especially those who lived through Charlie, are usually very well-versed in hurricane preparedness. Especially if, like me, they are unable to evacuate. (If I were to even attempt it, it would likely leave me stranded on the road for days and risk being a sitting duck.)
That being said, I fully expect it to make landfall near where I live at category 5 strength, despite the current projections of "merely" a category 4 when it reaches us.
What do you think of city mayor's decision not to order a larger scale evacuation. NYT seems to think it was absolutely (their word) the right thing to do. Being on the ground there, would you agree?
I wonder how flat is the houston area. West indies are often volcanic islands. Meaning the high ground will probably be "safe" from flood, the lower parts on the other hands.. Somehow they're a bit used to storms so they're not going full noob on this.
I know that this is slightly off-topic so feel free to downvote if you feel so inclined:
There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding.
What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters. For instance, the comment in this discussion about the airlines overbooking for flights out of the Turks made me think, "we've known that this is a possibility for a while, could aid funds be provided to get folks to safety in advance?" I know that there are a lot of logistical problems to solve (where do they go? for how long will they stay? what about their lives/livelihoods at home? how does an organization maintain accountability with donations for a disaster that has yet to happen?)
Anyway, it's just a thought. I didn't know if such an organization existed, or if it's even feasible.
It isn't feasible, but the reasons are weather prediction, not economics. Those who live in hurricane reasons are warned far enough in advance to evacuate 10 times every year. Many years not even one hurricane turns out big enough that an evacuation was required, and even when one does turn out that big, that vast majority of the land that was warned is never affected.
When we can accurately predict 1 week in advance how big and where a hurricane will land it is easy to evacuate those people over that week. However we don't yet have enough information to do that.
People living in those areas soon learn that most hurricanes are non-events: either they hit elsewhere, or they are small enough that their house can safely ride it out. Either way they can go years without evacuating. When a big one finally comes for them they don't realize until it is too late. Then the evacuation becomes a massive traffic jam of people trying to get out in not enough time.
Note that even if weather prediction is good enough people will take years to undo their habit of ignoring the predictions until it is too late as they have learned that the warnings are not worth paying attention to. (For all I know prediction might already be good enough)
Simple notification is another, huge but often overlooked step. More immediate things like providing busing to evacuate people is often considered part of the event.
>There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding.
>What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters.
Future Aid: Why Prevention Efforts in Humanitarian Aid Often Fail
>Humanitarian response is reactive, in part, because funding is reactive. Giving is emotional and irrational. If people can’t see the problem, it isn’t likely to garner support.
>Disaster preparedness is too abstract for people to take out their wallets. Even when someone says, “Hey, if you give $5 now, you’ll save more lives and money in the long run…” people just aren’t inclined to do it. Consider the slogan, “Build Back Better.” The emphasis is on what is already broken. A more pragmatic slogan would be, “Build Better.” It’s not likely to catch on.
Not necessary pre-relief, but some companies assess risk of a damage prior to the disaster.
E.g. at tensorflight we are assessing building insurance risk via computer vision and significant part of features we detect are useful for hurricanes (e.g. building construction type, potential windborne projectiles, trees dangerously close to the building). Although our business model is selling this data for insurance, we could offer an assessment to individual users close to the catastrophe. Do you think individual users would be interested in potential suggestions (e.g. trim the tree, move chairs in-house, or flee ASAP :P)
FiveThirtyEight had an interesting piece on how politicians have stronger incentives to provide relief after disasters than prepare for them before hand.
I think the general trick is there are always enough people in the world in need of charity to make pre-funding private disaster relief seem like wasted potential.
This is supposed to be something governments account for. They budget for and provide the insurance on giant disasters of this scale.
If we want to do anything about improving the preparation and recovery from natural disasters, it will have to be a political engagement. The total costs of some of these incidents push tens of billions of dollars for the whole recovery. If there is anything governments should be accountable for, it is acts of nature.
This site makes an appearance on HN somewhat regularly, but in case it's new to anyone, it tends to be a pretty useful forecast visual for wind: https://www.windy.com/?25.820,-67.720,5
I was 10 living in Miami during Hurricane Andrew, and I'm still here if that's were Irma hits.
After Andrew we bought an RV and live in that outside our house for months while our home was repaired/rebuilt; I can't recall exactly but I'd say it was at least a month before power was restored to power refridge/deep freezer; for months my elementary school was shared with another school that was destroyed (we had half days); houses literally had "looters will be shot" spray painted on them; eventually national guard began patrolling the neighborhood for a couple months; it wasn't unusual for kids at school to be living off military MREs (meals ready to eat). And we always considered ourselves lucky.
Oof. This is ramping up to be quite the hurricane/monsoon season.
I don't know much about meteorology, so I'll post this without comment besides the article's subject; maybe someone else can make an informed value judgement. But apparently as global temperatures rise, the atmosphere is going to be able to hold a lot more water:
The atmosphere can hold more water, and the oceans hold more heat. Hurricanes thrive on warm water (especially deep warm water, as the hurricane will churn up water from deeper levels, which can weaken it significantly if it's stirring up a lot of cold water).
One of the reasons Harvey intensified so quickly is that is passed over a _very_ warm section of the gulf:
The northern Leewards and Greater Antilles are in for a _really_ rough time. It's likely a direct hit (or close brush) with either Hispaniola or Cuba will weaken Irma before it turns north into Florida, but that's still really bad news for folks in the northern Caribbean, and it's still going to be a very serious storm when it hits Florida.
Cliff Mass (whose blog is really worth following) points out that this is not an abnormal hurricane season by historical standards. There is not a big temperature anomaly in the waters fueling these storms: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/08/global-warming-and-hur...
In other words, this is the kind of storm season you can expect to get once in a while even before factoring in the effect of warming seas.
It's also pretty fascinating to look at the Satellite images. Here you can check out the latest from the hi-res GOES-16. It's insane to see the scale of the hurricane, all told.
I have been through a category 3 hurricane(Ivan) in the Caribbean and it devastated the island, cost us over a billion in damages and took about 10 years to recover. Its not something I want to go through again.
A category 5 at those wind speeds, even block structures with hip and gable roofing and short eaves can be torn off and have walls fall.
I hope you and everyone in this hurricane's path safety.
Hurricanes rotate counter clockwise, so the highest wind speeds and storm surge tend to occur to the "right" or on the east/southeast side of the eye path. Currently Miami looks to be right in the center of this danger zone, so just get out now while you still can.
Yes it's a few days out and they can and usually do veer off, but this one is not worth riding out.
Hasn't Miami been sinking a bit over the past few decades? I would imagine it wouldn't take much storm surge to flood parts of the city. In that case, they really don't wanna be on that side of the storm.
I remember reading a few days ago that European models were predicting a turn to the north, and US models were predicting a high pressure ridge holding the hurricane to the west.
Anyone know more about this?
Because if true, it's the second time European models were more correct than American ones. Last time they decided we needed more supercomputing power, and they got it. Did it help?
I have been through 5 hurricanes in south florida, and always stayed put. Wilma was a strong 2/weak 3, and it was no joke. Afterwards there were trees uprooted everywhere, concrete power poles snapped like toothpicks. This storm's winds have 2.5x the energy of Wilma's currently.
I second this. Wilma's eye passed over us, which was my first time ever experiencing the eye wall of a hurricane. I vividly remember watching our house's patio enclosure get destroyed from my parents' bedroom.
I wouldn't stick around for this one if I were still in Florida.
Still looking at Windy.com, Alaska is getting hit with 150mph winds right now. I haven't heard about that, but Irma is huge news on the back of Harvey. I guess I might be sheltered a bit. I seldom think about the weather much.
I've got a Christmas vacation booked in Providenciales and I give it a 50/50 chance the VRBO I booked will still be there.
People are trying to get off Grand Turk as fast as they can.
The airlines have overbooked outbound flights and the airport is closing on Thursday for 48 hours. I'm hoping the damage is minimal. outoftacos mentions that eastern sides of the islands take more of a hit which gives some solace here.
I was born and raised in Cuba. I lived through Katrina, Wilma, and many others (while in cuba).
For the most part, everytime theres any climate discrepancy the primate part of the brain activates -chaos and disorganization arise-
Which is, in part related to the amount of casualties.
Key things to do:
-keep calm
-seek higher ground
-gather dry food, and non-perishable food (nuts, dry meat, canned fish, etc)
-water
-detachment of any material things. (Countless lives have been lost because people refuse to let go of their belongings)
-dont wait until the last minute to take action.
In Cuba we didn't have nearly a quarter of the resources available in the U.S. We managed to minimize casualties because we kept our cool and didnt give in into despair.
I live in the Turks and Caicos Islands (Providenciales). We were lucky hurricane Matthew missed us last year, I suspect however that we won't be so lucky with Irma.
I already bought my flight out of South Florida. The worst should be over by the time it reaches Alabama so I figure anywhere NE/MW is good to hold out.
[+] [-] S_A_P|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiph|8 years ago|reply
The suggestions at https://www.ready.gov should be considered a starting point, as they assume that relief will arrive sooner than recent storms have proven.
EDIT: Get your off-site backup started so you'll have time to Fed-Ex it out of town. If you have a business, make sure your employees will be fine, then start your continuity plans. Which should include some cash to pay bills in case the power goes out (no ATMs, no card machines).
[+] [-] CiPHPerCoder|8 years ago|reply
That being said, I fully expect it to make landfall near where I live at category 5 strength, despite the current projections of "merely" a category 4 when it reaches us.
[+] [-] rdtsc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r0fl|8 years ago|reply
This is a great read as to why:
https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6wcpt0/la_vita_bella_n...
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swasheck|8 years ago|reply
There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding.
What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters. For instance, the comment in this discussion about the airlines overbooking for flights out of the Turks made me think, "we've known that this is a possibility for a while, could aid funds be provided to get folks to safety in advance?" I know that there are a lot of logistical problems to solve (where do they go? for how long will they stay? what about their lives/livelihoods at home? how does an organization maintain accountability with donations for a disaster that has yet to happen?)
Anyway, it's just a thought. I didn't know if such an organization existed, or if it's even feasible.
[+] [-] bluGill|8 years ago|reply
When we can accurately predict 1 week in advance how big and where a hurricane will land it is easy to evacuate those people over that week. However we don't yet have enough information to do that.
People living in those areas soon learn that most hurricanes are non-events: either they hit elsewhere, or they are small enough that their house can safely ride it out. Either way they can go years without evacuating. When a big one finally comes for them they don't realize until it is too late. Then the evacuation becomes a massive traffic jam of people trying to get out in not enough time.
Note that even if weather prediction is good enough people will take years to undo their habit of ignoring the predictions until it is too late as they have learned that the warnings are not worth paying attention to. (For all I know prediction might already be good enough)
[+] [-] Retric|8 years ago|reply
Abstractly, the Red cross for examples also promotes disaster preparedness. http://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergenc...
Simple notification is another, huge but often overlooked step. More immediate things like providing busing to evacuate people is often considered part of the event.
[+] [-] KVFinn|8 years ago|reply
>What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters.
Future Aid: Why Prevention Efforts in Humanitarian Aid Often Fail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZwFG63TNxQ
http://aid.works/2016/10/billions-spent-why-isnt-haiti-ready...
>Humanitarian response is reactive, in part, because funding is reactive. Giving is emotional and irrational. If people can’t see the problem, it isn’t likely to garner support.
>Disaster preparedness is too abstract for people to take out their wallets. Even when someone says, “Hey, if you give $5 now, you’ll save more lives and money in the long run…” people just aren’t inclined to do it. Consider the slogan, “Build Back Better.” The emphasis is on what is already broken. A more pragmatic slogan would be, “Build Better.” It’s not likely to catch on.
[+] [-] kozikow|8 years ago|reply
E.g. at tensorflight we are assessing building insurance risk via computer vision and significant part of features we detect are useful for hurricanes (e.g. building construction type, potential windborne projectiles, trees dangerously close to the building). Although our business model is selling this data for insurance, we could offer an assessment to individual users close to the catastrophe. Do you think individual users would be interested in potential suggestions (e.g. trim the tree, move chairs in-house, or flee ASAP :P)
[+] [-] s-phi-nl|8 years ago|reply
You can read it at https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disaster-politics-can-g... .
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zanny|8 years ago|reply
This is supposed to be something governments account for. They budget for and provide the insurance on giant disasters of this scale.
If we want to do anything about improving the preparation and recovery from natural disasters, it will have to be a political engagement. The total costs of some of these incidents push tens of billions of dollars for the whole recovery. If there is anything governments should be accountable for, it is acts of nature.
[+] [-] rbritton|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will_brown|8 years ago|reply
After Andrew we bought an RV and live in that outside our house for months while our home was repaired/rebuilt; I can't recall exactly but I'd say it was at least a month before power was restored to power refridge/deep freezer; for months my elementary school was shared with another school that was destroyed (we had half days); houses literally had "looters will be shot" spray painted on them; eventually national guard began patrolling the neighborhood for a couple months; it wasn't unusual for kids at school to be living off military MREs (meals ready to eat). And we always considered ourselves lucky.
[+] [-] leggomylibro|8 years ago|reply
I don't know much about meteorology, so I'll post this without comment besides the article's subject; maybe someone else can make an informed value judgement. But apparently as global temperatures rise, the atmosphere is going to be able to hold a lot more water:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/the-stra...
[+] [-] JshWright|8 years ago|reply
One of the reasons Harvey intensified so quickly is that is passed over a _very_ warm section of the gulf:
https://s.w-x.co/wu/ohc_aQG3_2016_237_1200.harvey.int__0.gif
Irma will be passing over similarly warm waters for the next 4-5 days:
http://isotherm.rsmas.miami.edu/heat/images/irma/ohc_aQG3_20...
The northern Leewards and Greater Antilles are in for a _really_ rough time. It's likely a direct hit (or close brush) with either Hispaniola or Cuba will weaken Irma before it turns north into Florida, but that's still really bad news for folks in the northern Caribbean, and it's still going to be a very serious storm when it hits Florida.
[+] [-] idlewords|8 years ago|reply
In other words, this is the kind of storm season you can expect to get once in a while even before factoring in the effect of warming seas.
[+] [-] lugg|8 years ago|reply
This site[1] has some really good info and daily videos with the rundown of the latest forecast
[1] https://www.tropicaltidbits.com
[+] [-] Jazonk|8 years ago|reply
http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/
[+] [-] sathackr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ftxrcc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grazester|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winslow|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pryelluw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiNovi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singularity2001|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outoftacos|8 years ago|reply
Yes it's a few days out and they can and usually do veer off, but this one is not worth riding out.
[+] [-] MisterBastahrd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeep|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|8 years ago|reply
Anyone know more about this?
Because if true, it's the second time European models were more correct than American ones. Last time they decided we needed more supercomputing power, and they got it. Did it help?
[+] [-] erobbins|8 years ago|reply
I would GTFO for this one, it looks really bad.
[+] [-] MaxScheiber|8 years ago|reply
I wouldn't stick around for this one if I were still in Florida.
[+] [-] rovr138|8 years ago|reply
At least we have been able to help family out.
[+] [-] brianbreslin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikesickler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jason_slack|8 years ago|reply
Irma is 180mph. Scroll the Windy.com map to between South America and Antartica. Is that really 330mph winds?
https://www.windy.com/?-63.273,-79.277,3,m:YTadQA
screenshot, just in case: https://imgur.com/a/Jm2ir
Still looking at Windy.com, Alaska is getting hit with 150mph winds right now. I haven't heard about that, but Irma is huge news on the back of Harvey. I guess I might be sheltered a bit. I seldom think about the weather much.
[+] [-] joezydeco|8 years ago|reply
People are trying to get off Grand Turk as fast as they can. The airlines have overbooked outbound flights and the airport is closing on Thursday for 48 hours. I'm hoping the damage is minimal. outoftacos mentions that eastern sides of the islands take more of a hit which gives some solace here.
[+] [-] DarkTree|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sandorie|8 years ago|reply
In Cuba we didn't have nearly a quarter of the resources available in the U.S. We managed to minimize casualties because we kept our cool and didnt give in into despair.
[+] [-] rovr138|8 years ago|reply
It’s been a shit show in Puerto Rico the last couple of days.
[+] [-] Xoros|8 years ago|reply
Big thoughts for all those who will be less lucky than us.
[+] [-] rovr138|8 years ago|reply
Expecting it here today/tonight (Puerto Rico)
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nickgravel|8 years ago|reply
It's worrisome to say the least.
[+] [-] 0xCMP|8 years ago|reply