Dr. Roy Spencer:
Today marks 4,001 days since the last major hurricane (Wilma in 2005) made landfall in the United States. A major hurricane (Category 3 to 5) has maximum sustained winds of at least 111 mph, and “landfall” means the center of the hurricane eye crosses the coastline.
This morning it looks like Matthew will probably not make landfall along the northeast coast of Florida. Even if it does, its intensity is forecast to fall below Cat 3 strength this evening. The National Hurricane Center reported at 7 a.m. EDT that Cape Canaveral in the western eyewall of Matthew experienced a wind gust of 107 mph.
(And pleeeze stop pestering me about The Storm Formerly Known as Hurricane Sandy, it was Category 1 at landfall. Ike was Cat 2.)
While coastal residents grow weary of “false alarms” when it comes to hurricane warnings, the National Weather Service has little choice when it comes to warning of severe weather events like tornadoes and hurricanes. Because of forecast uncertainty, the other option (under-warning) would inevitably lead to a catastrophic event that was not warned.
This would be unacceptable to the public. Most of us who live in “tornado alley” have experienced dozens if not hundreds of tornado warnings without ever seeing an actual tornado. I would wager that hurricane conditions are, on average, experienced a small fraction of the time that hurricane warnings are issued for any given location.
The “maximum sustained winds” problem
Another issue that is not new is the concern that the “maximum sustained winds” reported for hurricanes are overestimated. I doubt this is the case. But there is a very real problem that the area of maximum winds usually covers an extremely small portion of the hurricane. As a result, seldom does an actual anemometer (wind measuring device) on a tower measure anything close to what is reported as the maximum sustained winds. This is because there aren’t many anemometers with good exposure and the chances of the small patch of highest winds hitting an instrumented tower are pretty small.
It also raises the legitimate question of whether maximum sustained winds should be focused on so much when hurricane intensity is reported.
Media hype also exaggerates the problem. Even if the maximum sustained wind estimate was totally accurate, the area affected by it is typically quite small, yet most of the warned population is under the impression they, personally, are going to experience such extreme conditions.
Read more from Dr. Roy Spencer: http://tinyurl.com/jn9tgha
Stella's Place 
Yeah, until one local TV weatherman started questioning the ‘global warming’ dogma, we’d hear this all of the time.
NOLA was hit by a hurricane over a hundred years ago that wiped two lake-side towns off the face of the earth, no strength listing but they’re still finding traces of the towns in the lake. Opportunist Cassandras say that was due to the early beginnings of climate change as the evil human virus’s industrial blasphemy was just starting to insult Gaia. Being such a religious city the ‘divine punishment from God’ hurricane explainations just squeak past the secular prog’s ‘punishment from Gaia’ explainations but manynof us just accept that ‘we’re living in a bullseye zone’.
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Was watching Weather Channel reporting, had tonstop as it became painful. Not the scenes of weather, wind and water…it was the weather woman from their Georgia feed saying, multiple times, how the residents had “fleed the island” and taken “preventment” prior to leaving. In all fairness she may have been talking about how the residents sprayed insecticide to kill the fleas but that still leaves the ‘preventment’.
On a lighter side the now-nanny NBC owned Weather Channel droned on and on about how people should flee, run away when told to…they were one catch phrase away from a call from Montry Python’s lawyers; “why”, they warned, “you could be without power for as long as TWENTY FOUR HOURS!!!!”. A poll of self-identified looters agreed 100% with the Channels rabbit writers.
My favorite was the Channel reporting, multiple times and in a high state of frenzy, of a group of drinkers trapped in a seaside bar in St Aug. Now I’m betting that few, if any, residents in that bar were desperately calling for the Coadt Guard to chopper them from that bar. I’ll bet a drink that more of the bar’s patrons were worried they would be forced to leave the bar than were worried the bar would be swamped. Trust me, you CAN drink when you’re up to your chest in water.
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Or under water!!!!!!!
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Weather talking-heads are frantically waving theirvarms about and using theirvPee Wee Herman voices talking anout the ‘devastation’ Matthew’s visited along the Florida coast.’Scuse me, New Orleans was devastated, Ocean County, New Jersey was devastated…Florida hot a bad rainstorm. Sorry, you had how many homes and businesses wees razed to the ground? How many people left completely honeless for more than a week? Or have we redefined adjectives that apply to disasters?
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I don’t edit good when I’s perturbed…gotta stop watching the ‘weather as entertainment’ channels. Then again when you only have one subject and you have to put a new spin on and reserve the same tired, cold dish 24/7 I guess you have to be innovative.
Wonder if they’ll start having an Emmy for ‘best weather report as docudrama’ ?
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