Welcome To The Age Of The Sucker Punch Hurricane

[hatrack]

On Monday morning, a mild tropical storm in the Pacific Ocean heading toward Mexico’s western coast suddenly transformed into one the strongest tropical cyclones ever to threaten the region. Hurricane Willa—which had maximum sustained winds of 40 miles-per-hour less than 48 hours prior—had quadrupled in intensity, gusting at 160 miles-per-hour.

Residents of the Mexican states Sinaloa and Nayarit must now scramble to prepare for a Category 5 storm they didn’t realize was coming. Expected to make landfall there on Tuesday afternoon, Willa is now threatening “life-threatening flash flooding and landslides,” “dangerous storm surge,” and “large destructive waves,” according to the National Hurricane Center. Willa’s unexpected growth has been both “explosive” and “extremely impressive,” the NHC said. But it’s also eerily familiar. Willa is the third devastating hurricane in the last month to experience “rapid intensification,” a phenomenon in which a hurricane’s sustained wind speeds increase by at least 35 miles-per-hour over a 24-hour period.

Hurricane Michael was the last to catch meteorologists off guard. It was only a Category 1 storm on October 8, less than two days before it made landfall as nearly a Category 5, one of the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall in the United States. Hurricane Florence jumped from a Category 2 to Category 4 storm in a period of a few hours before it slammed into North Carolina in September. The trend isn’t limited to this year, either. The most destructive and infamous storms of 2017—Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria—all underwent rapid intensification, according to The Washington Post.

It’s fairly normal for hurricanes to gain strength over short periods of time, but rapid intensification is becoming more severe. “A study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the magnitude of these rapid intensification events increased from 1986 to 2015 in the central and eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean,” the Post noted. “From 1986 to 2000, the average storm that rapidly intensified saw its peak winds increase by 32 mph in 24 hours, but the increase was 36 mph in 24 hours from 2001 to 2015.”

EDIT

https://newrepublic.com/article/151826/rise-rapid-intensification-hurricanes-willa-michael-florence

[wasupaloopa]

1. So when they tell you a cat one is going to hit land in your town, get the hell out.

Fill your gas tanks, avoid the rush. Board up and tape your windows. Remember climate change is real.

Or don't

[Sherman A1]

2. All of us need to take time to prepare for weather events

In our areas well ahead of them striking. We all need to set up our emergency kits stocked with medicines, food, water, batteries and alike to get us through short term events. Just as we need to know how a fire extinguisher works, we need to have some plans in place.

[wasupaloopa]

3. Where I live in CA it is fire. We have several large signs in town at busy intersections that read

something like this, "this is fire country, fire is coming, be prepared".

Almost weekly you look toward the distant hills and see smoke. Almost weekly you step outside and smell smoke. Attack planes from the local airport are flying off somewhere almost weekly.

When they tell you to voluntarily evacuate you should go. When they say mandatory evacuation get the hell out.

Also if it isn't you, make space for someone who is evacuated.