Anybody else find it curious that the NOAA 5-day cone for Dean

[kestrel91316]

only goes out 3 days???

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/144025.shtml?5day#contents

What, they can't be bothered to do a 5-day projection because it isn't hitting the US, just those poor brown people south of the border? It was like this yesterday, too.

[stranger_with_candy]

1. it's because....

after 3 days it's not a tropical storm. they do this all the time when the system becomes non tropical.

[Lasher]

4. Yep, and they were doing 5 days before.

I've been hitting the site just about every day.

[Justyce]

2. If you look at the wind speed,

it looks like it will be less than 39 mph after that and not considered a hurricane anymore.

[soothsayer]

3. Dean didn't do much even as a supposed Cat 5 (did he?)

[phantom power]

5. Damage was quite light, compared to the potential. Total estimate about $3-4 billion

It really did remarkably little damage, for a cat-5 landfall, and still being cat-3 right in the center of the peninsula. But that's relative.

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. Depends on various factors -

It's really all about the diameter of the hurricane winds, its impact angle, the types of building/terrain. I was quite surprised (and relieved!) that the perceived damage was less than it could have been. we have a personal appreciation for these beasts - we live in Raleigh, and when Fran came into our area in 1996, it was incredible - winds far less than Dean (75-80 mph by the time it hit us), but with so many trees, and the ground saturated from an earier Tropical storm, it caused incredible damage (we lost over 100 trees just on our acre of land).

[tnlurker]

7. I thought

That it made landfall in an area that was lightly populated and swampy. That was the reason for the light property damage.