Shannon Ricles: Right, well, good morning!
Thank you for joining us today
and welcome to Hurricane Hazards and Science,
the National Hurricane Center's Role
in Providing Life-Saving Information.
I am Shannon Ricles, the Education and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor National Marine Sanctuary,
and I'll be your host today.
And joining us as my co-host is Mark Losavio,
who is the Media and Outreach Coordinator for Monitor.
And this presentation is brought to you
by NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary,
in collaboration with the North Carolina Office
of State Archeology.
Now partnering since 1975,
NOAA and the state of North Carolina,
work to research, honor, and protect the hallmarks
of North Carolina's underwater cultural heritage Shipwrecks.
Now these shipwrecks hold information
about the ever-changing technologies,
and cultural and physical landscapes.
They serve as uniquely accessible underwater museums
and a memorial to generations of mariners
who lived, died, and worked and fought off our shores.
This is one of the many webinars that we will be hosting
in the coming months for this Submerged
North Carolina webinars series,
in collaboration with the North Carolina
Office of State Archeology.
So Monitor is just one of 14 national Marine sanctuaries,
and two marine national monuments
in the National Marine Sanctuary System.
The system encompasses more than 600,000 square miles
of marine and Great Lake waters from Washington State,
to the Florida Keys, and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.
Now, during the presentation,
all attendees will be in listen only mode.
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All right, so this morning we are welcoming, Andrew Latto,
the Hurricane Specialist for the National Hurricane Center.
So good morning, Andrew, and thank you for joining us.
And I am having a little trouble.
I'm going to try to change presenters here. So hold on.
Whoops.
All of a sudden, my screen decided to scroll.
Mark, can you make him a presenter please?
Sorry, folks.
Did you get it, Andy?
Andy Latto: Yep.
Shannon: Okay.
Andy: My screen all right?
Shannon: Yes, thank you.
Andy: Alrighty. Hello everybody.
As she said, I'm Andy Latto, I'm a Hurricane Specialist
at the Hurricane Center.
We're going to talk about some of the science
behind hurricanes, some climatology,
how it affects the Eastern United States,
specifically the Carolinas and the mid-Atlantic,
and also kind of convey some of the dangers behind it;
some of the misconceptions.
And overall you, hopefully, you can walk away
with a sense of how to best expect things,
as far as preparedness is concerned,
and what the hazards might be
in your particular locality for these hurricanes.
So I wanna start right off the bat with a poll questions,
just to make sure you all are awake.
What's the deadliest hazard from hurricanes?
And Shannon, I think's gonna to do a poll on there,
and we're going to say, "Okay, is it widespread
strong winds, tornadoes, flash flooding from heavy rain,
or storm surge?"
Shannon: Okay. I've launched the poll.
So select your answer.
We'll give everybody a couple of seconds
to get awake and choose the answer.
Watching responses.
People are still voting,
so I'll wait another few seconds.
Okay.
We're getting there about 81% of you have voted, 82.
Okay. We'll give you one more.
All right. It looks like it's slowed down.
So I'm going to go ahead and close the poll.
And then I'm gonna share the polls results,
and let's see what you guys think.
So it looks like storm surge came in first at 56%,
flash flooding from heavy rains at 29%,
5% of you thought tornadoes,
and 10% thought strong winds.
Andy: All right, good job guys. Good job group.
Water is what kills, so it's actually very close
to what the polling results was.
Storm surge is about 50%,
flooding rainfall from rainfall is 27%,
and much smaller percentages from the others.
So, yeah, the popular conception is people think about wind,
but it's the water that causes most of the fatalities.
That's as far as a direct fatalities from storms occur,
but there's a lot of indirect fatalities that occur
as well from these major systems.
Most frequently is cardiovascular events, you know,
folks are doing strenuous activities trying to prepare,
or clean up after the storm.
Other things could be electric,
lots of electrocution.
So from down power lines or accidents,
things like that, nature that can happen.
A lot of folks aren't careful
with their generators afterwards
and they don't have proper ventilation, that can happen.
Those are also considered indirect fatalities.
By age, typically it's folks over 60,
and the numbers go down
as the ages go down.
So climatologically speaking,
where do these storms come from?
So we're going to pretend,
say that we start of in June here.
And for folks that aren't aware of it,
we're gonna actually start doing
the tropical weather outlook, starting May 15th now.
So we already do the tropical weather outlook
for the East Pacific starting May 15th,
but this is the first year we routinely
do that for the Atlantic on May 15th.
Just we've seen, noticed a trend,
that we've typically had a lot of years recently,
where storms have formed late May.
And so it follows a similar pattern as June,
it's just, there's occasional storm in late May,
therefore we go, "Well, we're already doing the job
for these specific miles,
we'll just take a look at the Atlantic too."
So June, the upper left hand corner,
at it's likely formations typically Gulf of Mexico,
up through the Carolina coast.
And a lot of times you see these from disturbances
that form off little frontal boundaries.
You have things that stall, the cold front
that moves off shore, shore stalls out,
and you have something that kind of spins up on that,
and festers for a couple of days, and then turns back north.
And may make landfall something in the week.
We had stuff like that last year.
Arthur was an example of that.
Going into July, things expand a little bit more
towards the Caribbean.
You see like tropical waves start crossing the Atlantic,
they get a little stronger.
The conditions become a little bit better,
as far as shears concerned,
wind shears are a big storm killer.
And the shear typically lightens up
as the season goes on.
Of course the water's warm up as well.
So you get those combination of the warmer waters,
and the lighter winds in the atmosphere
that allow the storms to really tower up.
And so by August, you have all hotspots,
pretty much anywhere in the Western Atlantic
or the Caribbean Sea.
And the typical tracks with August,
you'd have less cold fronts,
moving down into the Southern United States.
So the tracks can often times go from east to west
all the way up through even the Carolinas.
And that's where you could see, a lot of times,
the stronger storm-making landfall.
August and September as these storms
just kind of move east to west,
and they kind of curve up a little bit
as they approach the United States.
And so September being the peak of the hurricane season,
when all those conditions are just right,
and then October starts,
the things sort of start to die off from east to west.
So they had the Cape Verde season,
that kinda ends off of Africa,
the conditions become a little more hostile.
A lot of times those waves
will just keep on propagating across the Atlantic.
They won't form until I get to the Western Caribbean.
That happened very classically last year.
We had a couple of really strong hurricanes
in the Western Caribbean late in the season.
Michael, a couple of years ago,
happened in late in the season,
is a very similar circumstances.
So the last time you see those big
Gulf of Mexico hurricanes happen in October.
You can also get some strong ones off the East Coast,
but fortunately by October,
typically, off the Eastern United States,
cold fronts, the westerlies,
the mid latitude westerlies
kick in and they kind of push the storms
off to the east before they get a chance to make landfall.
Unless you're a Sandy type of year,
where it pivots around it has
those conditions just right to make landfall.
By November, things really die down,
there's a lot of wind shear,
a lot of cold fronts moving off the United States.
And so the conditions just are going downhill
for storms to actually hold together for very long.
That's kind of a rundown of what to expect
month by month, typically speaking.
And so if you add all that together,
this is kind of what it looks like.
September 10th is the climatological peak
of hurricane season, but you can see this chart,
all the way from left to right,
you could have storms any of the time
from, well basically, from like next week,
all the way till Christmas.
You add 'em all up to over the last a hundred years.
So, but typically, you don't see
a whole lot of activity until August,
and then it goes on through October.
You see that little secondary peak,
that's that Western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico peak
that we oftentimes see like the Michaels form,
and the Wilma's form and whatnot,
when the storms come out of the Western Caribbean Sea.
The history of tropical cyclones.
You're going to see a couple of versions of this map.
'Cause it kinda, it kind of highlights whether or not
you're out of harm's way at any point in time.
So unless you're way over here,
you'll see potential effects from a tropical cycle
at one point or another, probably in your lifetime.
Zooming in a little bit, Major Hurricane History.
So every yellow line was a major hurricane reaching land.
Carolina's no stranger to them,
and even New England,
can get impacts directly from a major hurricane landfall.
So we're gonna go through some hurricane basics,
and kind of show you what they're all about.
How they form and what their structure is.
So here is four different major hurricanes.
So they're all different shapes and sizes.
Jose, it's hard to tell by looking at the map,
it was a fairly small compact storm.
It's kind of like Andrew,
where you could have been in Miami getting racked
by a category five hurricane,
but if you were up in like,
a hundred miles north,
it was a breezy day, it wasn't that bad.
Maria is a little bit bigger of a storm.
Irma was a very large storm.
When Irma passed by south Florida,
you could feel it all the way up in Jacksonville.
So it was, it was a very large, broad circulation.
The convection, that all that red and yellow,
spanned it out for a couple of hundred miles.
And then Joaquin,
even though it's eye was clouded over at that point in time,
was a little bit sheared.
It was still a major hurricane.
So what makes these form? How do we build a hurricane?
So you need all these ingredients to come together,
just right, for them to happen.
So number one, you need a preexisting disturbance.
So what is that?
It could be a tropical wave.
It could be an old cold front.
It could be some, a good example,
Barry a couple of years ago,
it was a mesoscale convective system.
It came out of the central plains in the United States.
Come all the way around the high pressure area
into the Gulf of Mexico and became a storm.
So any of those things that have
a lot of thunderstorm activities,
or a little bit of turning in the atmosphere,
that have formed from something else
can be the building block,
the initialization of what a hurricane can be.
So you need to be far enough north of the equator,
the Coriolis force, the turning in the atmosphere,
it has to be strong enough.
And the farther north you go,
the stronger that factor becomes.
We see a little change in wind speed,
and or direction with height,
the word wind shear I'm talking about.
When the winds are 10 miles per hour at the ground,
out of the east,
and they're 10 miles per hour out of the east,
five miles up in the atmosphere, that's light wind shear.
If it's 10 miles per hour to the east of the ground,
and a hundred miles per hour to the east, five miles up,
that strong wind shear.
Hurricanes don't like wind shear,
it'll tear the storms apart.
Because they'll just tear the top off of a thunderstorm.
So they need to be able to have that light winds,
to be able to have that tall tower of convection to fuel,
to get that engine going.
And so the fuel it takes
is the warm sea surface temperatures.
That's where it gets its warm water and that warm air.
An unstable atmosphere,
so the temperatures go down as you go up.
That's how we call instability.
It helps the water air parcels lift fast,
with that instability.
And then high atmospheric moisture.
You can't have a whole bunch of dry air,
expect to have a lot of thunderstorms.
You go outside today, here,
it's barely a cloud in the sky. It's dry.
Not conducive for thunderstorm activity.
So example of these disturbances
I was kind of alluding to already.
So we have those tropical wave that come off of Africa,
about 70% of all the tropical cyclones
that we see in the Atlantic basin come from that.
Then we have low fronts,
low pressure systems, in the upper levels of atmosphere.
We sometimes have these upper level lows
that spun up Joaquin in 2015.
Another great example,
and you folks, up in the mid-Atlantic,
and the Carolinas probably see a lot of this,
occluded cycles.
What I mean by those,
is you have a cold front associated with a low
that moves off the United States,
that can go over warm waters and turn into a storm.
It can transition into a tropical cyclone or a hurricane.
So we usually see a few of those,
a couple each year.
And like I alluded to, the other one,
the disturbances that come off
the United States thunderstorms cluster
produced by a non-tropical weather systems.
That could be a big thunderstorm complex
that crosses over your state, moves off shore,
and turns into a storm.
So all those are possible sources.
How do they die?
Number one, they weaken over land.
Land causes friction.
These storms do not survive with friction.
They require that non-fiction water surface
to spin them up, and give them that energy,
and keep the engine going.
They could mix in with cold air or dry air
and become extra tropical.
When these storms, a lot of times,
go over cooler waters and interact with the cold front,
they'll become extra tropical.
Basically they become a mid-latitude cyclone with a cold
front. We transition to that.
Or they weakened to hostile environments,
such as strong wind shear.
They can get torn apart by wind shear or cool waters.
And then all you have left,
is this little swirl of low clouds
in the low levels of the atmosphere.
So those are different ways they can meet their demise.
The very classic example of the Cape Verde hurricane.
You have off of Africa, a tropical wave,
and moves towards the west across the tropical Atlantic,
slowly develops becomes a tropical depression,
then a tropical storm,
then a hurricane off the Eastern United States.
And this lucky case, it re-curves,
doesn't affect land,
and comes a extra tropical transition.
See the fronts, the cold fronts, the blue triangles,
the classic warm front to the right,
and it becomes an extra tropical storm
that accelerates off across the northern Atlantic.
Many times though, obviously,
we're not as fortunate in these storms,
the steering flow will take these into the United States.
And I'm going to tell you how we look at those
steering flows here in a second.
One example of a season.
So storms are all different shapes and sizes.
They go different places, depending on the steering flow.
You can see down south,
you have a lot of classic east to west moving storms.
They formed off the Cape Verde islands,
but then you look north,
you have a lot of storms that formed out here,
meandered around and went north.
That, those could be of subtropical origins.
They could have formed from old upper-level lows,
or oral fronts, different features like that.
And then you have, look right here,
the Western Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico,
these are some of the early season
and late season ones that made have formed.
Like number three here, Sydney, was June.
So yeah, those forming maybe off of an old frontal boundary,
and then they lift north
into the United States.
So kind of a classic season here,
where they have a few different areas
that they could form at.
So how do they, how do we know where
they're going to be going?
So basically you picture a leaf in a stream.
They're just sitting there moving wherever
the flow in the atmosphere is moving.
Typically these deeper storms move
with the large-scale atmospheric flow, the deep layer flow.
A lot of times we look at the mid-level in the atmosphere,
to determine what those steering flows might be.
It's actually a very well understood,
fairly well understood problem,
because you've had to focus mainly
just on this steering flow and the larger scale features.
So those are large and identifiable computer models,
a lot of times pick up on those fairly well.
And they provide a fairly good estimation
of where the storms are going to be going,
especially in the near term.
Intensity's a bit more of a challenge.
So intensity, there's a lot of things going into play here.
Not only did we have to worry about what's going on
around the storm and the environment,
we also have to worry about what's going on
inside the storms, as far as it's structure.
A storm can have a great environment,
but if the internal structure's all messed up,
and it can't get an eye-wall forming, and the core together,
it might really struggle to strengthen.
So we have to be aware of all of those different
scales of the issue with intensity.
And it spends a lot on track,
because if it track's over colder waters or land,
it could be a big difference.
A great example is Dorian.
Hurricane Dorian that went across the Bahamas,
and devastated part of the Bahama chain,
A lot of the models were having it crossover Hispaniola.
And so their intensity forecast,
a lot of them had dissipating.
Unfortunately, it never really crossed that island,
and instead of moving, it intensified off shore.
Had it made across the island,
it would have made it across maybe as a weak tropical storm.
Instead it became a very strong hurricane.
Remember in the category five, ultimately.
The other factors are winds,
temperature and moisture around the storm.
So those are the key factors we look at.
The shear, water temperatures, and moisture.
Those are again, I mean, I've said that a couple of times,
but those are key factors as far as
intensification of a storm.
Those internal processes are very important.
That bottom right-hand corner pictures a microwave image.
Kind of digs into the storm and shows you the structure.
You see like, a ring of dry air in there,
and you're like, "Oh, when it went,
it went under an eyewall replacement cycle."
So it might struggle initially with intensification
in that kind of example.
Another challenge we face in forecasting,
is a rapid intensification.
In this example, the storm goes from a weak hurricane
to a major hurricane very quickly.
And it's sometimes very difficult to pick up on
when that process is going to occur.
We look at the factors.
We look at all the environmental factors
and know that those are all very conducive,
and the storm looks like it's going
to have a good structure,
then we can get higher confidence.
And rapid intensification
is defined by 35 mile per hour wind increase in 24 hours.
But it's still poorly understood
and generally poorly forecasted.
It's very, very hard to have the high confidence to say,
"Okay, this storm is going to get 40,
knots stronger, in the next day."
It's tough to pick up on that.
We have different methods to look at that.
Statistically, there's other tools
that are being developed to help us with that.
And we're still in the learning process of that.
So our whole role here at NHC,
is I'm going to go over that here now.
The left-hand side of the screen you have in 1995,
the buildings being built.
They used to be over in the eastern part of Miami,
until Hurricane Andrew hit that building,
and took the radar out, tossed some cars around,
and we decided, "Okay, we should probably build a building
that's a little bit more resilient,
since we're putting the hurricane center in South Florida."
And so, Herb Saffir,
which is one of the people that designed
Saffir-Simpson Wind scale, helped design this building.
It's 10 inch thick walls made of tons of concrete,
with reinforced metal rods.
So we can sit in there while a hurricane's blowing outside
and be okay inside.
Even on the right-hand corner of the screen,
you see this big building here,
that's a giant generator with a giant gas tank.
So we can be a couple of weeks without electricity,
still forecasting away, while there's storms outside.
So the questions we have to answer as forecasters is first,
we have to do an analysis.
When we go through the forecast cycle,
let's pretend I'm sitting down,
it's a few hours process.
And so some of the questions we have the first answer is,
"Where's the storm at?"
From this, the motion can be determined.
We look at a lot of different data aircraft, if we're lucky,
If not we have satellite imagery,
we have scatterometer data,
which is the satellite wind data, or buoy data...
We have tons of sources we can look at.
Even ship data, to try to determine where these centers are.
'Cause that's not as,
sometimes it's not as straightforward,
as you see in this picture, where you see an eye.
It's very easy to figure out that one.
A lot of times these systems in the formative stages
are very difficult to find the center,
and therefore very difficult to figure out
where they've been going for the last several hours.
How strong is the storm?
Even even more difficult if you don't have a lot of data.
And a lot of the data sources have their limitations.
That some of the best data we can get is aircraft,
or radar if it's close enough to shore.
Buoy data could be very useful as well,
'cause it kind of gives you
an actual pinpoint specific data.
Otherwise we use satellite estimates,
or if we have satellite wind data, we use that as well.
How big is the storm?
Another important factor.
How far away do the tropical storm
force winds extend from the center?
That's a major part of how we determine
where to issue watches and warnings.
So if you have a very compact storm,
where the storm tropical, storm force winds,
only extend 30 miles from the center,
you have a lot smaller area
that you have to worry about evacuations, and whatnot,
and preparations versus one that has
a hundred mile storm radius.
And so we had to look at all that data to determine
those particular factors for tropical storm
or hurricane force winds.
And as I was saying, ship buoy,
aircraft, scatterometer data,
all helpful in trying to determine
all three of these questions we have to answer.
So there's some uncertainty when we do this analysis.
And usually the week of the storm,
the harder it is to figure out where it is.
And that's, I was alluding to that,
because if it has a major hurricane, has an eye,
you can sit there, and look at a satellite,
"Oh, there it is." Pretty simple.
So our error is usually very low
where the storm is for the analysis,
five to 20 nautical miles.
And this is that hour zero, keep that in mind.
Hurricanes 50 to 40.
40 being, if you can't see the well-defined eye,
and it's kind of obscured,
you have that typical area, you can get out of that.
And then tropical storms,
a little bit more error, because again,
you can't find the center very easily.
Intensity. Within about 10%.
So a a hundred mile per hour hurricane
could be 90 or 110 miles per hour.
So a 30 mile per hour top compression
could be a 45 mile per hour tropical storm.
It's just basically the limitation of the data
that we have at the time.
And then wind radii, within about 25%.
So if we say it's about 30 miles
from the center of the extend,
you might have to consider it being
almost 40 miles to be on the safe side.
So the radii present the largest distance
from the center in the particular quadrant.
That's important because we might say,
they extend 120 miles from the center,
but that's maybe right here, into my center,
only a hundred over here.
But you have to assume the worst case scenario,
in this case, to stay out of the harm's way.
So this, when we see this graphic here,
that's what we're showing the tropical storm force winds
is that large orange circle,
and that brownish copper is hurricane force winds.
And our products will always show this 34, 50, and 64,
you see in the bottom left-hand corner,
that's in nautical miles,
and how far the maximum extent of each quadrant is.
Okay, next poll question, to make sure you're still awake.
What is typically the more challenging part
of the hurricane forecast? Track or intensity?
If you're paying attention,
you'll know the answer to this one.
Mark: All right. The poll is open cast your votes now.
Votes coming in really fast. We've already got 70%.
All right, I'll keep the poll open
for about five more seconds.
Get your votes in.
All right.
Last chance.
And we're done.
So we have about 24% voted for track,
and 76% voting for intensity.
Andy: All right. Great.
Yep. Intensity is the correct answer.
Intensity is definitely more difficult
statistically to forecast than track.
Track forecasting, as we were saying before,
is relatively simple.
It's the cork or the leaf in the stream.
The larger features, you see in the top right-hand corner,
larger features, it just flows around.
It goes, flows around the high pressure,
gets picked up by a trough and turns away.
So intensity forecasting,
we have to worry about the inner structure
and the larger scale environment.
So these storms can then be bringing dry air into 'em.
It takes time to work that dry air out, for example,
and so it's much more difficult to forecast for intensity.
When radii forecasting,
we have some guidance, but not a lot,
So we have climatological methods we look at.
Some of them global models,
and higher res models are also providing
some guidance onto that as well.
But the errors in those are still being studied,
and there's some challenges with that.
There's different challenges that are faced with wind radii.
Is the storm strengthening or weakening?
Is it becoming extra topical?
If things are, if this is going to be interacting
with like a frontal boundary, as it goes north,
these wind fields can expand very rapidly.
That becomes a big challenge in how far the extent
of these tropical storm force winds are going to be.
Also if it passes over land,
well that radii could decrease
because you have that friction.
So all, you have to think about all those things,
when you're talking about the wind radii forecasting.
So our product suite at the Hurricane Center,
brought up from a time by time basis.
So we have the tropical weather outlook we routinely issue.
We also might issue a special tropical weather outlook.
If there's something that's looking
a little bit suspicious out there,
and we have to have new information that says,
"Oh, we have to increase the probabilities big time."
But five days out, we usually,
that's the only thing you see,
if we have no storms is an outlook.
Within three to five days,
we might have an advisory for a storm.
So we have the advisories, wind speed probabilities,
forecast discussion.
We typically issue every six hours for a storm
that's out there without threatening any land.
Within two to three days of landfall, we will issue,
you know, a couple of days out,
we'll issue tropical storm hurricane watches.
And at that point,
we start issuing those advisories every three hours.
Intermediates every three hours,
and the full package, every six.
Within that two day timeframe,
we within, typically we'll issue the,
if he's going to be threatening land,
hurricane warnings, local statements.
The local weather forecast office
will start issuing their products as well.
We spell out, with a little bit more clarity,
the impacts of timing,
everything as far as when things
could be expected to occur in your area.
Graphically speaking,
this is classically what it would look like.
Is the Cone of Uncertainty,
as everyone likes to call it.
So in this particular example,
the northwest motion is expected,
And then center, we approach the U.S.,
in maybe a Monday or Tuesday timeframe,
and additional strengthening is expected.
'Cause you saw from the 'H' is a hurricane,
'M' is a major hurricane, so it shows intensification.
And here's a quick question,
what you folks listening in,
just because it's in this Cone of Uncertainty,
does that mean you're outside of it, you're safe?
Just ask yourself that question.
The answer's no.
Two thirds of the time,
the center of the storm stays inside that cone.
It means one third of the time,
the center, the actual center,
would be over here, or over here,
and that's a center of circulation.
So all the core threat, all the core winds might be,
the center might be here on the edge a third of the time,
and the wind, strongest winds are right here,
outside the cone.
So it's important to see if you're at the cone,
or even near the cone to keep an eye on this.
'Cause that cone can also shift as time goes by.
So we show hurricane force,
probably is kind of built
in a little bit of that uncertainty.
So we have showing probabilities here in yellow,
is about a one in three chance
of seeing hurricane force conditions
at any of these locations.
And we can combine these wind speed probabilities
with a time of arrival.
We have two different types of time of arrival.
This one's called the Most Likely Arrival,
and this helps in preparation for storms.
And so you see like on Monday at 8:00 PM,
is where the most likely time
the tropical storm force winds
will already be inland.
So if you're doing preparation,
and you're trying to put up shutters, things like that,
you don't want to be doing those
with there's tropical storm conditions.
So it kind of gives you an idea,
is when your preparation should be completed by,
when you're preparing for the storm's arrival.
If you have a lower threshold,
'earliest reasonable' might be a good way to plan,
because assume it's going to go faster.
And so by maybe Monday 8:00 AM,
if you're trying to plan along the coastline here,
that may be safe time to make sure you have
all your preparations complete.
Maybe you have a lot more work to be done.
Maybe have to take a ship out of a port.
You know, those kinds of things,
you have different factors, different thresholds,
for everybody depending on what their preparations are.
For those of you that lived in that area,
when Hugo went through,
here's the examples for the key messages.
So we have, when a storm is going to be threatening an area,
we will write up these key messages
to try to show what the main impacts are going to be.
In this particular case, we're trying to explain,
is going to be a major hurricane.
The timing, we tell the impacts are going to be
strong winds in a dangerous surge,
from the coast, South Carolina, North Carolina.
But we also mention it's too soon to determine
the location, timing, magnitude.
So we urge everybody to keep monitoring
their local officials and listen to them,
as far as evacuation advice.
We talk about risk of damaging and wind rainfall.
We talk about flooding.
So if flooding is going to be like,
it's gonna be slow moving,
and floodings going to be a really big issue,
we're gonna really highlight that in these statements here.
And lastly, we talked about large swells,
because not necessarily because
you're in the direct path of these storms,
but we're talking about Bermuda,
portions of the East Coast through mid-week,
that might even be directly impacted by the storm.
We had storms last year,
that several hundred miles off shore,
that there's still multiple fatalities
along the Eastern United States due to the swell,
that caused these rip currents.
That enhanced the rip currents
combined with the local effects.
And so they can be deadly without even reaching land.
So the inland winds, right?
Here's an example from Hurricane Hugo.
The wind swath on the, on the upper right-hand screen here,
shows how strong the winds penetrated inland.
It's hard to kind of tell,
if you look closely the green 100 mile per hour plus,
penetrated a fairly decent amount inland
here along its landfall.
And then of course you had the winds
decreasing as it moves inland,
but there was still quite a bit of strong winds,
a large swath of damage that occurred
as the storm moved in.
Still a CAT-1 as it reached Charlotte, North Carolina.
Folks, a lot of you that probably
went through Isaias last year,
could probably appreciate how a category one hurricane
making landfall was still a strong tropical storm
as it went past New York.
It still had a little bit of dynamic
interaction with a trough.
And there's still a little bit
of source of warm waters there,
that part of circulation was feeding off the East Coast.
So it maintained a large,
large amount of its circulation
as it moved several states last year.
And it caused a swath of damage all the way from
South Carolina, even into Vermont and New Hampshire.
Power outages, all up and down the East Coast,
from one weak hurricane.
The category ones can be very potent
and it can cause a lot of damage,
and cause quite a bit of fatalities.
It doesn't take a CAT-5 to necessarily cause any fatalities.
Some of the most devastating storms
are actually going to be the weak ones.
So I want to go with this question.
We're gonna get more local for you folks,
how many tropical storms were stronger?
So, I'm gonna probably have to explain
this question a little bit.
If let's say, anywhere from South Carolina to New York,
how many tropical storms to hurricanes
have tracked across that area?
Doesn't have to mean it made landfall in that area,
but it's tracked across that region,
and in our recorded history.
Shannon: Okay, the poll is open
and we have people voting.
So let's see what their answer is.
I will let the audience know I got this one wrong
when we went through it before, so...
but it looks like everybody's
getting it more correctly than I did.
All right. Few more seconds.
We've about 70% have voted.
Okay, it looks like the voting has pretty much
slowed down or stopped.
I'm gonna close the poll
and share the results.
It looks like most people,
45% say 322, 24%--
It's pretty evenly split between 411 and 222.
24% for 411, and 25% for 222.
And then 7% said 111.
Andy: So was the percentage for 411?
Shannon: Uh, 24%.
Andy: Okay, well those 24% are correct.
We're going to go through a state-by-state breakdown here.
South Carolina, 86 storms have crossed
your area in recorded history.
I think some of the oldest ones you
see in here is an Unnamed 1882.
So these storms could have crossed anywhere like,
they could've made landfall in the Gulf of Mexico
in the crossing the state, or made landfall in your state.
Kinda to give you a perception of like,
what the threat over time could be in your area.
The red lines, that kind of magenta lines,
those are major hurricanes that affected the area.
And the green, the blue lines are tropical depressions,
I believe, and green would be tropical storms,
and yellow was hurricane.
Moving North... 135, North Carolina.
North Carolina sticks out there. It has the Cape.
So a lot of storms graze that area quite a bit over time.
Virginia, 69 storms.
A lot of the time they were moving from,
it's kind of a southwest to northeast direction.
They're getting, they're accelerating.
Isaias, last year is a good example.
It's right up there where this path was
across the eastern portion of Virginia.
Maryland's, 38.
Delaware, 15.
New Jersey, 23.
And again, New York,
'cause it has Long Island there, it kinda sticks out.
You get hit by 45 in history.
And some of those have been pretty strong storms as well,
especially in the Long Island area.
So here's a montage of last year's, season, record season.
Hopefully that's not the case this year.
What I'd like to convey about hurricane preparedness,
here's a link actually at the top
to the hurricane preparedness.
It's, I just added this, so it's not on the PDF.
But it's hurricane preparedness week is next week.
There's a lot of good resources on there.
It'll also go to your local,
there's stuff usually offered in localities,
as far as like what your evacuation information is.
We're actually talking about that
before this webinar started.
You know, everybody, if you lived in a vulnerable area,
that has an evacuation zone,
it's typically because of surge.
Know what zone you're in, and know how to prepare,
and have all your stuff prepared now rather than later.
It's always a good rule of thumb.
I know that one question that's probably gonna be asked is,
how busy this hurricane season is gonna be.
I'm gonna answer that before I field other questions.
We don't have the number yet from NOAA,
as far as how busy it is.
I don't think it's going to be as high as last year's
numbers that we actually saw. That was a record year.
But even if, if you know,
it might be forecasted to be above normal,
even if like in the future years,
if it's forecast to be below normal,
per se like down the road,
it's all a matter of perspective
of folks in where you live.
Last year, busiest year on record.
If I lived in central Florida, it felt pretty good.
Didn't really get hit by a whole lot of stuff.
If you lived in western Louisiana, not so much,
you got hit by multiple hurricanes.
A quiet year in 1992.
Very much below normal activity.
If you lived in south Florida,
you will never forget if you lived
through Hurricane Andrew,
that was a category five.
So it's very storm dependent.
It's very dependent on what region you are,
and where you are when these storms are, are developing.
The quietest season could have the right ingredients
and the right stream flow come together
to make that season the worst season you've ever remembered.
So you always have to repair it every year,
no matter what the level of activity,
generally speaking is going to be.
With that I'll field whatever questions that y'all may have.
Shannon: All right. Sorry about that.
Though, we have a lot of great questions that have come in.
Somebody wanted to know why there
were two storms named, Melissa.
Do storm names get reused?
Andy: Yes. It depends.
Some names get retired if they cause enough devastation,
those are voted on each year
by the World Meteorological Organization.
Actually, that group of people is also
what comes up with the list of names.
So yeah, Melissa might've formed
and never had any major impacts,
or minor impacts.
And if that's the case, they will recycle the name
every several years and use it again.
Shannon: Okay.
Mark: All right.
What would you say is the most overlooked
hurricane prep tip?
Andy: Hurricane prep tip?
From my experience,
from my own hurricane preparations is...
waiting too long to do things.
I will get my supplies all together,
probably in the next few weeks,
and I'll just hold onto them.
And so what I'll do, is I'll have my bottled water,
I'll have gas for the generator, that'll all be here.
Because if you have a storm, that's like,
might be threatening an area,
if you're lucky enough,
it might be the first time a storm
has threatened the region recently.
And it's been, it's still several days out,
and you can get to the gas station.
If you wait too long, and words on the street, good luck.
We've had storms threatened down here and there's no gas.
Or you're waiting very long time for gas.
And it just becomes an absolute obsolete commodity.
Water is the same way.
Certain goods on store shelves are the same way.
You just don't want to wait until that rush
to get all those supplies.
Mark: Great. Thank you.
I have another question here.
Cause you mentioned for Hurricane Hugo,
you were preparing Bermuda.
What does working with other countries look like for you?
Andy: Okay. It actually varies from country to country.
Bermuda last year, for example, we had Hurricane Paulette.
So we set up actually video webinars
with them of some of their,
some of their staff,
that were trying to handle some of the preparations there.
So we talked to them a couple of times a day
and say, "Okay, here's the deal. Here's what's going on.
Here's some of the uncertainties we're talking about."
And so we had kind of a teleconference, kind of like this,
where they could ask questions.
There's other locations that we might just,
it might phone call.
It's up to the countries themselves,
whether or not to issue a hurricane watch or warning.
So we asked, we say, "Here's a situation.
Do you want warnings put up?"
And so they will say, "Yes, we want it."
Or they'll call us and say, "Hey, we want it."
So a lot of the,
most of these conversations are by phone.
And so we have some challenges that we face,
like, for example,
if you were talking to Mexico,
or one of the Spanish speaking countries,
one of our Spanish speakers in the office
will get on the line and talk to, and coordinate with them,
what the watch warning situation is going to be.
Shannon: Okay. And another question came in,
it's kind of a little long one.
So I'm going to read what the person wrote,
"Isaias last year produced hurricane force wind gusts,
and much damage over Long Island,
even though it had moved inland over North Carolina
past a hundred miles west of L.I.,
and spent many over land before affecting L.I., Long Island.
Were there reasons--
where there unusual reasons for why this type of storm
remained so long for a long period of time over land?
Andy: Yes.
So you Isaias had a fairly decent sized wind field
and some of those,
some of the inflow into the storm
was still over the eastern--
just off the East Coast.
So over some of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream,
of the Western Atlantic for a little bit after landfall,
also the reason Isaias was accelerating,
was that it was beginning to interact
with an upper level trough to the northwest of it.
And when it has that kind of interaction, a lot of times,
those storms can, can begin to transition.
It was, it was slowly transitioning to what we call,
an extra tropical cyclone.
And when they do that,
the surface winds don't necessarily
diminish as fast as they typically would
if it was just a classic strong tropical cyclone
and with friction slowing down the winds.
So what happens is the winds aloft start to stay strong,
and those can mix down with the storm,
as it continually moves north.
Also as a factor, you'll see,
even if you saw an image of the wind swath,
most of the damage was off to the right.
It was accelerating.
So it was moving about 25 miles per hour.
And so you add that to the winds
when it's moving that direction.
So if you're on the right hand side of the storm,
you're gonna get these much stronger winds
off to the right-hand side.
So all those are coming to factor
when it moved past the New York area,
and in through Virginia and Maryland,
and every everywhere up there as well.
What was interesting about Isaias,
is it is a very prolific tornado maker.
It spawned 39 tornadoes.
So there's, and all the way up,
all the way up through,
in Connecticut was the farthest north, they had one,
but in New York had, I think had one as well.
So because of that interaction with the upper trough
helped to spawn some of those tornadoes.
Shannon: Okay.
Mark, do you have another question?
Mark: I'm actually got a really interesting question.
Is there a way to reduce the intensity
of a hurricane using man-made intervention?
Andy: I haven't read through any studies about it.
So I don't--
Personally, I don't know of any way to do it.
Mark: Fair enough. I was just super curious myself.
(Mark laughs)
Andy: And I think if we knew a way, we'd probably try it.
Shannon: Right!
Mark: Here's another question, I think maybe,
is a little more reasonable to answer but...
What about storms on the Pacific coast?
How is that tracked like it is on the East Coast?
Andy: So if we're talking about the Pacific coast
of the United States and Mexico,
the Hurricane Center covers that area as well.
We cover out the 140 west, at the hurricane center in Miami.
So anything that forms in that area,
and is tracking in that area,
we'll do the same process we do for the Atlantic.
So we'll do the track and intensity radius forecasts,
do the analysis of those.
We'll do tropical weather outlooks for those areas too.
Same goes with the watches and warnings.
If something's gonna hit Baja, California,
we'll talk to Mexico, and coordinate with them,
what they want to do about that.
Fortunately, we rarely, if ever,
have to worry about Southern California.
Typically storms are dying up before they reach there.
We have things in place in case they do reach there.
And if, once it crosses 140 west,
that becomes Hawaii, Central Pacific Hurricane Center,
which is in Hawaii.
They handle the forecast at that point in time.
And if you go further, even further west,
a joint type of warning center
handles the storms far out west.
Shannon: Okay.
Another question we have is can Andy speak
to the role of climate change and hurricane formation,
and hurricane intensity?
Andy: That's a study that's still undergoing,
it's an undergoing study right now.
There's still data being collected.
There's still data being looked at.
There's been, I think a couple of articles that came out,
that maybe suggested that,
what was it that they get?
It could cause storms to be...
What was it, was it slower moving?
There's different, different aspects.
A lot of it is statistically driven.
They try to determine over recent years, what's,
how the hurricanes have changed.
And so I think there was one stat that shows
there might them a moving a little slower,
therefore can cause heavier rainfall.
Which was an interesting aspect to think about.
So they're looking at the different,
they're looking at how strong the storms are,
how big the storms are, trends over time,
and trying to pick up on these trends
and how they could be connected back to climate.
It's not a very clear signal at this point in time.
I think one of the biggest challenges
is that there's not a lot of data, as far as like,
how many years of storms have been,
that we've been able to track.
One of the challenges faced when trying
to do those studies is the satellite era.
Satellite era is only several decades long,
and even so satellites had gotten better,
more higher resolution.
And so something that might've been out there in the middle
of the Atlantic, kind of obscure kind of uncertain,
whether or not it's a storm,
even 30 years ago with the high resolution satellite
and data we have, like scatterometer data, wind data.
We might say, "Oh, that's a storm."
To what 30 years ago, might not be able to figure that out,
and might not have ever been designated as a storm.
And so the challenge is,
some of this increase in storms
might because we're seeing them better.
Also, it has that intensity factor as well,
because if you have no data over the ocean,
and you're doing an estimate,
where if you have the actual data,
you might be able to hone in on the intensity.
So it's an undergoing process because we have to have enough
time to collect the data of the...
the more accurate data years that we've had of late,
and see if there's any actual trendable changes in that.
Shannon: Okay. And Mark,
I think we have time for about one more question.
Do you have another question you want to pop out there?
Mark: Okay. This one's really good. I really like it.
How do you track the history of a storm,
or is there a way to track the history of a storm,
pre-satellite?
Andy: So, some of the old databases, these don't...
Pre-satellite, basically you have, if there was a buoy,
if there was a ship, or if it hit land,
I think a lot of the data going into the pre-satellite era
came from the word of mouth.
If it grazed an area of land that can be communicated,
how bad the conditions were at those pinpoints of land,
along wherever that storm might've been affecting,
but ships, the ships that were affected by it.
Unfortunately back before the satellite era,
they could still relay it,
before satellite era you still had methods to communicate.
So you can get information that way.
But before the satellite era was much more challenging.
And I remember reading some of the discussions
from pre-satellite era storms,
and they would allude to, you know,
they know there's a storm out there,
but not sure how strong,
but then, you know,
you were aware that there's something out there
and might be heading your way.
So that the big challenge,
as far as preparation is concerned,
and that's why you hear about, I think,
the Galveston storm back in the early 1900s...
It was hard to know it was coming,
till it's almost there, especially, if you're not sure.
You know, think about a Micheal situation.
Where there was a tropical storm two days prior,
and it was become a CAT-5 at landfall, unless you had a,
if you're lucky enough to have a ship in the Gulf of Mexico,
or people in north Mexico to relay information like,
"Hey, something's getting bad out here."
You wouldn't have much notice before something
like that would have made landfall.
Shannon: Okay. Good questions.
Well, we're sorry if we weren't able
to get to your question,
but we will send all of the questions to Andy.
And so he can at least see the questions
that you were asking.
And if you want to ask Andy another question,
or if you feel like you just want
to get an answer directly from Andy,
you can also email him at his email address,
there at the bottom of the screen, Andrew.Latto@noaa.gov.
And if you haven't downloaded Andy's bio in the chat box,
be sure to do so now,
because in the bio you'll find the various links
for the National Hurricane Center,
the hurricane tracking charts,
the hurricane preparedness week and more.
And if, and as I said, if we didn't get to your question,
you can email Andy or...
or email him directly.
Okay, and we wanted to do a pitch for hurricanes at home.
It's coming up and it says,
So if you're a teacher or just want
to learn more about hurricanes,
you can be sure to check out
the National Hurricane Season's upcoming webinars.
And they are presented both in English and Spanish.
And there is a handout in the chat with more information,
and the links for these registrations.
There is gonna be one at 4:00 PM
on Wednesday, May the 12th,
and another one in English at 5:00 PM on May 18th.
And then the Spanish one will be on May 13th at 4:00 PM.
Okay, and also be sure to check out
the NOAA Sea Chart webinar series.
Sorry, I had the wrong picture with the wrong...
No, this is correct. Sorry.
And the NOAA Sea Chart Webinar Series,
the link to the series is also in the chat box.
And this is for hurricane awareness webinars.
So you'll see, they have quite a few
of the really good ones coming up.
And then once captioned,
a video recording of this presentation
will be available on the sanctuary's webinar archive page.
Then that URL is at the top up there, but don't worry,
we're going to send you a link to it.
In addition, the webinar will be archived
on Monitor's National Marine Sanctuary.
You can click on the multimedia section of that
in the tool bar to access the webinar box.
You'll also find future webinars in that same section.
And as I said, don't worry,
we're gonna send all this information to you in an email,
once the recording is ready to view.
And on May 6th, that's on this coming Thursday at 4:00 PM,
Submerged North Carolina will present an educator workshop
on World War II off the North Carolina Coast,
and why this area is where the war
truly came home to America.
I'm gonna be the presenter,
and I will highlight the Battle of the Atlantic,
and show how to access free curriculum, photos, and more.
And although this webinar is aimed at educators,
all are welcome to attend.
And coming up on May the 11th at 1:00 PM,
we have on - Eastern time,
we have Dr. Sal Mercogliano,
Assistant Professor of History at Campbell University.
And you're going to learn how and why
the American East Coast
became a tragic strategic battlefield.
And the first five months after
the U S entered World War II.
You're gonna learn about the mistakes that men made,
and who made them,
and the solutions found to turn
the tide in the German U-boat war.
We have several others coming up,
in the Submerged North Carolina series, you can see there.
We have conservation of the USS Monitor Artifacts
with Will Hoffman.
We have the Lake Phelps Canoes with Tim Smith,
and then we have Engineering in the Classrooms
with ROVs, which I will present.
And then we have David Cranford,
who will be talking about
North Carolina Fish Weir Archeology Project.
Now, if you enjoyed this webinar,
be sure to check out others
in the National Marine Sanctuary Webinar Series
on May 20th at 6:00 PM.
You can join Jared Underwood,
US Fish and Wildlife Service Superintendent
for Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument
to learn how millions of sea birds use the remote atolls
and islands that are found around Hawaii
and the central Pacific ocean.
And lastly, as you exit the webinar,
there is a short survey for formal and informal educators.
If you are an educator, NOAA would really appreciate it,
if you would just take a minute or two,
to complete the survey.
I think there's five questions. So it's very short.
Your answers will help NOAA develop
future webinars to meet your needs,
and your participation is voluntary,
and your answers will be completely anonymous.
So we thank you for joining us once again.
And we thank Andy for a really great presentation,
very informative,
and just very timely with hurricane season coming up.
So thank you, Andy.
And thank you for taking the time to join us today.
And if you live in a hurricane prone area, get prepared!
Have a wonderful day, and this concludes the broadcast.