Hurricane Ian

This will be a short one, but hopefully set the stage for several more that will come as soon as I can put them together (how cool would it be to have nothing else better to do than talk and write about the earth).

Wednesday was quite a day! While all of us not in Florida are pleased for that spatial boon, I have to admit that I spent the day wishing that I had been there. Ahhh… to be a dedicated storm chaser — whether it be hurricane or tornado or tai-fun or anything that the Gods of the Sky might want to dump on us mere mortals.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the residents of the western Florida coastline (and now the eastern), many of whom surely lost more than they could afford during, and after, the storm. I heard a pundit interviewing one of the local county commissioners from one of the affected areas and say how they “fully understand” what the locals were going through. A worthy sentiment, but I can’t help but think that no one can ever understand the reality of losing everything unless they have gone through it themselves.

My heart also goes out to the thousands of folks in the Caribbean who also lost much, if not all that they had to give. I’m not sure if they have the same level of support that we enjoy here in America, but kinda-sorta doubt that they do. At least we have an empathetic congress and executive branch to fly down and lend a helping hand when the need is great.

While this is surely NOT a time for politics — good luck getting both sides to agree to that one — it is always a good time for education, especially when our lives and livelihoods may be at stake. With that being said, I cannot help but offer a couple observations regarding how natural disasters — in this case Hurricane Ian — are discussed and analyzed on the daily news shows.

I really learned a lot watching The Weather Channel as Ian gobbled up the western coast of Florida — it also ate up most of my day, but I look upon it as time well spent.

You simply gotta love, and respect, Jim Cantore — I’ve followed his often heroic attempts to cover extreme weather events for thirty years, and if I could be anyone else, I’d want to be him. I also want to give a shout-out to Stephanie Abrams — her work in the downpour and wind was beyond the pale, and she REALLY deserves a significant raise (and an industrial blow-dryer)!

Sadly, while Jim and Steph rarely put an awkward foot, the same cannot be said for some of the other commentators — not so much on The Weather Channel, but on other news services that make so many statement and projections, all in the name of sciences that not all of them (or their writers) seem to understand… but need to report on anyway.

I could go on and on about the questionable “facts” I’ve heard over the past several days, but the ones that really got under my skin had to do with the storm surge, and how it was, or was not, “just like a tsunami.” Some of the experts said they are the same and others said they are completely different, and one even made both statements within thirty seconds during the same segment.

For the record (and I absolutely promise my version of the science in the N.T.D. future): Neither a tsunami nor hurricane storm surge is a “wave” as we all think we understand the term; either after spending time at the beach or, as in my case, bobbing up and down on a surfboard, hoping for a big one to appear from under the horizon.

Both involve a simple flooding of the land by a rising sea. In the case of a storm surge the rise is driven by onshore winds (and the incredible low pressure within the eye, which literally sucks up the water and drags it onshore), while a tsunami is merely the crest of an entirely predictable sine wave that is most often generated by an undersea earthquake.

Click here for the 15 minute YouTube video from the same area that supplied the above image, and graphically demonstrates the reality of how a tsunami comes onshore. I challenge you to identify the “wave.”

Storm surge and tsunami are different in a couple more fundamental ways, however, and these differences can really affect the reality of the impact.

A tsunami will flood the land — generally in less than half an hour — and then retreat just as quickly as the crest moves further inland and the trough of the sine wave arrives. This leaves the water suddenly many feet above where it’s supposed to be — where it wants and needs to be — and it will rush back to the sea, often doing the worst damage on its way out.

A storm surge on the other hand — thanks to the winds — will come onshore and stay there as long as the wind blows, keeping everything that has been inundated submerged for hours, possibly days.

One other difference of note: A hurricane will generally give days of warning and allow plenty of time to prepare — if the warnings are respected and heeded — while an earthquake-generated tsunami generally gives no warning whatsoever, other than the limited time between the shaking and the arrival of the water. In general, the closer you are to the quake the bigger the tsunami will be, and the less warning you will get. In our image from Japan, above, the quake was a 9.1 on the Richter scale, and the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant had about fifteen minutes.

Not sure which one you like, but neither scenario is optimal! From where I sit the more warning the better, so I’d probably lean towards the storm surge as opposed to the tsunami. But as I’ve mentioned elsewnere, Susie and I live over an active subduction zone that will surely knock us on our butts if we live long enough. However, our house is at 1700 feet in elevation, and we are very careful about where we sleep when we’re at the coast.

Anyway, enough for now — I think this one got a bit longer than I was hoping, but so it goes. I just want to close with another expression of sympathy for all in Florida and elsewhere who were affected by Ian, and I hope we can all learn from this and pledge ourselves to do two things: sift through the warnings for those parts that are valid (and promise to educate ourselves about those we may not understand), and then take whatever action we need to help us and our loved ones weather the hurricane, tornado, earthquake, ice storm, Nor’easter, or whatever.