As I was buying a Blackberry “Storm” Saturday, the Atlantic produced two Tropical Storms of its own: Ana and Bill –the first of the 09 season. Then today T.S. Claudette fired up – starting in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Florida. From no storms in months to three developing in less than twenty four hours.
Our dormant time is over. Hurricane season peaks in September and doesn’t end until the end of November.
These “pop up” storms in the Gulf of Mexico like Claudette (and Humberto before it) don’t give people much time to evacuate or prepare. Our crews are working almost seven days a week now, trying to keep up.
The weather channel is doing a piece this afternoon on Hurricane Katrina. It was generating wind gusts up to 200 mph before landfall! Why? Because it passed over a couple of “warm cores” of circulating warm water near Florida. These warm cores gave it a power boost just before it hit. With global warming generating hotter waters to feed these beasts, we should expect more Katrina size storms in the future – and we need to prepare for them.
Do we need an “Ike Dike” on the Texas coast? Or should we leave more wetlands between us and the coast. We probably need both. Galveston needs an Ike Dike since people already live on the edge of the water. Bolivar Island has few people and could provide a “buffer zone” between the storm surges and people.
It’s going to be a wild week ahead. It will take more than buying a phone named “Storm” to be prepared (the Verizon Storm is similar to the AT&T Iphone: a big screen touch phone -- I like it).
Are you prepared?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment