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2024 Hurricane Season thread of DOOM


Zonahorn

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I was stationed in Florida for almost 9 years. East coast and west coast.  There were always these urban legends about hurricane protections for our area in Tampa and Cape Canaveral.  Everything from ancient Indian prayers to curvature of the earth.    
 

the first story was cape Canaveral and how it’s never taken a direct shot with the infrastructure on the point it would be catastrophic.    Hurricane Michael in 2018 was a dead shot heading right for us and st 2am it turned north right at the last minute and smashed Daytona.  
 

Tampa hasn’t been direct hit in over 100 years or something like that due to an ancient Indian protection.   To see this storm shifting south at the last minute is wild.  No I don’t beleive this shit. But it’s really wild 

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4 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


In one of my group chats, an old tailgating buddy of mine says his inlaws in punta gorda got out and are watching it unfold from Bismarck ND…but the inlaws sister/husband are hunkering down in punta gorda because “their house is hurricane proof”

Looking at their house address it’s less than a mile from Charolette harbor/peace river. Idiots. Then I’m like do you get sad or mad at a potential casualty like this?

Glad I was able to convince at least 2 people to get out of the potential surge zone, but it was getting fairly exhausting thinking about it and how to convince them what they were doing was potentially very dangerous. Was getting to the point where I felt like I did what I could and if they didn't listen, they were just gonna have to FAFO and hopefully it was just a highly unpleasant experience and not a deadly one...

6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Something like that.  The joules of energy involved in a hurricane are staggering.....yet we have a cascade of idiots, including elected officials, who think that "they" are manipulating the weather to create and steer these beasts.  With fucking WHAT?  We don't possess ANYTHING capable of being more than a fart in a tornado in terms of influence on something with that much energy.  "They have a 1 trillion watt laser!"  Cool....that won't do shit.  The weaponized stupidity that is now involved in how we handle weather events....man, it's something.

The morons on social media right now insisting that the "gubmint is doing all this and making the storms worse/could make them go away but hey wont" has really got me at wits end...like is this how dumb we have gotten as a society??

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A few people have brought it up recently in this thread - for 95% of the people the surge/wind isn’t the problem it’s the aftermath with no power and water. The debris everywhere. The smell. It’s fucking miserable. For close to a month or more. After Harvey I came back home to Port A 2 days after landfall but stayed most nights in Corpus where there was power. I was lucky and was able to find a place to stay. That’s one of the hardest (and most expensive) things to do and I imagine it will be much harder in Florida as it’s a more densely populated area.

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8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Dear God....won't somebody think of the carnies and circus people?

Only thing that storm is doing is swirling the mosquitos around and pissing off the pythons

1 minute ago, texasdago said:

Pretty crazy when you consider how far Weston is from the action.

I like being out of the cone, but the SE side is always dirty and squally.  Our wind won't pick up for another 6hrs or so

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I've been watching the traffic maps for the last three days. There is never any red, besides a couple of small spots every now and then at 75 near the villages. Then you see the news and anecdotal social media accounts that the freeways are at a standstill. So either those are lies/inaccurate, or they are purposely manipulating the real-time traffic maps to not scare people from evacuating.

image.png.b61337c6158c6efc3f4acbb0a6e86c39.png

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1 minute ago, sidis said:

i have to be honest...i am a little bit surprised that pimphand's appearance on here has not yet shifted to space lasers controlled by "them" generating hurricanes targeting different populations. shouldn't be too much longer though.

Whatever you sheeeeeeeep. OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!

if you don’t think the reverse vampires in conjunction with Soros/Jewish Galactic Federation are making this happen, I don’t know what to tell you. 

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8 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

I've been watching the traffic maps for the last three days. There is never any red, besides a couple of small spots every now and then at 75 near the villages. Then you see the news and anecdotal social media accounts that the freeways are at a standstill. So either those are lies/inaccurate, or they are purposely manipulating the real-time traffic maps to not scare people from evacuating.

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My son was planning to drive from Orlando to Alababama to go rock climbing with friends.  Fuck coming home to see mom and dad.   I-75 was a mess when he planned to leave (Monday night), so he waited overnight and drove up Tuesday morning.  He had some traffic at Wildwood and Gainesville but otherwise smooth sailing.  No problems getting gas.   

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15 minutes ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

Glad I was able to convince at least 2 people to get out of the potential surge zone, but it was getting fairly exhausting thinking about it and how to convince them what they were doing was potentially very dangerous. Was getting to the point where I felt like I did what I could and if they didn't listen, they were just gonna have to FAFO and hopefully it was just a highly unpleasant experience and not a deadly one...

The morons on social media right now insisting that the "gubmint is doing all this and making the storms worse/could make them go away but hey wont" has really got me at wits end...like is this how dumb we have gotten as a society??

There are so many things that Don't Look Up  gets right, including the idiocy of people in the face of an overwhelming force of nature:

 

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Unless you live in an underground bunker or concrete house with bullet proof windows, your house isn't hurricane proof for this storm.  The dry stack boat marina outside of Rockport was rated for a Cat 3 storm and Harvey peeled them like an onion.  Those Spanish tile roofs everyone loves to have on coastal homes?  They make terrible shrapnel when the wind starts peeling them off roofs.

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16 hours ago, Updawg said:


Empty Galveston bay permanently?

yes sir

do you want to ensure you save houston?

the 1953 north sea flood killed 2500 in nederland

the response was the deltaworks

the dutch made ocean control a keystone of their National Security

harris county was built by morons - if you want to prevent a potential trillion dollar catastrophe it's possible

or, do nothing, faafo and roll the dice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works

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we could also build 100 miles of dams in the upper rocky mountains and over a century or so impound a small ocean at altitude which would quench the yellowstone caldera

but this would entail a reduction of 10% of the military budget for a project to benefit future generations hundreds or thousands of years from now or possibly never

so, we will faafo on that one too

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6 minutes ago, Bert Orange said:

And Milton has lost his eye and some steam. Weakening has begun. 

Thankfully.  Still forecasted to be a major hurricane at land fall.  And the radius of hurricane force winds has increased from 30 miles from the center to 35 miles from the center.  That width is forecasted to increase before landfall, but hopefully it stays relatively narrow.

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35 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

I've been watching the traffic maps for the last three days. There is never any red, besides a couple of small spots every now and then at 75 near the villages. Then you see the news and anecdotal social media accounts that the freeways are at a standstill. So either those are lies/inaccurate, or they are purposely manipulating the real-time traffic maps to not scare people from evacuating.

image.png.b61337c6158c6efc3f4acbb0a6e86c39.png

Yeah, I have been checking Google Maps and it looks like traffic on the roads is almost non-existent.  One would think the bulk of people left so anyone leaving now while there is still time would be able to haul ass.  

 

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50 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Something like that.  The joules of energy involved in a hurricane are staggering.....yet we have a cascade of idiots, including elected officials, who think that "they" are manipulating the weather to create and steer these beasts.  With fucking WHAT?  We don't possess ANYTHING capable of being more than a fart in a tornado in terms of influence on something with that much energy.  "They have a 1 trillion watt laser!"  Cool....that won't do shit.  The weaponized stupidity that is now involved in how we handle weather events....man, it's something.

Tell us about the island tilting as well....

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41 minutes ago, sidis said:

i have to be honest...i am a little bit surprised that pimphand's appearance on here has not yet shifted to space lasers controlled by "them" generating hurricanes targeting different populations. shouldn't be too much longer though.

IT's too bad our buddy who was tortured by Cristiano Ronaldo's favorite people is no longer on here.   I'd love to hear his "Theory of Everything: Hurricanes Expansion Pack"  

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15 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

This was already workshopped in 2009 by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Committe, then updated in 2020.  Article is from Sept 2020:

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2020/08/14/hurricane-phoenix-is-tampa-bays-devastating-worst-case-scenario/

 

 

 

this-powerpoint-slide-is-from-the-tampa-

 

 

 

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It’s impossible to calculate exactly how likely a hurricane like Phoenix is to strike Florida, much less the bay area. Only four Category 5 storms have hit the U.S. mainland in almost 170 years of recorded history. Yet, the National Hurricane Center estimates that statistically the Tampa Bay area should get hit by a Category 3 or higher storm about every three decades.

“You don’t need a 5 to bring Tampa Bay to its knees,” said Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen.

One might think the worst-case scenario would have the storm’s eye going right over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and marching into Tampa Bay.

It is not. The worst-case scenario is actually the simulated path of Hurricane Phoenix, approaching from the southwest and making landfall at noon north of Tampa Bay’s mouth.

The planning council’s model targets Indian Rocks Beach — that allows the counterclockwise rotation of the storm to sling Gulf water into the bay, raising the surface waters until they overflow into communities like an unattended bathtub with the faucet left running.

The water would rise so dramatically that most of downtown and South Tampa would be under at least 12 to 15 feet of water, according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency software tool used to estimate losses from potential disasters.

The edges of the South Tampa peninsula, all of Davis and Harbour islands, the Channel District and the banks of the Hillsborough River would see water 21 feet or higher.

Westchase and Oldsmar would be entirely underwater, with surge extending all the way inland to Gunn Highway.

One would be able to swim U.S. 41 from the Manatee River to the Ikea store in Ybor City.

The swollen Tampa Bay would meet the Gulf of Mexico in Seminole, swallowing much of mid Pinellas County: The Gateway area, Feather Sound, Pinellas Park, Lealman, Kenneth City and east Largo would all be under water, plus everything south of 22nd Avenue S in St. Petersburg. The intersection of Fifth Avenue N and 34th Street would be the center of St. Pete Island.

The highest surge would hit 42 feet.

The beaches as we know them would be gone.

Hurricane Phoenix would have sustained winds of 160 mph, making it a Category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. That is strong enough to destroy framed homes, tear roofs apart and decimate trees and power poles.

Wind gusts would reach the 200 mph mark. The takeoff speed of a Boeing 737 is about 150 mph, meaning a Phoenix-like storm could toss passenger jets aside like toys.

The simulated storm retains Category 5 strength as the eye cuts diagonally across the region, moving northeast through mid-Pinellas, the northwest corner of Hillsborough and central Pasco. By the time it reaches eastern Hernando, it would be a Category 4.

From daybreak until 7 p.m., the entire region — Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and Manatee counties — would be lashed by hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph.

If what was left of Mexico Beach after a direct hit by Hurricane Michael in 2018 — the last Category 5 storm to make landfall in Florida — serves as a comparison, Phoenix would destroy almost everything in its path.

 

The simulation, done at the planning council’s behest by disaster planning and preparedness contractor Critical Integrated Solutions, serves dual purposes:

“It’s both a warning about the chilling impacts of a catastrophic storm and a call to action for people to plan and prepare for a severe hurricane today — even if they’ve weathered many hurricane warnings in the past,” said planning council executive director Sean Sullivan in an email to the Times.

Phoenix 2.0 echoes the last major hurricane to make landfall in Tampa Bay: The 1921 Tampa Bay hurricane, which came ashore Oct. 25 in Tarpon Springs, just 20 miles north of Phoenix’s simulated landfall in Indian Rocks Beach.

Also known as the Tarpon Springs hurricane, the Category 3 storm leveled the region with up to 115 mph winds. It’s 11-foot storm surge flooded downtown Tampa and turned St. Petersburg into an island. It killed eight people when the population was just 135,000 or so, and caused $10 million of damage in 1921 dollars.

 

The region rebuilt, driven by leaders who “sought to cover up the damage caused by the hurricane and rushed to draw attention back to the ‘paradise’ they marketed as Florida,” according to a 2008 article that Nicole Cox wrote for the journal Tampa Bay History.

That notion of paradise persists a century later, strong enough to attract people to the bay area’s endangered beaches, vulnerable coastline and expensive, low-lying neighborhoods, despite the risks.

But risk, said Jeff R. Temple, psychology professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, exists everywhere. Nearly every part of the U.S. faces a worst-case scenario.

“If it’s flooding, mudslides, or earthquakes, or fires, or hurricanes, or tornadoes, it’s really inescapable,” said Temple, whose home, just blocks from the beach, was destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008.

After Ike, he said he wouldn’t rebuild in Galveston. But 12 years later, he still lives there. He’s resigned to another hurricane. If he has to, he’ll rebuild again. Humans are like that. “We have to be resilient,” he said, “we have to have short memories.”

But humans are also more reactive than proactive, Temple said. Maybe Phoenix 2.0 can convince Tampa Bay residents to better prepare for their worst-case scenario:

“By putting this (model) out there, people might take it more seriously.”

Not much has changed since the original Phoenix study. The new simulation predicts 10 percent higher storm surge due to Kelvin waves, large-scale waves that can change ocean height. Sea level rise in the past decade has had a negligible impact.

What has changed is the Tampa Bay area itself.

The estimated 3.1 million residents makes Tampa Bay the 17th largest economy in the U.S. If the bay area were its own country, it would have the 55th largest economy in the world.

There are also more than 400,000 more people living here compared to 2009. Downtown St. Petersburg and Tampa are more built out and at risk of flooding. Density has also increased. There are more businesses and homes in the way of storm surge, more structures with roofs to fly off. Many of those are now 11 years older.

Of the six counties’ more than 1.35 million buildings, the simulation shows more than 103,679 buildings would be severely damaged or destroyed. That is an increase from the 92,827 buildings lost in the old simulation.

The 2009 storm was estimated to cost the area $233 billion in economic losses and create 41 million tons of physical wreckage.

Eleven years later, the same storm would cost the area in excess of $300 billion in losses, and leave behind more than 50 million tons of wreckage.

The damage would be worst in Pinellas County. Not one household or commercial building would have power immediately after the storm. More than 70 percent of businesses would be completely destroyed, and the county’s mobile home parks would cease to exist.

The further from landfall, the better residents may fare. Hillsborough would be mostly without power, and more than 60 percent of businesses would be destroyed. Pasco County would go completely dark, and 50 percent of businesses would be gone.

What is different about Phoenix 2.0 is that it comes with a program to help small businesses prepare for and survive a major storm.

The simulation estimates 40 percent of small businesses wouldn’t reopen following the storm. Within a year, 25 percent more would close.

Two years out, 90 percent of small businesses would fail because of a storm.

“So we have a lot to protect,” Sullivan said.

• • •

Death is the biggest concern of Pinellas County Emergency Management Director Cathie Perkins. No amount of messaging to the public or advanced preparations can eliminate the fatalities that will result from the massive evacuation, the storm and its aftermath.

“There will inevitably be loss of life,” she said.

The 2009 Hurricane Phoenix simulation estimated the storm would cause nearly 2,200 deaths; the 2.0 simulation didn’t estimate a death toll or the storm’s effect on poverty.

RELATED: A hurricane during the pandemic would be bad. The economic crisis will make things worse.

But Sullivan said the suffering will be worse among underprivileged communities, where people likely live at or below the poverty line and in older structures. They will also be less likely to buy seven days’ worth of food in preparation for a storm. State officials say that’s how long it could take for help to arrive.

The pandemic will also present challenges, Perkins said, for both citizens and planners. Emergency officials have made alterations to their shelter plans to accommodate pandemic risks. Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton said each evacuee taking shelter needs 60 square feet of space instead of the old figure of 20 square feet to maintain social distancing and prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

But the pandemic has enhanced cooperation between faith groups, feeding organizations, mental health experts and governments to prepare for that aftermath, Perkins said. Those strengthened relationships would become critical if a Phoenix-like storm were to strike.

Still, governments and nonprofits can only do so much. Perkins said residents need to prepare on their own: They’ll need masks and sanitizer to stay safe in shelters and at least seven days of food, water and medicine to live on after a storm.

It will take time for help to reach them, and even more time to stabilize that help for the hard months to come.

“I can’t do it alone,” she said.

 

Local governments say they’re doing what they can to prepare for the worst-case scenarios outlined in the Phoenix 2.0 simulation.

If a hurricane damages the bay area’s three bridges — which are most vital to Pinellas County — Perkins said they’re ready for that. They’ve already talked with state and federal agencies about using amphibious vehicles to shuttle emergency supplies across waterways.

But a full scale recovery effort would stall if a major storm wipes out the bridges and other critical roadways, said Hillsborough County’s Metropolitan Planning Organization executive director Beth Alden.

For every 2½ weeks a critical road is out of service after a storm, the loss to the regional economy is equivalent to what it would have cost to have built the road to withstand such a storm in the first place.

Mitigation, like preventative health care, is fiscally responsible, said Whit Remer, Tampa’s sustainability and resilience officer.

Every dollar invested in girding infrastructure for a major storm pays for itself four-fold.

“Is it worth it to make these investments now?” Alden asked. “And the answer is, ‘Oh yeah, it’s definitely worth it.’”

 

 

fwiw, the a dutch dude with an ocean control doctorate told me 15 years ago that jacksonville is the only florida coastal city they could protect with a project like the delta works

daytona, space coast, all of south florida and all of west florida south of the bend are a lost cause unless we built 1000 miles of dikes and basically built a dam around the entire state

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4 minutes ago, hookemATL said:

You could mount these fuckers on the edge of the bathtub and my kids would STILL get the god.  damned.  floor.  wet.  

Yes, there are no structures capable of handling the tub surge of a preschool boy.

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19 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

yes, permanently

it will take several years to pump the water out

it can't be done in hours, days, weeks, or months

Yep.  The lack of understanding of most people of the VOLUME of water we're talking about in floods, and how it moves (how long it takes, how much of it there is) is amazing. 

"When they hear a hurricane is coming, why don't they just release water from the lakes to make room for the rainfall????"

Cool, cool.  So, let's say we're expecting a catastrophic amount of rain.  100,000 acre feet are going to fall into the basin of lake X.  Lake X can release 5,000 acre feet of water a day without causing catastrophic floods downstream.  So...it'll take 20 days to make room for that flood.  In the meantime, these are the unknowns, based on the fact that we KNOW hurricanes change path right up till the end:

1) what if the hurricane drops most of its rainfall DOWNSTREAM of the dam?   Now the dam has just dumped 5,000 acre feet of water into the waterway, making downstream flooding WORSE than it would have been without the release.

2) what if the hurricane whiffs entirely, turning west by 100 miles?  Now you've dumped your summer drinking water supply downstream, not to be replaced.  Everyone goes on water rationing for the next year.

3) and again.....what did you gain?  If you start dumping 5 days before landfall, based on a wildly uncertain forecast, you empty only 25,000 acre feet of storage.  Which the flood (if it happens) fills up like that....and then you STILL have a flood.

The volume of water in hurricane-driven floods, and the unpredictability of where the rain is going to actually fall, mean that any efforts we make to pre-plan and "prevent" the flood are folly, especially in more flat-land areas (where lakes are only 30 feet deep, as opposed to 230 feet deep in the steep hill country).

But even in Helene, you have people bitching because "why didn't they empty all the lakes beforehand??!!"  Because they couldn't be certain where it was going to go, you don't just drain lakes based on an uncertain forecast, and if they got it wrong, the flood caused by those massive releases combined with downstream rainfall would have made things even worse.

1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yes, there are no structures capable of handling the tub surge of a preschool boy.

Or when he sticks his dingus up out of the water and says "look!  It's a periscope!"  My wife left the room.  I couldn't stop laughing.

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2 hours ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

Better late than never but finally convinced the future in-laws to gtfo of their house that's in Sarasota Evacuation Zone C and move a bit inland to family house that's outside the surge hazard area at least, still gonna suck ass with all the wind but might at least have kept them from getting surged/flooded out. Boomers are stubborn as hell...

1. Are the in-laws loaded?

2. Is there a prenup involved in the upcoming nuptials?

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1 hour ago, Pimphand said:

Yeah and there are people on I75 evacuating through a tornado warning.  I thought evactuation was 100% safe per some surlyites 😉

You’re supposed to evacuate before the event, not during it. But you know that, and just can’t help but be a fuckface for whatever reason. 

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53 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Pretty cool interview on CNN with a director at Tampa General Hospital, talking about their "AquaFence" that provides surge protection up to 15 feet.  It worked perfectly during Helene:

Tampa General fortifies for Ian with 'aqua fence,' water-tight doors

Aqua fence about to be printing money, like the "Plylox," guy.

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1 hour ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

The morons on social media right now insisting that the "gubmint is doing all this and making the storms worse/could make them go away but hey wont" has really got me at wits end...like is this how dumb we have gotten as a society??

No, it's not.  We won't know how dumb we've gotten until an idea is floated that is so unbelievably stupid that it is rejected out of hand by even the dumbest among us.  There is still plenty of room to grow more stupid.

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