Mississippi Coast following Hurricane Camille, 1969 Source: noaa
Ah, but I repeat myself: It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to pound your keyboard and prove you are a fool.
Posted on 10/11/2018 12:42:19 PM PDT by Red Badger
PANAMA CITY, Fla.
The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Michael came into focus Thursday with rows upon rows of homes found smashed to pieces, and rescue crews began making their way into the stricken areas in hopes of accounting for hundreds of people who may have defied evacuation orders.
At least two deaths were blamed on Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in over 50 years, and it wasn't done yet: Though reduced to a tropical storm, it brought flash flooding to North Carolina and Virginia, soaking areas still recovering from Hurricane Florence.
Under a perfectly clear blue sky, families living along the Florida Panhandle emerged tentatively from darkened shelters and hotels to a perilous landscape of shattered homes and shopping centers, beeping security alarms, wailing sirens and hovering helicopters.
Gov. Rick Scott said the Panhandle woke up to "unimaginable destruction."
"So many lives have been changed forever. So many families have lost everything," he said.
The full extent of Michael's fury was only slowly becoming clear, with some of the hardest-hit areas difficult to reach because of roads blocked by debris or water. An 80-mile stretch of Interstate 10, the main east-west route along the Panhandle, was closed.
Some of the worst damage was in Mexico Beach, where the hurricane crashed ashore Wednesday as a Category 4 monster with 155 mph (250 kph) winds and a storm surge of 9 feet (2.7 meters). Video from a drone revealed widespread devastation across the town of about 1,000 people.
Entire blocks of homes near the beach were obliterated, reduced to nothing but concrete slabs in the sand. Rows and rows of other homes were turned into piles of splintered lumber or were crumpled and slumped at odd angles. Entire roofs were torn away and dropped onto a road. Boats were tossed ashore like toys.
A National Guard team got into Mexico Beach and found 20 survivors overnight, and more crews were pushing into the area in the morning, with the fate of many residents unknown, authorities said. State officials said 285 people in Mexico Beach had refused to leave ahead of the hurricane despite a mandatory evacuation order.
Mishelle McPherson and her ex-husband searched for the elderly mother of a friend. The woman lived in a small cinderblock house about 150 yards from the Gulf and thought she would be OK.
Her home was reduced to crumbled cinderblocks and pieces of floor tile.
"Aggy! Aggy!" McPherson yelled. The only sound that came back was the echo from the half-demolished building and the pounding of the surf.
"Do you think her body would be here? Do you think it would have floated away?" she asked.
As she walked down the street, McPherson pointed out pieces of what had been the woman's house: "That's the blade from her ceiling fan. That's her floor tile."
As thousands of National Guard troops, law enforcement officers and medical teams fanned out, the governor pleaded with people in the devastated areas to stay away for now because of fallen trees, power lines and other debris.
"I know you just want to go home. You want to check on things and begin the recovery process," Scott said. But "we have to make sure things are safe."
Over 900,000 homes and businesses in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas were without power.
The Coast Guard said it rescued at least 27 people before and after the hurricane came ashore, mostly from homes along the Florida coastline, and searched for more victims.
Among those brought to safety were nine people rescued by helicopter from a bathroom of their home in Panama City, another one of the hardest-hit spots, after their roof collapsed, Petty Officer 3rd Class Ronald Hodges said.
In Panama City, most homes were still standing, but no property was left undamaged. Downed power lines lay nearly everywhere. Roofs had been peeled off and carried away. Aluminum siding was shredded to ribbons. Homes were split open by fallen trees.
Hundreds of cars had broken windows. Twisted street signs lay on the ground. Pine trees were stripped and snapped off about 20 feet high.
The hurricane also damaged hospitals and nursing homes in the Panama City area, and officials worked to evacuate hundreds of patients. The damage at Bay Medical Sacred Heart included blown-out windows, a cracked exterior wall and a roof collapse in a maintenance building. No patients were hurt, the hospital said.
The state mental hospital in Chattahoochee, which has a section for the criminally insane, was cut off by land, and food and supplies were being flown in, authorities said.
A man outside Tallahassee, Florida, was killed by a falling tree, and an 11-year-old girl in Georgia died when the winds picked up a carport and dropped it on her home. One of the carport's legs punctured the roof and hit her in the head.
As of 2 p.m. EDT, Michael was centered about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Greensboro, North Carolina, with winds of 50 mph (85 kph). It was moving northeast at 23 mph (37 kph).
Forecasters said it could drop up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain over the Carolinas and Virginia before pushing out to sea Thursday night. In North Carolina's mountains, motorists had to be rescued from cars trapped by high water.
"For North Carolina, Michael isn't as bad as Florence, but it adds unwelcome insult to injury, so we must be on alert," Gov. Roy Cooper said.
More than 375,000 people up and down the Gulf Coast were ordered or urged to clear out as Michael closed in. But it moved fast and intensified quickly, and emergency authorities lamented that many people ignored the warnings.
"Why people didn't evacuate is something we should be studying," said Craig Fugate, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a former Florida state emergency management chief. "Is there more the government can do? But we ask that every time."
Based on its internal barometric pressure, Michael was the third most powerful hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland, behind the unnamed Labor Day storm of 1935 and Camille in 1969. Based on wind speed, it was the fourth-strongest, behind the Labor Day storm (184 mph, or 296 kph), Camille and Andrew in 1992.
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If you can’t deal with hurricanes, don’t live in Florida or other hurricane prone states.
Global warming/climate change has NOTHING to do with it.
More importantly, there is NOTHING we could do about it even if we wanted to.
Man can do NOTHING about “global” climate. NOTHING!!!!!!
It is too YUGE, with very complicated and integrated systems that “scientists” barely comprehend.
Lets experiment with changing the weather? /s Sound like a good idea? I mean, what could go wrong with that? /s
OOPS! end of the world, my bad.
“At least two deaths were blamed on Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in over 50 years,”
Not good if it were you or someone you cared about, but seriously, TWO deaths?
“Over 900,000 homes and businesses in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas were without power.”
Lets just keep putting them electric wires on poles.
What is that about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? /s
“”Why people didn’t evacuate...”
Because of the constant HYPING of everything! People just don’t believe it anymore.
Also, the risk factor is very low on an individual basis. Not good if you end up dead, but the chances specifically for you are low (2 dead).
Concrete blocks are very strong in carrying weight. They are very WEAK to lateral forces.
Poured concrete is the only answer. Strong both ways.
Government and media hype caused this.
Hurricane hype is why. We are shown (for dramatic purposes) this YUGE spinning whirlwind with 150 mph winds to make you think it’s ALL like that. When actually only a small area has those winds and they diminish rapidly the farther out from center you get.
Michael was 350 miles in diameter, so a 25 mile path of destruction is imaginable.
I believe poured concrete is all that is allowed on the Island of Bermuda, they know they will get hurricanes.
However, my little second home in Rockport is just a mobile home and garage with bedroom and bath in it. Mobile home was built/installed to code. Garage is just wood frame but overbuilt on code. Both came thru Harvey with only minor shingle damage and I am about 1/2 mile from the water. Got very lucky on falling trees if a couple of them had fallen just 6 more inches the wrong way I would have had significant damage. My wife had to spend lots of time and effort making sure everything was built right contractors will cut corners if you are not careful.
That may be true for wind. But not for surge. Severe surge can happen over 100 miles to the right of landfall. And as the saying goes, the wind will scare you, but it’s the water that will kill you. Sandy had minimal hurricane force winds at landfall. And trashed the coasts all the way up into Long Island from a South Jersey landfall.
There were 83 miles of east-west major commerce thruway Interstate 10 impassable in both directions due to fallen trees. For reference, I-10 is about 50 miles inland from where Michael made landfall. Do the math.
Tell the people living far inland in GA who lost 53 chicken farms, cotton crops, homes damaged by fallen trees, and the 900,000 people who lost electricity in your self-described "only a small area" that had those over-hyped winds damage their livelihood.
Your need to be cynical far exceeds your knowledge and expertise for hurricanes. Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to pound your keyboard and prove it.
Yes and no. Technology has gotten so good at looking inside hurricanes that measurements can be taken in a small part of an eyewall which are then attributed to the entire storm. That couldn't be done 30 years ago.
From what I've seen of Michael damage, I'm inclined to believe that had it been 30 years ago, it might have been rated as a mid-strong Cat 3 or a weak Cat 4. I say this largely because pine trees in the area have not been sheared off as if a ~30 mile scythe blade had swing through.
A true Cat 5 would have sheared the nearby pine forests and left the stumps debarked. All tree stumps would be brown due to having the grey layer of sunbleached wood power washed.
Mississippi Coast following Hurricane Camille, 1969 Source: noaa
Ah, but I repeat myself: It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to pound your keyboard and prove you are a fool.
True! You don't know when those photos were taken, or how far inland they were. Where is HWY 90? You just assumed the caption meant they were on the seashore within days of Camille.
As another poster on this thread mentioned from his/her personal experience, standing trees (non palm) +25 miles from the eyewall of a CAT 5 storm will be defoliated.
I realize we should defer to your Rhode Island hurricane expertise. Nuttier than a fruitcake.
Keep on. Don't let up! LOL!
Except Michael was nowhere near as strong as Camille. 155mph is a lot less than 190mph. Like all the downcasters here, you love to compare apples to oranges instead of examining the facts of the ground.
Just because you haven't seen such pics, it doesn't mean they are not out there. I have seen countless pictures of that level of tree damage - including large pine trees bent at 90 degrees to upright. You can even see the track of the eye from space like a tornado track in a Kansas field.
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