Hurricane Rita Live Thread, Part III

Category	Wind Speed	Barometric Pressure	Storm Surge	Damage Potential
Tropical Depression	< 39 mph < 34 kts			Minimal
Tropical Storm	39 - 73 mph 34 - 63 kts			Minimal
Hurricane 1 (Weak)	74 - 95 mph 64 - 82 kts	28.94" or more 980.02 mb or more	4.0' - 5.0' 1.2 m - 1.5 m	Minimal damage to vegetation
Hurricane 2 (Moderate)	96 - 110 mph 83 - 95 kts	28.50" - 28.93" 965.12 mb - 979.68 mb	6.0' - 8.0' 1.8 m - 2.4 m	Moderate damage to houses
Hurricane 3 (Strong)	111 - 130 mph 96 - 112 kts	27.91" - 28.49" 945.14 mb - 964.78 mb	9.0' - 12.0' 2.7 m - 3.7 m	Extensive damage to small buildings
Hurricane 4 (Very strong)	131 - 155 mph 113 - 135 kts	27.17" - 27.90" 920.08 mb - 944.80 mb	13.0' - 18.0' 3.9 m - 5.5 m	Extreme structural damage
Hurricane 5 (Devastating)	Greater than 155 mph Greater than 135 kts	Less than 27.17" Less than 920.08 mb	Greater than 18.0' Greater than 5.5m	Catastrophic building failures possible

things are not looking good, I will be very interested in the 10 am (thru) forecast track.

1,181 posted on 09/21/2005 9:33:39 PM PDT by jpsb

Woman, you are a genuine genius!!!

Wait! Let me go get my husband! Can you repeat this? :)

1,182 posted on 09/21/2005 9:34:01 PM PDT by Brad’s Gramma (Lord, we need a Logan miracle for Simcha7 and Cowboy. Please.)

Going to call it a night. My prayers for all Texans! You are in my heart.

1,183 posted on 09/21/2005 9:34:38 PM PDT by nuclady

I don't know what yall are doing up there but I wish you would stop:') I can't call out and people in Texas can't get thru to me. My son in Japan however has called twice today.

1,184 posted on 09/21/2005 9:35:04 PM PDT by CindyDawg (Brownsville Texas)

Sorry to hear that she is still having difficulties. At least we are almost done with Sept, and getting closer to winter.

1,185 posted on 09/21/2005 9:35:29 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat

Your assertion that "assertation" isn't a word is laughable.

1,186 posted on 09/21/2005 9:35:55 PM PDT by raygun

Hopefully only the bottom floors are gutted, or they'll need a new mayor.

1,187 posted on 09/21/2005 9:36:03 PM PDT by nwctwx (Everything I need to know, I learned on the Threat Matrix)

Thanks for the info. :)

1,188 posted on 09/21/2005 9:36:30 PM PDT by RoseyT (Lufkin)

To: Daniel Ramsey

BTW, other people have asked about nuking the hurricane. Here's the NHC response to that:

Subject: C5c) Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them ?
During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.
Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x10¹³ watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 10¹³ watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.
If we think about mechanical energy, the energy at humanity's disposal is closer to the storm's, but the task of focusing even half of the energy on a spot in the middle of a remote ocean would still be formidable. Brute force interference with hurricanes doesn't seem promising.
In addition, an explosive, even a nuclear explosive, produces a shock wave, or pulse of high pressure, that propagates away from the site of the explosion somewhat faster than the speed of sound. Such an event doesn't raise the barometric pressure after the shock has passed because barometric pressure in the atmosphere reflects the weight of the air above the ground. For normal atmospheric pressure, there are about ten metric tons (1000 kilograms per ton) of air bearing down on each square meter of surface. In the strongest hurricanes there are nine. To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.
Attacking weak tropical waves or depressions before they have a chance to grow into hurricanes isn't promising either. About 80 of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5 become hurricanes in a typical year. There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop. If the energy released in a tropical disturbance were only 10% of that released in a hurricane, it's still a lot of power, so that the hurricane police would need to dim the whole world's lights many times a year.

1,189 posted on 09/21/2005 9:36:31 PM PDT by AntiGuv (™)

To: Daniel Ramsey

Now why hasn't somebody or anyone suggested we try to actually stop these hurricanes? There was a project to "super-seed" the hurricane with massive amounts of silver iodide I think to make it basically rain itself out. Now may be the best time to try something.

From Wikipedia...

In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States government attempted to weaken hurricanes in its Project Stormfury by seeding selected storms with silver iodide. It was thought that the seeding would disrupt the storm's eyewall, causing it to collapse and thus reduce the winds. However, it was later discovered that eyewall disruption happens naturally as part of eyewall replacement cycles, and so the success of the program was impossible to gauge.

Other approaches have been suggested over time, including cooling the water under a tropical cyclone by towing icebergs into the tropical oceans; covering the ocean in a substance that inhibits evaporation; or blasting the cyclone apart with nuclear weapons. These approaches all suffer from the same flaw: tropical cyclones are simply too large for any of them to be practical.

1,190 posted on 09/21/2005 9:36:58 PM PDT by JeffAtlanta

Night all. Here's to hoping we wake up to a Cat3. :)

1,191 posted on 09/21/2005 9:37:16 PM PDT by publana (yes, I checked the preview box without previewing)

To: Diddle E. Squat

She's totally worried and concerned for y'all and the whole of Texas's coast. Unreal, but somebody said that the surge could go in 30 miles. Can that possibly be possible?

1,192 posted on 09/21/2005 9:37:22 PM PDT by onyx ((Vicksburg, MS) North is a direction. South is a way of life.)

LOL! Eaker and Humblegunner sound like 2 tough hombres.

Thanks for the kind words.

1,193 posted on 09/21/2005 9:37:25 PM PDT by Nita Nupress (Is the name "Nita Ritagone" taken?)

People point and giggle when I walk by. :<

1,194 posted on 09/21/2005 9:37:33 PM PDT by nwctwx (Everything I need to know, I learned on the Threat Matrix)

I just copy and paste. On this matter, I am a worthless mere conduit. :)

1,195 posted on 09/21/2005 9:38:13 PM PDT by Torie

Well... it IS Wednesday and the storm isn't coming til late Friday. They have a bit of time to find their husbands, for crying out loud. Wake up people! Get the hell out!

1,196 posted on 09/21/2005 9:38:14 PM PDT by lainie

To: Diddle E. Squat

What is this thing you call winter????

1,197 posted on 09/21/2005 9:38:28 PM PDT by eastforker (Under Cover FReeper going dark(too much 24))

Yes Okies are good people.

Not Smug, elitists near do-well-wannabes but just plain good people who know how to handle anything that man or nature throws at them.

I'll always have a place in my heart for Oklahoma.

Lets pray for my fellow Texans in harms way of this terrible monster.

1,198 posted on 09/21/2005 9:38:30 PM PDT by OKIEDOC (There's nothing like hearing someone say thank you for your help.)

OK - which one of you saved 30 million people today?

If it was Eaker, I want to take part of the credit.

1,199 posted on 09/21/2005 9:38:43 PM PDT by TheMom (My husband and children rock! I am like a rock . . . round and thick.)

Phone lines in S.E. Texas are swamped, "all circuts are busy"

1,200 posted on 09/21/2005 9:39:15 PM PDT by jpsb

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