Be Excellent To Each Other

Being the weather nerd I am it's been both baffling and disturbing to see over the last week the progress of Hurricane Ian from a tropical disturbance south of Jamaica into a powerful hurricane that has passed over Western Cuba to now form a potential Category Five major Hurricane poised to hit a highly populated stretch of Florida's Western coast.

For much of its track Ian has been tying up the forecast models in knots as they try to figure out its ultimate path and strength. At first it looked to be heading to a weak landfall in the Florida panhandle. Then as it hit Cuba it trended towards a moderate Tampa hit, a worrying case indeed for a very surge prone major city. Then the models swung south and some weaker categories were banded about until suddenly, defying expectation, Ian began to strengthen as it passed OVER land in its transit across Cuba. It hit a belt of very warm waters between Cuba and Florida and began a rapid eyewall replacement cycle, where a large, new eyewall formed up around the old one and choked it off, causing the inner one to fall apart. This checked Ian's speed, but only briefly. What usually takes a day or two happened in ten hours in a burst of rapid intensification, and Ian is now approaching a Katrina sized hurricane with an eyewall 35 miles in diameter.

The path no longer brings it into Tampa but instead around fifty miles south. However that's not good news either as the entirely stretch of coast below Tampa is crowded with artificial dodgy swampland cities crowded with mansions built by real estate hucksters the likes of which would put Lyle Langley and Glenglarry Ross to shame. Ian is now headed towards Port Charlotte and a coastline of 700,000 people with a forecast surge of 12 to 16 feet. The cities are at sea level.






As Ian tracks over these it will dump 20 inches of rain in Tampa and the backwinds will cause a surge there of around four to six feet. The hurricane will then head towards Orlando over the next 24 hours where it will eventually peter out into a storm, but not before bringing major flooding.

I only hope everyone evacuated because until yesterday the models were predicting a northerly hit towards Tampa. If Port Charlotte and the neighbouring cities weren't paying attention... well.

This is almost certain to be a historic storm and could pretty much destroy Florida's insurance market. I wouldn't be surprised if it rivalled Katrina in the number of people it displaces. I expect it to be front page news tomorrow.

Jesus, what a week, eh?


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The surge forecast has now gone up to eighteen feet for Port Charlotte and Fort Meyers area. There's 400,000 people in the mapped surge zone. The hurricane is showing no signs of weakening and is now a borderline category five at or close to 155mph peak surface winds at the eyewall, which is around 30 miles across. The water has been sucked out of Tampa Bay owing to the winds up that way moving offshore, and it'll be coming back in later as it shifts to inshore as the hurricane passes, though thankfully only up to six feet probably for the Tampa area. Between two and four feet of rain forecast to fall in parts of Florida over the next 48 hours.

This is frankly terrifying. It might actually out-do Katrina.

Nothing I've read about Florida gives me a wild amount of confidence in their preparedness, infrastructure and the state government's ability to handle a crisis like this...