Being over water will keep Irma from dissipating but the land masses nearby, especially mountainous ones, really affect the intensity. Irma’s already looking a little ragged and asymmetrical from the close encounter with PR, which is fairly small and with only 4300 ft mountains. Hispaniola is a much larger island with 10,000 ft mountains. The official NHC forecast has Irma dropping from 160 kt sustained winds right now down to 135 kt sustained winds by the time it gets to the Miami area because of the interaction with Hispaniola and Cuba.
Hurricanes are fairly low-topped systems, say, in the 30 to 50 kft range in height. A 10 kft mountain range seriously disrupts the flow over a significant fraction of its height.
We are having a pretty unusual cold front in Louisiana right now. I think that front pushing down is contributing to Irma’s turn. Also making our weather really nice. Glad it may be keeping this storm a bit offshore too. Although it’s a beast still.
I doubt if anyone’s dancing in the streets that Irma’s winds will “only” be 135 knots when it reaches Miami. 135 knots is 155 mph. Ok, better than 185 mph, but…
The National Hurricane Center has graphics showing all sorts of information on the current hurricanes, including the projected path and arrival times. It’s updated every few hours.
90% of Barbuda’s structures are destroyed.
I don’t think I’ve seen images like this since the Haiti earthquake. And even then… I’m not sure it was this bad.
@busyparent, at this point, the forecast for FLL.looks like Friday should be just fine, particularly in the morning. Same for Orlando, though they are forecasting thunderstorms in the afternoon, that is a normal event and probably not hurricane related. Unless the storm rapidly accelerates, it should be fine.
However, it is unknown when the airlines are going to start cancelling their operations. Sometimes they give advance notice, and sometimes they wait till the last minute. This news article talks about how American Airlines is winding down their flights on Friday afternoon, and about all the cancellations out of FLL. If I could get out earlier, I would, because they could cancel a flight in a blink of an eye. No pun intended.
I just finally read this thread. On the first pages people were talking about Federal Flood repeatedly paying to rebuild homes. I’ve been told if the damage is over 50% you must tear the house down and they don’t rebuild. There are areas they will not cover with flood insurance and they are called COBRA Zones. North Topsail Island, NC is one and I think Carova Beach (where the wild horses are) is another. http://www.southshoreinsurance.com/2014/10/01/cobra-zone/ I’ve been told that homeowners in those areas are often covered by Lloyd’s of London.
We have a small house in the Outer Banks on stilts that was built in 1972. The subdivision was laid out in the early 1950’s. In all that time the subdivision did not flood until Hurricane Irene in 2012. We got 14" in the garage and laundry room. Last fall it flooded again, 6" from Matthew. The water rushes through; there’s no standing water to pump. Federal Flood insurance only covers the upstairs living area. which I agree with completely. What I love (S) is the ghouls who drive around looking for a deal. We pulled all the surfboards kayaks and lawn care supplies out of the garage last fall to hose down with bleach and water. I turned around to a guy picking through our belongings. Again my house was built in 1972. There have been no flood insurance pay outs on it ever. If it gets wiped away next week I think I should be able to make a claim.
My daughter scheduled a Sat 11 am flight. Called Jetblue and while they haven’t had any cancellations yet and did expect the Sat flights to go out of Orlando, they changed her to Friday. Hurricane strength is not expected until Sunday am.
When I was growing up, I was unclear about the difference between a hurricane and a tornado. Big wind, buildings fall down, was my naive idea. Later I learned that tornados are little and short lived but incredibly destructive in their narrow path, and hurricanes are huge and longer-lasting, but not as powerful.
Irma’s a hurricane with tornado-force winds.
Jeez, the weather guy on TV just said Irma’s winds are gusting to 225 mph.
It looks like they keep adjusting the path to the east. I am praying it keeps moving to the east, and eventually ends up missing the entire coast. However, with winds gusting like that, the hurricane wouldn’t have to be even close to cause harm. It’s a monster.
@busyparent – according to the latest model the center of the storm will be over 150 miles southeast of Miami on Saturday morning. Normally, I’d say there’s no problem flying out of FLL … but as @busdriver11 said, the airline network can get screwed up in these situations. Orlando shouldn’t be a problem at all on Saturday unless things ripple through the air traffic system.
As an example of how things can get screwed up with the airlines, we came back from a cruise during Spring Break this year and were flying out of Miami. There were extensive thunderstorms in Atlanta several days before yet the Delta flights out of Miami were still being cancelled. We were about to give up our seats for big $$$ but the Delta people warned us that the nearby hotels were full and there were no rental cars available.
Edit: the latest model now has the storm making landfall north of Charleston. Up near Myrtle Beach on Monday night. Do I believe it? Not any more than any of the other model runs!
I have a friend in Barbuda and another in Antigua I haven’t heard from since before the storm. She was awaiting the storm and was expecting power outages.
