Are You Ready for the Hurricane Season?

To misquote Monday Night Football... Are you ready for some hurricanes?  I'm not a betting person and yet I would bet you are not.

Here is that same storm Hurricane Isabel in 2003 over land....same shape.... same storm.




Neat fact about hurricanes I learned from the best...once they get that shape going early on ...the bad ones keep it and you can see the similarities.

Below is a picture of inland flooding from another storm ... Hurricane Floyd.



No one is safe from a hurricane and safety is an illusion. This year's hurricane is not the same as last years and we always ... by human nature... prepare for last year's hurricane. Beach towns up and down the coast will worry on another Sandy. The year after Andrew everyone worried on another Category 5 and after Katrina every town with a levee worried on their levees holding. Mother Nature likes surprises and she likes to keep us on our toes. Last year it was beach towns, this year it could be inland flooding like the devastation that Isabel brought to areas far inland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Isabel

Isabel is the hurricane image above when she was down in the Caribbean. When she moved out of the Caribbean and up across the Atlantic and moved inland to towns far from the sexy beach shots of the storm surge her wake of devastation surged on and on and on. Highlighting the salient points in bold and color below. This storm ...not as well known as "Katrina" or "Andrew" caused damage from South Carolina to Maine and from the coast of Carolina to Michigan and a province in Canada.  Are you SURE you are READY?? I bet not. You are ready for the hurricane you think and fear you might get, but you could be blindsided by the storm you thought you would never get. And, that my friends is the way of the world when it comes to Mother Nature and Hurricanes.  In ways... they are less predictable than twisters. Their point of landfall is pretty predictable, the damage far inland and along the way is not. Read on from Wikipedia on Isabel in 20003.

"In North Carolina, the storm surge from Isabel washed out a portion of Hatteras Island to form what was unofficially known as Isabel Inlet. Damage was greatest along the Outer Banks, where thousands of homes were damaged or even destroyed. The worst of the effects of Isabel occurred inVirginia, especially in the Hampton Roads area and along the shores of rivers as far west and north as Richmond and Washington, DC. Virginia reported the most deaths and damage from the hurricane. About 64% of the damage and 68% of the deaths occurred in North Carolina and Virginia. Electric service was disrupted in areas of Virginia for several days, some more rural areas were without electricity for weeks, and local flooding caused thousands of dollars in damage.

Moderate to severe damage extended up the Atlantic coastline and as far inland as West Virginia. Roughly six million people were left without electric service in the eastern United States from the strong winds of Isabel. Rainfall from the storm extended from South Carolina to Maine, and westward to Michigan. Throughout the path of Isabel, damage totalled about 5.7 billion (2003 USD, $7.11 billion 2013 USD).^[1] 16 deaths in seven U.S. states were directly related to the hurricane, with 35 deaths in six states and one Canadian province indirectly related to the hurricane."

This morning, governors everywhere are making public service announcements and lying to their constituents that their state is ready for a hurricane. It's a lie they believe mind you or pray is not a lie and yet it is a lie, because no one is really ready for a hurricane.  With the recent destruction from the most recent Moore Tornadoes weather is in the news and the more severe the weather the more it is in the news.  CNN and FOX are out there LIVE covering every tornado and TWC has given up their own mediocre hunts for Tornadoes and signed up with Reed Timmer the REAL THING and has taken to the road with the storm chasers in search of LIVE WEATHER.

May I remind you that New Orleans flooding from a breech in the levee system after a strong hurricane was the number one feared national "weather" disaster. It happened, over twenty years after that first report went out that it would happens one day unless something was done...   New York City being hit by a large hurricane has always been played up on shows like TWC and yet when it happened everyone seemed shocked it could do that much damage. Or more so...that sort of damage. We thought it was all about the subways flooding and the Statue of Liberty being flooded up to her knees... no one said nothing about islands on the shore burning out of control and the stretch of beach to the south in New Jersey washing away under a wall of water leaving ferris wheels rocking in the waves.

Trust me as someone who knows.. you are not ready. You are ready for a small category one hurricane where you will get your supplies, put up your shutters and hunker down and far away in some random band a twister will form and wipe out a trailer park or rip the roof off of a shopping mall and the storm will stall and inland flooding will occur far from landfall.

Are you really ready? Rethink that.. no matter what your governor or mayor tells you .. listen to the folks at the National Hurricane Center or your most trusted weather people online and make a list of ALL possible problems that your area could have from a hurricane and make a Plan
A and then make a Plan B. That is what life is about in the Hurricane Zone.



LIVE WEATHER has become the new REALITY TV SHOWS of 2013.  Every chaser worth his name is out there in some sort of vehicle dubbed with a gritty, grindy sounding name such as the DOMINATOR taking videos of tornadoes grinding themselves out as they pass over their live cameras. And, oh what a show it has been . . .

Incredible video that was passed around the Internet and I am wondering if this new fascination on storm chasers and weather will continue into the Hurricane Season?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v075d9Vfqcg

That is a "violent wedge tornado" in the video above that Brandon Ivey took on May 27th, 2013. While Brandon was out there on the road risking his life to get that video and the data that is collected ... KFOR helicopters were in the air intercepting the tornadoes in the air. What next?

This is from the earlier outbreak in May as there were several, the news team goes from the ground to the air to radar and back to the video from the chopper chasing the twister. That is not a twister.. it is a piece of the helicopter. . .

So what will we see this coming year in the news and what will we see from Hurricanes? Everyone expects towns like Miami, Key West, Wilmington NC to get hurricanes. How about Jacksonville who is long overdue or Tampa? How about Mobile and Maine? How about your town far inland where a dike might fail or a storm will stall out and dump days of rain on you after you already had a lot of rain from a stalled out frontal system? Hmmmnnn?  And, twisters form in hurricanes... Are you ready for twisters? Power Outages?

Not trying to be a Negative Nancy here... more a realistic, rational voice at the start of the hurricane season.  Two packages of twinkies that your kids broke into at their last slumber party and some old water bought on sale months back is NOT going to get you through the season. And, I am glad your phone has a flashlight App but....buy flashlights and good ones and buy extra batteries. Medicines that you use consistently, stock up on diapers for the baby and while at it buy an extra pack of two for grandma. Crayons work when the power goes out and you have to conserve that battery on the iPad.

Trust me... you think you are ready for the Hurricane Season, but you are not.

The lights, cameras and action of the TWC are ready and Jim Cantore may be ready, but he is going to hop on plane or a bus out of town and chase the next down impacted and you will be stuck for days, weeks with no power, no cable and not a clue that Andrew wiped out Louisiana until you read about it days later. Trust me, been there... never realized they got it so bad as we didn't get TWC back until well into October...nor CNN. Everything was down and we were miles away from Homestead on Miami Beach with trees tangled around wires and cable and telephone service taking showers when the rain fell in the backyard.

Towards the bottom of www.spaghettimodels.com there are many links on how to prepare as there are articles everywhere in your local news, the NHC page or your favorite weather website and if you are more the TV type of person TWC will be covering what to do nonstop, around the clock today and tomorrow between going live to storm chasers out on the plains and their "get ready for the hurricane season spots." Pay attention! It really could happen to you!

Hmmnnnn possibilities in our world and out by Africa the possibilities are growing.


And, in the Atlantic there is already an Invest from the remnants of Barbara.

Keep watching... the 2013 Atlantic Hurricane is here...sooner than you think and sooner than you think you could be under the gun ,,,so prepare now and don't believe the myth that your town is ready. No town is really ready as you never know what kind of storm you may be getting until it's bearing down on you..

Something to think on...

Besos Bobbi