yeah, we just scraped by in sarasota...still we have trees down everywhere and sustained winds of 60 mph with gusts to 75+ from 6am to about 3pm. nuts. i don't even want to know what it was like in stuart/vero beach....
Greeting from just south of there (Palm Beach County). I just got power back (Frances took a full week....blah...) We got the southern eye wall and it was intense but not nearly as bad as those counties north of us. I talked to some friends in Martin County they got it much worse...... In Palm Beach Gardens the winds were much more powerfull than Frances but it went through pretty fast (Frances decided to stall for a day and drill us with rain and slightly lighter wind) I surf and usually look forward to Hurricane season on the east coast.........after a couple of direct hits I cant wait for winter!
Speaking of hurricanes: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040912-080434-9518r.htm While the experts are divided on whether hurricane frequency is increasing, most agree that rising ocean temperatures will at least increase hurricane severity. The same effect occurs with land based storms and tornados. Storms are in general driven by warm, humid surface air. I just spent a month in St. Croix. I was shocked at how warm the ocean water was. In some places it was as warm as bathwater, 90 to 95 degrees F. I lived on St. Croix from '75 to just before Hugo in â89. Never was the water that warm. It was never more than 80 - 85 degrees. In the 13 years I lived there we needed our shutters for just three storms, David and Fredrick in â79, then Hugo in â89 which was devastating. The â90s saw a strong hurricane every 2 to 3 years. This yearâs season is scary. Jeanne surprised everyone at how fast it strengthened. On Monday 9/13 it was a tropical wave with 30mph winds and no one cared. On Tuesday people were crowding the supermarkets and putting up their shutters, preparing for 60 to 70 mph winds. The storm hit Tuesday night. That's never ever happened before.
there were 30+ hurricanes last year. fortunately in 2003, we didn't have that high pressure system sitting off the coast all summer like this year. what causes high pressure? well, polar melting could be a plausible cause. antarctica just had a HUGE ice shelf break off, and it has now been confirmed by international teams that it is increasing its melting alarmingly. this in turn cools the northern atlantic and shifts the energy dispersion throughout the atmosphere, which then causes the atmosphere to be more imbalanced, got it?. cause and effect. the higher the high pressure, the lower the low pressure! just drinking a beer with my alligator and soaking up the sun