ATL: HELENE - Post-Tropical - Discussion

[cheezyWXguy]

The dry air issues are over now. Appearance is quickly improving.

[IsabelaWeather]

You can see on visible the dry air entrainment is still present wrapping in/around from the SE side. Good structure for sure but still sucking some dry air in.

true, but you pretty much will see that with every strong system that's developing. If you go back and look at the various hurricane threads, usually you will see dry air mentioned a few times with every potentially strong hurricane. But they almost always end up mixing it out over time, unless of course dry air is extreme, which it isn't with Helene.

Yeah but it often goes both ways though, you often see mentioned when systems don't strengthen like predicted it's because of dry air the system can't seem to mix out. Models handle dry air very very poorly at this scale.

This storm looks to have built a core and there isnt that much dry air around. If it struggles to intensify it wouldnt be because of the dry air. But it looks like its about to explode.

[tulum07]

Palm Beach District Schools has not made a closure announcement yet. Do you think PBDS schools will close tomorrow since we are under a TS Warning and not a watch? I thought the buses could not run under a warning.

[otowntiger]

Question for people who live near Tallahassee: That city has had a lot of near misses over the last century. Do people there feel like they’ll get ‘lucky’ again or is there a sense that this is the ‘really big one’ finally coming?

The mood changed today and lots of people are leaving town. We expect long power outages, flooding, and lots of downed trees. I still think people are hesitant to believe true major hurricane forces will make it this far inland, but people are definitely nervous and preparing.

If anybody in Tallahassee still believe they are "too far inland" to be under a threat, they need to look at the warnings! ALL OF GEORGIA has been been declared disaster area.

Yes! And they should just look at their inland neighbors to their west! Marianna got destroyed by Michael and they are 50 miles inland. Tally is just 25 miles inland!

[Michele B]

Thanks for your response. I suspected it wasn't built back better (sorry!). Oftentimes it is the $$$ issue. I feel very bad for those who had lovely homes there on the beach and lost it all.

Hopefully, those who are there now are smart enough to get out and be safe. I think I heard horror stories about many who would not leave, never to be seen again...

The unfortunate truth is that there are some places that people shouldn't live and I say that as someone with a vacation home on the beach in NC. We shouldn't be building or living right on the coastline in surge prone areas, it's no different than living in the floodway of a river. If people do decide to build there, the government shouldn't be bailing them out when the inevitable storm comes and destroys their home. The government should do everything they can to protect lives, but it isn't their job to protect lifestyles, especially when someone makes a poor financial decision by owning a home without sufficient insurance to cover it after a total loss.

My 1960s house will one day be destroyed by a hurricane, my insurance won't cover the very expensive rebuild, I'm ok with that.

You are a very rare bird.

Most people want to build RIGHT on a dangerous spot (earthquake fault line? Shore line in hurricane territory?) and then expect "help" when nature knocks on their front door.

[ObsessedMiami]

Miami-Dade schools
Open tomorrow

[IsabelaWeather]

Thanks for your response. I suspected it wasn't built back better (sorry!). Oftentimes it is the $$$ issue. I feel very bad for those who had lovely homes there on the beach and lost it all.

Hopefully, those who are there now are smart enough to get out and be safe. I think I heard horror stories about many who would not leave, never to be seen again...

The unfortunate truth is that there are some places that people shouldn't live and I say that as someone with a vacation home on the beach in NC. We shouldn't be building or living right on the coastline in surge prone areas, it's no different than living in the floodway of a river. If people do decide to build there, the government shouldn't be bailing them out when the inevitable storm comes and destroys their home. The government should do everything they can to protect lives, but it isn't their job to protect lifestyles, especially when someone makes a poor financial decision by owning a home without sufficient insurance to cover it after a total loss.

My 1960s house will one day be destroyed by a hurricane, my insurance won't cover the very expensive rebuild, I'm ok with that.

100% agree, its also terrible for the environment to have massive amounts of houses decay into the ocean, the barrier islands are not permanent, they ebb and flow with storms. Be much better for everyone to be more careful where we build.

[WaveBreaking]

Looking at the bigger picture, it’s both fascinating and horrible that a single CAG spawned two separate cyclones that both are developing eyes/dry slots (saying this to avoid controversy) and are threatening land.

John and Helene just by themselves and how they’ve interacted with each other are probably some of the most interesting events to come out of this already bizarre season (other than a Cat 4 MDR storm in June obviously).

[underthwx]

Miami-Dade schools
Open tomorrow

That may change tho.....this is an evolving event....impacts will be widespread unfortunately....im not sure how these school districts make decisions...regarding Helene....but im sure they are being advised by many agencies.....

[Texashawk]

The mood changed today and lots of people are leaving town. We expect long power outages, flooding, and lots of downed trees. I still think people are hesitant to believe true major hurricane forces will make it this far inland, but people are definitely nervous and preparing.

If anybody in Tallahassee still believe they are "too far inland" to be under a threat, they need to look at the warnings! ALL OF GEORGIA has been been declared disaster area.

Yes! And they should just look at their inland neighbors to their west! Marianna got destroyed by Michael and they are 50 miles inland. Tally is just 25 miles inland!

Downtown Lake Charles is ~31 miles from the coast. Donna tore up that city. FSU campus is approx. 22 miles from the coast. And this storm will be a lot larger than Donna, with most likely a larger eye. 25 miles is nothing in this situation!

[wx98]

With a Cat 4, the forecasted surge will come up even higher in Apalachee Bay. Especially if the center hugs closer to Apalachicola.

[bigfluffydogs]

Mexico Beach as you see it today is not the same as it was. FEMA gave only so much and without flood insurance, the houses that got wrecked by surge did not get nearly enough to rebuild. There are still damaged houses unoccupied there. What is being built makes my construction lawyer eyeballs twitch and it's mainly being bought by people as second homes. Wood frame, not concrete, and not nearly enough strapping in my opinion in a VE zone on the water is not going to make it. Cape San Blas has houses basically in the water that will not survive. Charming little places like Carabelle will be at risk of demolition if half of what appears to be coming comes to fruition. Our house in St Joe Beach will come out of this OK I think on this storm, but if we get another Michael down the road, we won't rebuild another time. There is a great book called the Geography of Risk that talks about the flood insurance angle of your question. And now, back to lurking.

none of those older homes anywhere on the gulf will survive a direct hit from a 4/5, eventually they'll all be gone.

What makes you think the new homes have insufficient strapping?

Agree on the older houses. The drive from Port St Joe to St Marks along 98 has house after house on slabs looking out over the bay and they are on borrowed time. Observations over the past 3 years of the mad building boom have not instilled a ton of confidence in me. Many I have (casually) observed didn't have enough ties/hangers in the right places IMO to comply with SST's installation requirements and in a few cases, they fastened them through the truss plate from behind which is not great. I also saw a lot of attachment to the upper top plate only which I don't love. I was surprised that many didn't have them installed in pairs for higher loading capacity given the wind potentials here. Generally, the codes guys do a good job but they aren't babysitters and they aren't there to watch them when the framing crew uses a 2" nail. How well a building performs is dependent on who built it, what materials got used and how competent the crews doing the work are. Back to lurking.

[tolakram]

Bigger picture animation

[chaser1]

The NWS local forecast has no explicit winds or wind gust forecast either (only the min/max temperatures LOL).

Not true - I just looked up the NWS Melbourne forecast for Orlando and it says this

THURSDAY
A CHANCE OF THUNDERSTORMS. A CHANCE OF SHOWERS IN THE
LATE MORNING AND EARLY AFTERNOON, THEN SHOWERS LATE IN THE
AFTERNOON AND TOWARDS SUNSET. VERY WINDY. HIGHS IN THE UPPER 80S.
SOUTHEAST WINDS 25 TO 30 MPH INCREASING TO 30 TO 35 MPH LATE IN
THE AFTERNOON AND TOWARDS SUNSET. GUSTS UP TO 45 MPH INCREASING
TO 50 MPH LATE IN THE AFTERNOON AND TOWARDS SUNSET. CHANCE OF
RAIN 90 PERCENT. HEAT INDEX READINGS UP TO 101.
THURSDAY NIGHT
MOSTLY CLOUDY IN THE LATE EVENING AND EARLY
MORNING THEN BECOMING PARTLY CLOUDY. A CHANCE OF THUNDERSTORMS.
SHOWERS LIKELY IN THE LATE EVENING AND EARLY MORNING, THEN A
CHANCE OF SHOWERS AFTER MIDNIGHT. VERY WINDY. LOWS IN THE UPPER
70S. SOUTH WINDS 30 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 50 MPH DECREASING
TO 20 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 35 MPH AFTER MIDNIGHT. CHANCE OF
RAIN 70 PERCENT.

Very explicit with wind and gust forecasts!

I suppose my point is that:
1) there are other types of Advisories which could express a potential expanded risk but not necessarily directly imply "you WILL experience tropical storm conditions".
2) We all love to jump on the media for being sensationalistic for the sake of ratings. Well, let's leave the worst-case scenario for them to constantly remind us.
3) When NHC forecast confidence is strong, they're pretty solid out to 72 hr.'s. When less confident they are pretty direct where an expanded risk could impact others in the case of a small track deviation.
4) I did not experience the wind impact as advertised during the majority of events where Warnings were issued for my area for those T.S. or hurricanes which did threaten Florida over recent years (nor the many Severe Storm Warning & Tornado Warnings issued for my particular area). Coworkers, family and friends have all expressed that same sentiment.

as for your points,

1) there are enough varieties of advisories out there to cover things and any more would confuse the public
2) where do you think the media gets their weather info from in the first place?
4) forecasts are for a county area in general, you're not going to get a specific forecast for your block

As the NHC pointed out in its discussion, this storm is going to be in the 90th percentile for size, and the stronger it gets the stronger the distant effects are going to be, which is why the entire state is under TS warnings.

Thanks Belle. What link do have for that page? This is the NWS page I am referring to https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.p ... n=-81.3484
and those details are not there, which I imagine is confusing to the public.

Where do I think the media gets their weather info from? Probably the same place where all the Youtubers do as well LOL.
You are correct that NWS forecasts are generally for counties (possibly adjusted by zip code for towns/cities). When I simply insert my zip code however, the NWS link above only details current day winds, and several future days but leaves out for tomm and tomm night.

[Aggiemon96]

I'm not gonna lie this "Best spot for the storm to go discussion" is useless imo. I'll tell you, when I was chasing Idalia in Perry last year and staring at people's homes with trees through the middle and businesses without roofs, I definitely wasn't thinking "Well this was the best place for this storm to go!" I'm not a fan of this discussion it feels insensitive to the people who live there. There's nothing to be gained from it, we can't control where these go.

Yeah I'm a Public Adjuster and have about 20 clients in Perry, Madison, Mayo, etc, from Idalia. Debbie created more messes, and now Helene. Three hurricanes hitting an area in a one-year time period is bonkers. It is true that being an isolated area, the money loss of a hit here compared to other regions will count as a win in the insurance companies' eyes. But the communities in this area are in shambles. The morale of the amazing people there is beyond horrible.

It seems this storm will also be much worse than the previous two. My stomach is hurting thinking about what people will soon be dealing with.

Anyone who has not experienced a direct hit (or near miss) from one of these storms doesn't truly understand what it takes to "get back to normal life." It can takes year, DECADES, to get "back to normal."

We had Charley 20 years ago, and many homes are still not brought back to what they were pre-

And then along came Ian, and while it might SEEM like less damage, I observed that that was mostly due to the oldest, most dilapidated homes hadn't already been knocked down by Charley! Meanwhile, many of the "fringe" homes - those who were badly damaged, but not judged to be completed destroyed - had people living in them simply because FEMA or insurance or whatever was not enough to bring their home back up to what they had before the storm were now damaged beyond repair. Whose sections of our town look like a bomb went off - still - 2 years later.

And now if a THIRD one were to hit here (TWO years later, not just one, or only a few months), I don't know how this community could survive.

I especially feel terrible for Mexico Beach, as we drove up there with supplies for that area after Michael and could not believe the entire beach along one stretch - for miles - was just *gone.* What does one do then? Did FEMA help pay for them to rebuild? Did they get enough insurance? Did they simply move away or are they close by, planning/hoping to rebuild one day. And now another storm may make that impossible?

I suppose one could make the argument that the "atmosphere conditions have changed" and returned to the middle of the last century (yes, I'm old enough to remember then!), when we had back-to-back storms in consecutive years and you just had to rebuild.

I have had the "pleasure" of dealing with some biggies...in 2020, back to back with Laura and Delta. Were out of our home for two years. Couple that with being in the middle of the pandemic (myself ending up on life support six months into the ordeal) it wasn't fun.

My parent company is a major reinsurer...pucker factor is high.

[Michele B]

Mexico Beach as you see it today is not the same as it was. FEMA gave only so much and without flood insurance, the houses that got wrecked by surge did not get nearly enough to rebuild. There are still damaged houses unoccupied there. What is being built makes my construction lawyer eyeballs twitch and it's mainly being bought by people as second homes. Wood frame, not concrete, and not nearly enough strapping in my opinion in a VE zone on the water is not going to make it. Cape San Blas has houses basically in the water that will not survive. Charming little places like Carabelle will be at risk of demolition if half of what appears to be coming comes to fruition. Our house in St Joe Beach will come out of this OK I think on this storm, but if we get another Michael down the road, we won't rebuild another time. There is a great book called the Geography of Risk that talks about the flood insurance angle of your question. And now, back to lurking.

none of those older homes anywhere on the gulf will survive a direct hit from a 4/5, eventually they'll all be gone.

What makes you think the new homes have insufficient strapping?

Agree on the older houses. The drive from Port St Joe to St Marks along 98 has house after house on slabs looking out over the bay and they are on borrowed time. Observations over the past 3 years of the mad building boom have not instilled a ton of confidence in me. Many I have (casually) observed didn't have enough ties/hangers in the right places IMO to comply with SST's installation requirements and in a few cases, they fastened them through the truss plate from behind which is not great. I also saw a lot of attachment to the upper top plate only which I don't love. I was surprised that many didn't have them installed in pairs for higher loading capacity given the wind potentials here. Generally, the codes guys do a good job but they aren't babysitters and they aren't there to watch them when the framing crew uses a 2" nail. How well a building performs is dependent on who built it, what materials got used and how competent the crews doing the work are. Back to lurking.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say I think the building codes aren't quite up to the standards of the southern most counties.

I could be wrong. My own opinion is that the entire state should have the same strict standards.

But again, I guess the inspectors can't be everywhere all the time!

[HurricaneBelle]

Thanks Belle. What link do have for that page? This is the NWS page I am referring to https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.p ... n=-81.3484
and those details are not there, which I imagine is confusing to the public.

I've used kamala.cod.edu for 10? 15? years now, they have all the text products from every NWS office in the country. The Melbourne ZFP (zone forecast product) is at https://kamala.cod.edu/fl/latest.fpus52.KMLB.html

[chaser1]

true, but you pretty much will see that with every strong system that's developing. If you go back and look at the various hurricane threads, usually you will see dry air mentioned a few times with every potentially strong hurricane. But they almost always end up mixing it out over time, unless of course dry air is extreme, which it isn't with Helene.

Yeah but it often goes both ways though, you often see mentioned when systems don't strengthen like predicted it's because of dry air the system can't seem to mix out. Models handle dry air very very poorly at this scale.

This storm looks to have built a core and there isnt that much dry air around. If it struggles to intensify it wouldnt be because of the dry air. But it looks like its about to explode.

Yep, looking pretty impressive on satellite now. I don't see dry air becoming a factor going forward

[Meteorcane]

Thanks Belle. What link do have for that page? This is the NWS page I am referring to https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.p ... n=-81.3484
and those details are not there, which I imagine is confusing to the public.

I've used kamala.cod.edu for 10? 15? years now, they have all the text products from every NWS office in the country. The Melbourne ZFP (zone forecast product) is at https://kamala.cod.edu/fl/latest.fpus52.KMLB.html

The graphical forecast page https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=27.9077&lon=-82.287&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=graphical will show you the explicit forecast gusts.

I recommend using the IDSS forecast points page though if you want summarized NWS forecasts for a point i.e. https://www.weather.gov/forecastpoints/?lat=28.342&lon=-81.646&clat=28.177&clon=-82.022&zoom=14.6&basemap=openstreetmap&bbox=-19719439,1706090,-1372338,10673494&layers=RangeRings,USStates,ForecastPointPolygon,ForecastPoint,Domain,&obs=ttffffft&countyNames=t

[jhpigott]

Palm Beach District Schools has not made a closure announcement yet. Do you think PBDS schools will close tomorrow since we are under a TS Warning and not a watch? I thought the buses could not run under a warning.

They just closed Palm Beach County schools for tomorrow

https://www.palmbeachschools.org/