Janalea England started on the morning of August. 29 last year, preparing his home and seafood market for Hurricane Idalia. The National Hurricane Center’s forecast called for landfall somewhere near Steinhatchee, their small community on the Gulf of Mexico, the next morning.
At the Steinhatchee Fish Market, she would bring in produce from out of town, throw out all the older seafood and put the rest in the freezer, then go home.
Like many who regularly experience tropical storms and hurricanes, they were somewhat jaded about Idalia, approaching the Florida Keys with winds of 85 mph at that time, England said. “More than anything, we were preparing to be without power.”
After completing preparations, England and her daughter headed back through town, blasting “Under the Sea” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” on the stereo and filming a Facebook live video. Now she wishes she had saved the videos, to compare what Steinhatchee looked like before the storm.
Between their passage through town and the time Idalia began hitting the coast between 3 and 4 a.m., the storm exploded, growing into a powerful hurricane with winds of 130 mph in a phenomenon that meteorologists call a rapid intensification.
Although Idalia began to decline almost as quickly before landfall, Steinhatchee suffered significant damage when the storm produced a storm surge of 8 to 12 feet.
The community, like others along the Gulf Coast, continues to recover, even as another Atlantic hurricane season begins Saturday.
Forecasts for the six-month season call for above-average activity, with at least two forecasts predicting more storms than ever before. Colorado State University predicted 11 hurricanes and 23 named storms. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration predicted 17 to 25 named storms, with 8 to 13 hurricanes.
No one knows how many of these potential storms will make landfall or where, but it’s a repeat of storms like Idalia that worries forecasters the most — the ones whose names are often infamous.
These are storms that intensify quickly – quickly creating ferocious wind speeds, becoming powerhouses almost overnight. The four most destructive Category 5 hurricanes of the past 100 years – the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, Camille, Andrew and Michael – experienced rapid intensification.
The process is notoriously difficult to predict, challenging meteorologists for years. For reasons that are still poorly understood, storms manage to make the most of surrounding conditions.
However, the hurricane center and the computer models it uses to develop forecasts are beginning to experience greater success in predicting such rapid intensification, thanks to advances in technology, data collection and modelization.
“We actually have the tools and the confidence to be able to do this, and we’ve done pretty well in Idalia,” said Michael Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center. But forecasts and a series of models were less effective in predicting Hurricane Otis’ transformation into the Eastern Pacific last year.
What is rapid intensification?
The official definition of rapid intensification is an increase in wind speed of approximately 35 mph in 24 hours. Idalia did this on the 15th.
When Idalia became a tropical storm and tracked into the Gulf of Mexico in August. On Dec. 29, they discovered a hot, humid sauna, full of heat and humidity that helps make hurricanes stronger by providing lift, which builds towering cloud structures at the top and lower pressures at the surface .
When conditions inside and outside a storm are perfect, with warm water, low wind shear, and lots of humidity, a storm can explode. This happened twice as Hurricane Ian headed toward southwest Florida in 2022.
Scientists are still trying to better understand what is happening and why storms can produce catastrophic winds so suddenly and with so little warning.
“You can have what appears to be a favorable environment but not have the storm structure to really take advantage of it,” said Dan Brown, head of the center’s hurricane unit. “Other times the storm may have more of that structure, but the environment is a little bit marginal.”
Sometimes when they predict rapid strengthening, he says, the storm can intensify at an incredible rate, even higher than expected.
Hurricane season begins Saturday.Find out what previous storms passed near your neighborhood.
As Idalia continued to rapidly intensify offshore between 3 and 4 a.m. on August 1. On December 30, winds already arriving on shore sent England, her husband Garrett, their three children and her parents into the master bathroom, where they huddled for protection for hours, reading the Holy Bible and praying. while terrifying winds that sounded like mini tornadoes howled outside. their house.
Idalia made landfall at Keaton Beach around 7:45 a.m. on August 1. 30. The English escaped damage at home or at the seafood market. Their business became a temporary distribution center for donated supplies and a meal prep station for volunteers cooking for residents and first responders .
Does rapid intensification occur more often?
There are signs pointing to more frequent rapid intensification events, Brennan said, making it even more crucial to continue improving their ability to forecast these storms.
Scientists are still trying to determine what impact global warming might have on tropical cyclones, but rapid intensification is expected to increase, according to Tom Knutson, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, who maintains a page on presentation on global warming and hurricanes. .
A 2019 paper co-authored by Knutson with a team led by colleague Kieran Bhatia suggests that increased greenhouse gases are contributing to a detectable increase in the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones.
It used to be almost impossible to predict rapid intensification
For years, intensity forecasts have been the hurricane center’s main enemy. And predicting rapid intensification was like “a no-go zone,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior hurricane researcher at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences. It was considered “extremely difficult,” he said, to trust that it would happen and to find the right time.
That the center correctly predicted the possibility of rapid intensification within Idalia, about 36 hours in advance, is “incredible,” McNoldy said.
The center wasn’t even doing rapid surge forecasts 10 years ago, Brennan said. But over the past five years, they have started to make “significant progress”.
Forecasting capability is improving because of advances NOAA and its partners have made in the quality and quantity of data and information fed into the various hurricane models that help predict intensity, Brennan said. Dropsondes, drones and other tools provide more information than ever before – and at higher resolution – about winds, humidity, temperature and other conditions in and around the storm.
NOAA’s planned data collection improvements this year include:
- Two model additions to help understand hurricane intensity and predict the likelihood of rapid intensification
- Improved coastal weather buoys to improve measurements of wind speed and direction
- Additional Drifting Buoys, Saildrones and Underwater Gliders
- A lighter form of dropsonde, called Streamsondes, will be added to the mix to collect a wider range of observations in real time.
“We’ve seen some improvements in forecasting rapid strengthening…but we still have a way to go to make that forecast as accurate as possible,” Brown said.
Hurricane Otis defied forecasts
Otis showed the path that remained to be taken. Meteorologists watched in horror as it exploded in intensity as it approached the coast of Mexico.
“None of the models were successful with Otis,” Brennan said. “There were few if any directions from the model that indicated much more than just sort of average reinforcement.”
The transformation has been “incredible,” said Robbie Berg, senior hurricane specialist at the center. “We have already seen rapid intensification, but it happened right on the doorstep of Acapulco. »
The hurricane’s winds increased from 80 mph to 265 mph in just 10 hours as it approached the resort city of Acapulco, Mexico. Making landfall at 1:25 a.m. as a Category 5, it killed at least 52 people and caused an estimated $12 billion to $15 billion in damage.
“I think what scares us is that this could happen in the United States,” Berg said. “Look at a big city like Miami, Houston or New Orleans. Nothing prevents a storm from behaving in the same way near our coasts.