Major Hurricane Idalia hit Florida last week

Might be freshwater rising/sheet flow? After Ian there were waters rising and extensive flooding for days after the storm in parts of Sarasota co, I’m talking inland where there was no “storm surge”. That happens as the inland water finds its way to canals/creeks/rivers and out to the gulf. They even had to close I-75 in the days after Ian as this sheetflow water actually topped over the interstate, had never heard of that before (closing bridges due to winds yes, but water rising up onto I75?).

Of course Ian dumped upwards of 20” or maybe close to 30” in some places. Doubt this storm dumps anywhere near that much. But the phenomenon could be similar with waters rising for a couple of days until it works into the gulf.

Supposedly due to combination of high tides and onshore winds there is some minor costal flooding. According to the local weather Punta Gorda got worse “storm surge” from this than they did from Ian even though Ian was a near direct hit. The difference was Ian blew offshore in that area when it was at its worst (unlike Sanibel and Fort Myers that got full onshore Cat 4 storm surge). Whereas these Tampa through Punta areas on the west coast have had onshore winds almost the entire time with this one, even if only @ tropical storm strength. I saw that downtown Fort Myers got a bit of flooding again too, though obviously not nearly as bad as Ian.

 

I think, not sure, the issue with Tampa is that when the hurricane is to the north, pulling the wind in that direction, it continues to pull the water up the bay and flood at the top of the bay. I know the Tampa mayor made a statement that they expected the noon high tide today be the worst flooding, not sure if that happened. I did see video of the water coming over the wall at Bayshore, but that happens every time.

 

A lot went right with this storm, stayed far enough offshore for most of its path. Reduces wind as also provides a water exit path.
Moved fast.
Landfall in low population areas

 

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Everyone Ok? I heard it's going to be 3-5 days before power is restored to most of the county. My job just bought $80k worth of generators and a ton of MRE's earlier this year as part of an initiative to support employee's in case of a hurricane. We didn't receive all of the generators just yet. Since I'm not married and don't have any kids, I'm going to let the other employees get first dibs. My and my dog will be ok.

 

Very little rain in Jacksonville, actually hoped for more. Wind picked up in the afternoon, but all I’ve got is a lot of tree trash down. Don’t really know the extent elsewhere.
But a lot of people weren’t so lucky. Very best of luck to those who got hit hard. May recovery be as quick as possible.

 

Glad you're okay.

Whether you grab some from work or the government or buy your own on the market, MREs are great to keep around. For anyone looking, this is the generator I have. Very light. Very quiet and super efficient. It's not going to power your house or anything but enough for the essentials without having to wheel around a really heavy and noisy piece of equipment.

Honda EU2200iTAN1 Companion Inverter Generator, 2200 Surge Watts, 1800 Rated Watts, Parallel Capable, Model#

https://www.northerntool.com/search?gclid=Cj0KCQjw9MCnBhCYARIsAB1WQVWty1CKofyCKvaW7ZghRaXI7lgHHpUajjqZV3yjOHSqmp2g4pvw1VkaAs32EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&ogmap=SEM|NDSA|GOOG|STND|c|SITEWIDE||||honda generator eu2200i|40749911|5504165351&orderBy=1&s=honda 2200&utm_campaign=Sub Brand_Honda Generators_EU2000 Companion&utm_content=honda generator eu2200i&utm_medium=Generators&utm_source=google_PPC

 

Yes, and (someone correct me if I'm wrong), one effect of that is that hurricanes that are very slow moving can cool the surrounding waters and relatively lessen the chance of significant intensification. At least I recall that being discussed with a prior storm. Of course, that's a bit of a double-edged sword since slower forward movement increases the amount of time for rain and wind to impact a given area.

 

In past years, I've seen satellite temperature views where you could see the cold (cooler) water wake behind a storm. But the extent of that effect also depends on whether the water is uniformly warm or cooler at depth. What I've been hearing this year is that the gulf/atlantic are hot, and that heat extends deeper than normal, so they're expecting less of a cool upwelling when a storm churns through. But in my mind, anything that pulls energy from the atmosphere and moves to towards the poles without hitting land is doing us a favor. One interesting metric of a hurricane season's energy is ACE (accumulated cyclone energy).

 

Interesting. Thanks for your thoughts. I read and watch a lot about weather as a hobby (mostly local convective storms) and am still learning. Do not recall if I'd heard of ACE before.

 

Yeah, we didn't realize how good we had it during our historic "drought!" Part of that may have been luck since I think there were quite a few fish storms.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/no-major-us-hurricane-landfalls-in-nine-years-luck

The U.S. coast is in an unprecedented hurricane drought | Santee Electric Cooperative Inc

 

I'm a hobbyist too. Mainly follow Levi Cowan of tropical tidbits, and Jeff Masters who was wunderground, now at Yale climate connect. Lots of information available to soak up!

 

Levi is great.

The vast majority of my meteorology study over the years has been spent learning about supercell storms and tornadogenesis. I'm still working on getting better with skew-t charts and hodographs, for example. Thankfully, no one is going to ever ask me to do the STP calculations on my own! I don't think I have the brainpower even if I wanted to do it.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...usg=AOvVaw0aSxERgCP6o3oxrvWv0Icb&opi=89978449

I have found Convective Chronicles to be very helpful for my level at least. I see a lot of stuff that is written for kids or very casual interests and then I run into things like the above that are way above my pay grade.

https://www.youtube.com/c/convectivechronicles