It's 10am. Do you know where your hurricanes are?
I got it right here, baby!
Photo courtesey of the National Weather Service
NOAA PREDICTS VERY ACTIVE 2006 NORTH ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON Residents in Hurricane Prone Areas Urged to Make Preparations
"For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher," added retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.On average, the north Atlantic hurricane season produces 11 named storms, with six becoming hurricanes, including two major hurricanes. In 2005, the Atlantic hurricane season contained a record 28 storms, including 15 hurricanes. Seven of these hurricanes were considered "major," of which a record four hit the United States. "Although NOAA is not forecasting a repeat of last year's season, the potential for hurricanes striking the U.S. is high," added Lautenbacher.
Please welcome Hurricane Chris:
Photo courtesey of the National Weather Service
August 1st marks the beginning of the hurricane season. Anybody from the Caribbean knows this but Americans are still slow to learn about these things, even after the devastation that still lingers after Hurricane Katrina. How many of you heard of NOAA's Hurricane Preparedness week or of their website?
Yeah.
Hurricane preparedness or environmental news still are not considered of importance in this country. It does not make for sexy news in mainstream media and that's why they don't cover this information with the zeal of the alleged fourth estate of government they claim to be. Now, if there's people dying, they're the first ones there.
What makes it worse is that the government still continues to be homicidally neglectful about the environment. Even though weather forecasting has become incredibly sophisticated with radars, infrared, satellites and other military and aeronautical technology; the government and big corporations can still get away with no liability for the deaths and devastation related to storms or hurricanes. They can claim "it was the weather" and not only sink a whole city to the ground like New Orleans. They can also walk away from the thousands of heat-related wildfires and the deaths by dehydration of hundreds of people during this year's heat wave. And to bring this point home, they can let my seven year old niece die because it is statistically acceptable.
In Puerto Rico we know that after a hurricane hits the island, we are to expect months even years of hot weather, drought or storm related accidents like felled trees or mudslides. Why? We understand that after hurricanes destroy the flora in a particular area, the topography is also severely loosened and damaged. We also know water retention and evaporation patterns change. So for example, after Hurricane Hugo, Puerto Rico suffered severe droughts for a few years afterwards because it took the rainforest that long to grow back to its pre-hurricane glory.
The fact that this year's heat waves along with freakish storms have covered the whole country but particularly the midwest should not come as a surprise after the devastation wrought last year by Hurricane Katrina. U.S. Americans believe the sheer size of the United States makes it impossible for the weather-related death of child in Wisconsin to be connected to the still unbuilt devastation of New Orleans.
Well I say it isn because my outrage is not about the weather. This is about a government that gets away with homicidal neglect because it can.
Post to TwitterYou guys always get smacked
Puerto Rico has the ... I have no idea how to say this in English ... Vientos Alicios to their advantage.
Puerto Rico is in a kind of an angle; serving as a hinge between the Greater and Lower Antilles. Because of it's "just a bit to the east" location, the dust winds coming from Africa, along with the North Atlantic and Caribbean movements somehow help divert a lot of hurricane traffic away from the island.
Hurricane radar watching is almost a sport in Puerto Rico; with people waging on Cuba, La Española, Bahamas or Florida as the contact points for many hurricanes that miss us.
BTW, Jamaica also is free from a lot of hurricanes. Trinidad & Tobago seems to be a magnate for the suckers. Which is why, I think David, my friend Barbi's brother, ended up being a hurricanologist.
- 0 points
Last thing *I* need is graphic
reminders here in the Florida panhandle, which is geography that may rival even Puerto Rico's in hurricane awareness now . . . I have NOAA on speed-dial, know what I mean?
I've personally been in hurricane season since June 1, not just yesterday. The only good thing about that is I'm one-third through the annual anxiety already, and we haven't been hit yet for this year. The bad thing is that June 1-Nov 30 is fully half of every calendar year! (And last year we went right through New Year's with storms and even ran out of names, remember? - do people in other places realize how exhausting it can get, living with that kind of fatalistic anxiety as a regular thing?)
I shouldn't compain though - folks living in the Middle East will scoff and be justified.
Last year, hurricane season was already kicking up the Category levels as Favorite Daughter left for an early July Caribbean cruise gig, and the year before that, the worst hit we took here was a severe June thunderstorm "microburst" (NOAA called it) that felled hundreds of trees including one on the house next door, many weeks before tropical storm (Bonnie) came along to pave the way for Charlie, Ivan and Jeanne later in the season.