this can’t be an accurate or reasonably accurate depiction, these are two completely different storms in a different category after all.
This is like me comparing the joplin tornado to the el reno tornado.
(for those that don’t know the joplin tornado was an extremely erratic EF/F 5 tornado that was incredibly strong and just sort of showed up and then lingered over a particular area causing immense destruction, whereas el reno was a massive, very powerful tornado, that was collectively rated to be about an EF/F 3 i believe, although the core itself, and numerous shenanigans it pulled including sub vorticies or whatever the correct term is were much stronger, causing strong localized damage)
The different categories are the point. What they’re missing though is Helene was much closer to a category 5. It’s winds were 15 mph short of that category and the storm tail you can see in the above photo is characteristic of category 5 Hurricanes. That in and of itself isn’t a big deal. The big deal is that it’s the second storm at this strength this year. The first one stayed coastal where they’re used to all that rain.
What the picture is basically saying is Katrina was a warning shot. An actual Category 5 with winds well past 157 mph is going to hit the wrong spot and we’re all going to regret not taking climate change seriously.
going to
I don’t unpack my go bag anymore even though we only evacuate every sixth year or so. I’ve lived here 30 years and we’ve evacuated 4 times, will probably need to this year or next (fire season is almost over). Although, I’m calculating like it happens steadily, not taking into account the acceleration. 1996. 2007. 2017. 2020. uh, fuck. Now that I type that out, those last two are an awful “coincidence” and I need to go sit down.
The different categories are the point.
are they? storms are not like a magic black box that outputs a specific strength of storm, the point i’m making is that we should be comparing every storm we have since the beginning of recorded history and comparing them to what we’re seeing now, rather than taking one storm from like a decade ago, and comparing it to another now. This is a completely arbitrary description of climate change.
We’ve done that before. We’ve talked about how the heat has higher energy and water potential, we’ve talked about frequency of storms, of severe storms, of once rare phenomenon. This seems to grab people better.
this can’t be an accurate or reasonably accurate depiction, these are two completely different storms in a different category after all.
What do you mean? This shows the differences between the two.
What do you mean? This shows the differences between the two.
yeah but i don’t really see how that matters. Weather is extremely complicated, and unless hurricanes are a lot more consistent than i think they are, this is a lot like comparing two random tornados together, and then being surprised when one of them is a lot worse than the other.
If that’s what we’re doing we should compare the tri state tornado to any tornado in the last 10 years and suddenly tornados must be a lot less dangerous now than back when the tri state tornado hit.
It’s an entirely arbitrary mechanism of comparison. It’s just wrong.
Even if the point is trying to convey the difference between different storms, i can pick up two different rocks, they’re both different rocks. You can’t really glean something from 2 data points effectively.
