Hurricane Noel
Position: 27.3 N 76.1 W. [10PM CDT]
Movement: North-Northeast [030°] near 20 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 80 mph.
Wind Gusts: 90 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 145 miles.
Hurricane Wind Radius: 45 Miles
Minimum central pressure: 981 mb.
TS Noel is about 180 miles North-Northeast of Nassau in the Bahamas.
Noel is already going to be retired as a name because of the effects of the nearly two feet of rain it dumped on the island of Hispaniola which have caused over 100 deaths in the Dominican Republic and Haiti making it almost as deadly as the category 5 hurricane Felix.
Currently it is North of the Bahamas and will be following the coast, causing mostly beach erosion as it heads to the Northeast and transitions into an extratropical cyclone. That storm, technically not a hurricane is going to look like a strong tropical storm or hurricane for people on the eastern half of Long Island, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia.
As the guys in the hurricane center said: “However…after extratropical transition…global model guidance suggests that Noel will become an extremely large and powerful cyclone.”
The difference for people who get hit by this sucker is the same as being told that the truck that ran over you wasn’t a diesel, it was gasoline powered.
6 comments
not that i’m wishing a hurricane on anybody, but too bad it couldn’t swing over geogia and fill up lake lanier.
We really could have used a tropical storm this year to make a pass through Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
Those of us who went through T.S. Allison in 2001 understand that storms can do very little wind damage but wreak extensive death and destruction with rain. As you said, it doesn’t matter to those who are killed, just what aspect of the storm killed them.
Our weather gurus have said we could use rain from not one but two tropical storm systems, and fast.
Here in central N.C., between Noel off the coast and a high pressure to the north, we are forecast to have 15-30 mph sustained winds today. No rain. Fire weather, in other words.
We have so much dead wood in the pine forests that any time the humidity drops below 50% they issue a fire warning. Everything drains so fast into the sand that the effects of the rain from last week don’t last very long.
Georgia got a little rain from that system, but it never made it into the Carolinas.
The weather is really messed up.
Steve, they are still finding bodies on Hispaniola, but it looks like Tropical Storm Noel will be the deadliest storm of the year.