Hurricane Dean’s eyewall may have stayed just offshore of the heavily populated areas, but don’t let that fool you: it’s been a very bad day in Jamaica, writes Dr. Jeff Masters:
It could have been much worse, but it is very bad for Jamaica. Hurricane Dean’s northern eyewall is just offshore the southern tip of Jamaica, bringing sustained Category 2 hurricane winds to southern Jamaica. A recent wind analysis prepared by NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division (Figure 1) at 3:30pm EDT today shows winds of Category 1 strength (>65 knots, or 74 mph) already affecting the east end of the island. By extrapolating this wind field over the island to the west-northwest, in anticipation of Dean’s track, it is apparent that perhaps 90% of the island will experience sustained winds of 74 mph or greater. At 4pm EDT, Kingston, on the southern side of the island, recorded sustained winds of 81 mph before the instrument failed. We can expect that the southern 1/3 of the island, including Kingston, will receive sustained winds of Category 2 strength–96 to 114 mph. Category 3 and higher winds will be confined to the southernmost 5% of the island, and it appears that the Category 4 winds will stay offshore. The portion of the island affected by the Category 3 winds is very sparsely populated.
Jamaica will suffer billions in damage from Dean. The high winds and rains of up to 20 inches will no doubt claim lives, although probably not as many as the 45 who died during Hurricane Gilbert of 1988. Gilbert cut straight across Jamaica as a Category 3 hurricane with 125-130 mph winds. Kingston measured sustained winds of 116 mph during Gilbert; I expect the top winds in Dean will be 10 mph slower than that.
UPDATE: Welcome, again, InstaPundit readers! Click here to read all my Dean-related posts.
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Categories: 2007 Hurricane Season
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August 19th, 2007 at 8:49:19 pm
TRANSLATION: “We fucked up totally in our zipperhead, total-alarmist prognostication for evacuating the whole western hemisphere … but heck, better safe than sorry, eh?”
August 19th, 2007 at 8:53:01 pm
“F***ed up totally”? LOL! You have no f***ing clue what you’re talking about. The forecast was extremely accurate, and I stand by everything I said in my “get the hell out” post — none of it, not a word, has proven false or inaccurate. Anyway, Dean is currently bringing 114 mph winds to Kingston, Jamaica, and was a couple dozen miles away from bringing far worse. The evacuation pleas were completely justified, and undoubtedly saved lives. Anyway, you may want to join the discussion here. I don’t have the time or energy to repeatedly rebut the same ridiculous nonsense on multiple threads.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:01:36 pm
P.S. Just in case you’re too lazy to click links, here are the key paragraphs from the “get the hell out” post:
Care to tell me exactly which portion of that was wrong… let alone “f***ed up totally”?
August 19th, 2007 at 9:07:09 pm
Brendan, this shouldn’t need saying, but thank you for your efforts on this. Sorry that there are twits like Jere out there who would rather show everybody how ugly his a** is than act like a human.
But I’ve been following your postings, and they’ve been invaluable for planning my own research.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:12:44 pm
Ten bucks says the Kos Kidz are already claiming Hurricane Dean is “ABF” (All Bush’s Fault).
August 19th, 2007 at 9:16:50 pm
I’m not utterly clear on the difference between being within a hurricane, in an area with 74-114 mph winds, and being “hit” by a hurricane. Perhaps there is some fine technical difference, but I’d say “run like hell” is sound advice with either outcome.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:39:31 pm
Does the Daily Kos do hurricane coverage? I thought it was a political blog. (guevara style politics, but politics nonetheless).
August 19th, 2007 at 9:41:06 pm
Ah, so Ray Nagin is now using the handle “Jere Shinot”? Just leave the school buses idle; how serious could a hurricane be?
Thanks for your fine reporting, Brendan. If Dean had hit as a Cat 4 or 5, this clown would be complaining that you weren’t alarmist enough.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:41:25 pm
Well a couple of miles here or there was the case in New Orleans also — and guess what — a heck of a lot of people would have been spared death and tragedy if they had cleared out of Dodge (or been cleared out by authorities). That wasn’t a wild alarmist call. There truly are situations where safe is better than sorry.
It is certainly difficult to call, and by the time it is a sure thing — guess what — it is certainly too late for some folks.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:48:11 pm
remember, there’s a buch of folks who like to play with M-80’s too. and they are posting here tonight
August 19th, 2007 at 9:49:01 pm
The storm surge is also something that has to be taken into account for devastation. A category 4 storm only a couple of tens of miles offshore is going to give a terrific beating to those one the coast even without the winds. I hope the low-lying city of Kingston which is on the strong side of the hurricane didn’t take an extreme beating. It is useful to remember that the storm surge damage from Katrina (another Cat 4 storm) went about 100 miles–all the way into Alabama. The geography of this island should reduce it somewhat, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to be absolutely devastating.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:53:56 pm
Where’s most of the tourism in Jamaica? I know Kingston is the capital, but is it as popular as Montego Bay? It’s my understanding that Montego Bay was far away from the danger zone on the southern portion of the Island.
I hope those folks at Hedonism brought some rain gear.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:54:42 pm
Thanks for another great job, Brendan.
August 19th, 2007 at 10:15:18 pm
[…] Dean is pounding Jamaica and they have had a bad day. It’s not as bad as it could have been there. However, there’s plenty of damage in […]
August 19th, 2007 at 10:20:51 pm
Hi — Margaret Saizan has asked me to provide some updates on Dean on her blog, Beyond Katrina:
http://www.hurricane-katrina.org/
The strong northern eyewall did go over some communities in the southern tip of Jamaica. So that portion of Jamaica did receive the Cat 4 winds.
August 19th, 2007 at 10:54:45 pm
If someone had a “six shooter” pointed at my head with only one round, and someone said “Get your head down!”, I don’t think that I would conclude that they had given me bad advise even if the gun went “click” that time.
August 19th, 2007 at 11:19:35 pm
My ass is pretty ugly, granted; but even I could tell that sticking around in Jamaica while a huge honkin’ hurricane was roaring by would be (1) stupid and (2) a burden on local efforts.
Shinot clearly doesn’t know the difference between s@#$ and shinola.
August 20th, 2007 at 1:55:37 am
Since I haven’t heard of any deaths, I can say this without sounding like a completely uncaring a**hole. Please tell me the Blue Mountain Coffee was not hurt!
August 20th, 2007 at 2:19:50 am
Is that a coffee they make in Jamaica?
August 20th, 2007 at 4:10:19 am
Yeah. Whew. Thanks for a wonderful, near-unprecedented job in tracing the professionally-predicted track of an oncoming hurricane, then just waving your arms and shouting that everyone (white people with airline $$$$, anyhow) in the danger zone should fly! Fly!!
Who should evacuate next? Lemme guess; Yucatan, right? Just get out? Fly, white folks, fly?
Thanks, bloggers! We coulda never figured this out without your awesome brilliance! Give that man another Blog-O-The-Year Award for HurriBlogging and Caucasio-Evacuating.
August 20th, 2007 at 7:27:47 am
Jere, I’m not sure what your deal is, exactly. I thought you believed my predictions were overly “alarmist,” but now it sounds like your objection is that they’re overly obvious, and I shouldn’t get any credit for saying obvious things. Which is it? It can’t be both!
I’m also confused about what, precisely, is making you so unhappy vis a vis my blog. Do you think the world would be a better place if I didn’t blog about hurricanes at all? (If so, why?) Or do you merely question whether I deserve some of the praise I’ve gotten? If the latter, I would agree with you, and have said so repeatedly. I’ve always been quite clear that I don’t “predict” anything (the professionals do), and most of what I say about these storms is indeed fairly obvious. (Yet in Katrina, at least, many people, including all levels of government, utterly failed to take the obvious steps in preparation for the obvious fact of the storm’s grave threat to New Orleans, and then many folks later claimed, in their defense, that the storm was “unimaginable,” a blatant lie — so one can never assume that something’s obviousness necessarily means it doesn’t need to be pointed out!)
Anyway, despite its obviousness, people seem to find some value in what I say here, perhaps because the media in this country does such a terrible job that even obvious things aren’t reported properly. In any case, I stake no claim to “awesome brilliance” or “near-unprecedented” greatness. I’m just a guy with a blog, who has been interested in hurricanes since he was a little kid and therefore blogs about them, and who, when a severe hurricane threatens people, does his small part to try and convince those people to evacuate. I don’t think I’m doing anything exceptional or extraordinary by doing that; I don’t really consider it a “public service,” as some of my blog’s fans do, I just consider it a natural and obvious extension of my general interest in blogging about hurricanes. Nor am I under any delusions that masses of people are making their decision to evacuate or not based on my blog. That would be crazy. But if my emphatic statements about the extent of the threat can help convince even one fence-sitter to leave instead of staying, when that is clearly the right course of action, isn’t it worth it? Would you prefer that I sit on my hands and snipe at people from the sidelines, contributing nothing of value to the discussion? Because that appears to be your strategy, but I’m not sure how it’s helping humanity at all. My strategy may not be helping humanity nearly as much as some of my more effusive fans might claim, but it’s at least doing a very small part to try and do something positive. Can you say that?
August 20th, 2007 at 8:13:46 am
I simply find it hilarious that bloggers get so smug and self-congratulatory over … well, what, exactly? Ooooooooo, the #1 Blog For Two-Year Old Katrina Coverage. I’ve ever so impressed! Let’s have another jolly round of patting each other on the back for linking to www.nhc.noaa.gov … or just www.weather.com.
Shit, maybe the next hurricane can get its own MySpace page.
And I’ve got a hot flash for ya. “Evacuating” carries its own monetary and social cost. That’s why it’s such a terrifying prospect for the real human beings in the path of these storms. It’s one thing to sit, safe behind your keyboard, and tell people who live in Jamaica that they’re going to die if they remain in their homes, and quite another to be a Caribbean islander and say to yourself, “Where da fook am I gonna go, mon?”
Heck, just ring up American Airlines and boogie off to Tennessee, eh? Follow the guys wearing white socks with their sandals.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:26:25 am
Jere, I’m not sure what your deal is, exactly.
He’s jealous of the respect and attention you’ve earned and, since he lacks any of the skills, knowledge, or charisma he might otherwise draw on to earn respect or attention himelf, he’s resorting to baseless insults. Pretty pitiful.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:41:02 am
Brendan,
Your blogging is very useful and informative. Just ignore Jere. He is, like the previous poster said, jealous. And, he is also engaging in race-baiting. Jere should start his own blog if his thougths are so profound.
df (Baltimore, MD)
August 20th, 2007 at 1:07:18 pm
Gideon, Blue Mountain is a premium coffee grown only in Jamaica. It’s wonderful. Once a month I get a delivery of three pounds of the “Good Stuff from Jamaica”.
August 20th, 2007 at 7:47:21 pm
POP QUIZ:
How many Jamaicans were killed in the MONSTER HELLSTORM that Brendan Alarmist told everyone (white) to FLY! JUST FLY FROM!!!!! GET OUT IF YOU CAN!!!!!
?
August 20th, 2007 at 8:16:33 pm
Pop Quiz:
Who in the following list is a troll who is reporting false information about what Brendan ACTUALLY said:
a) Jere Shinot
b) Jere Shinot
c) Jere Shinot
d) All of the above
August 20th, 2007 at 8:33:09 pm
You can’t wait for absolute certainty. It’s already certain enough. Now is the time for action, not deliberation. […] But if you can leave, then leave! This isn’t a difficult decision! […] Seriously — there’s no reason to risk it. Get the hell out
- Brendan Alarmist, August 17
POP QUIZ:
How many people who ignored Brendan Retard-Alarmist’s ignorant prediction got killed?
Uh, none?
August 20th, 2007 at 9:32:44 pm
I know i’m not supposed to feed the trolls, but one last time.
Jere Shinot, you are a grade-A certified moron, with an advanced degree in ignorance.
1) There were landslides and massive damage in Jamaica from a GLANCING blow from Hurricane Dean
2) The distance the hurricane would have to have shifted to give it a full hit is incredibly small as far as hurricanes go
3) By the time we were 100% sure that Jamaica would have been hit it would have been far too late.
The only retard here is YOU.