Music a little over dramatic, but worth knowing that rapid intensification of hurricanes is becoming more common, and makes storms more dangerous.
Music a little over dramatic, but worth knowing that rapid intensification of hurricanes is becoming more common, and makes storms more dangerous.
Post-Otis paper on two different ways that hurricanes can intensify:
https://news.ucar.edu/132924/scientists-find-two-ways-hurricanes-rapidly-intensify
Increasingly rapid intensification affects the window for warnings and preparations for civil authorities. Announcing and changing evacuation routes (including the ever-problematic contraflow) heading away from the expected landfall area take too long political time to make a decision. For example, the very process of evacuating nursing homes and hospitals in itself has a risk of death or increase of morbidity. Emergency people might have to see to their own families’ safety rather than being fully committed to preparations.
From that NOLA.com link:
Since in Louisiana it can only be used for a mandatory evacuation, it’s all but useless there. Florida gave up on contraflow (“emergency shoulder use” is simpler and cheaper) in 2017, and Houston/Galveston evacuation would be an unholy mess.