And I'll be "glad to oblige," whether you have chosen confrontation or discussion.
OK, I'll let you know my 'personal observations' since moving to Florida (15 years). Up until the '04 and '05 hurricane seasons, hurricanes were something you thought about, prepared for, but didn't really fear too much. Yes there were very frequent storms those two years, but that is cyclical and to be expected.
What was really freaky to me is how the storms developed and their strength. In watching storms in previous years, I had never seen them developed into majors so often, and so quickly. When a hurricane "bombs", it goes up 2-4 categories in less than 24 hours. I watched Hurricane Charley "bomb" from a weak cat 2 to a very strong cat 4 in less than 90 minutes (as it was taking dead bead on my house and was 3 hours away). Now that is one incredible increase in massive, massive power (possibly the most powerful thing in nature?). It seems like almost every storm bombs now, and I never, ever remember it happening before the '04 season.
So last year we had infrequent storms but two bombed to make cat 5 landfall, a record. Cat 5 landfall storms are very rare.
Is it global warming? Hell I don't know; I wouldn't presume to say I know when the experts don't know. The sea surface temps have been warmer, but I suspect something else is at work... maybe deep water temperatures are warmer.
The other thing I *think* is that the formation (and thus frequency) of storms depends more on prevailing wind, dust off Africa, other stuff than sea warmth. The strength of storms depends on prevailing wind shear, but very much on warmth.
As you may or may not have noticed I'm not a huge GW alarmist... I probably should be. But one of the benefits of getting old is that you realize how often mankind is wrong when dealing with complex stuff... almost always. |
