Photo Credit: Screenshot / Raw Story
Hurricane Harvey was a tragic nightmare that hit the Texas shores with force and then lingered for days, dumping dump-trucks full of rain on a city ill-equipped to handle it. Florida is next, and if predictions are accurate, Hurricane Irma is going to be far worse than Houston was, and worse than anyone has prepared for.
Already, Irma is setting records and being named the strongest storm the Atlantic Ocean has seen on record. Here is a short list of things meteorologists and experts at the Hurricane Center have already seen from Irma that should give everyone pause.
1. The wind speeds broke the measuring tool.
The wind was so strong when Irma passed over Barbuda that the monitoring equipment used to measure the wind was damaged and couldn’t report an accurate account of the wind speed. It tapped out at 151 mph.
2. The prospect of 185mph wind should strike fear into our hearts.
The gusts for the Category 5 storm have reached 185 mph. That’s the equivalent of an EF4 tornado sitting on an area, nonstop for hours. To put that into perspective, the photo below is of the damage sustained by residents of Garland/Rowlett, Texas after an EF4 tornado blew through in 2015.
Damage in a residential area as a result of the EF4 Garland/Rowlett, Texas tornado. (Photo: Wikipedia)
To make matters worse, NOAA’s tools dropped into the hurricane to measure the storm and recorded 226mph gusts from its northeast eyewall.
7:15 PM – Whoa. Dropsonde in NE eyewall 196 knot winds just 19mb above the surface, 167 knot winds in lowest reported level. #Irmapic.twitter.com/rB31sZf61B
— Alex Lamers (@AlexJLamers) September 5, 2017
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