An index of the power of hurricane Irene
Bartonsville Bridge in Vermont, Washed Away in Floods of Irene
Shortly after hurricane Irene touched down in New York, it was moved down a notch from a class 1 hurricane to a tropical storm. I read and heard comments about how “is that all you got,” implying that Global Warming, which might have contributed to the severity of the storm, was overly hyped. This is Al Gore’s fault. It has been argued that when Irene made landfall in North Carolina, it lost some of its punch, which effectively saved New York City from major flooding due to the storm surge–the effect of high winds bringing in much higher levels of sea water. Parts of New York City are only a few feet above sea level. But we now have to appreciate that Global Warming hurricanes are different from the garden variety we used to see but may never or very rarely see again. The effect of warmer water and warmer air allows the size of hurricanes to increase in diameter and hold more water as moisture in the atmosphere. So, when such a storm hits land, it can deliver more water through rain and we now appreciate that, while the storm surge that is driven by wind velocity was not what New York City had planned for (you had to be impressed with Mayor Bloomberg’s emergency city planning and evacuation–post Katrina of course), the amount of rainfall that got distributed to inland regions of the East Coast was historic. Several days after the storm, more than a million homes along the East Coast were still without power. In Vermont, the Bartonsville Bridge, a classic covered bridge design, built in 1871, with a 158 foot lattice span, was eaten all at once, sliding into the Williams River. A video of the event is available on You Tube. Upstate New York and Vermont suffered heavy damage and loss of many bridges, some of which will probably not be replaced, at least not in their original classic architecture. The loss of the Bartonsville bridge says to me that, at minimum, a once in 140 year storm hit Vermont and the Bartonsville Bridge. Yet, I don’t see this kind of expression mentioned and I don’t see much evidence that the press or even the meteorologists are willing to ascribe Irene to Global Warming: which daring soul will be the first? Can we get that event on You Tube or is it likely to be rejected as too controversial?
RFM
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