Climate Change Change?

Hurricane Jose is not going to hit land, but it is still causing enough trouble to warrant a tropical storm watch for several coastal communities along the U.S.'s eastern seaboard before it spins out to sea . . . and then back towards the coast as weaker post-tropical storm.  And then along comes Maria.

Hurricane Maria is headed to the same small islands in the West Indies that got pummeled by Irma, and it may go over Puerto Rico and Hispaniola as a Category 3 or higher.  If it does go there, the mountains on those islands could tear it up a bit.  Beyond that, well, computer projections have had it go everywhere from out to sea to hitting the Carolinas, making landfall on the southern tip of Florida before moving on to the northern Gulf Coast, and there may yet projection showing landfall in New York City by the time you read this.

Maybe the idea another hurricane of any consequence hitting the U.S. mainland or its Caribbean dependencies is what caused the Trump White House to suggest over the weekend that it's willing to re-engage in the Paris Agreement on climate change at a Montreal summit on the issue.  European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete has stated, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the United States "has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,"  hoping to find a solution more favorable to this country.

Here's my solution.  Get Donald Trump out of the White House.  Preferably in a straitjacket.

Trump, meanwhile, denied that he's softening his position on the Paris Agreement to make it look like he's not backtracking.  But dig this. He recently said that he had never seen hurricanes as large and as powerful as Harvey and Irma and didn't even know there was a fifth category for hurricane strength on the Saffir-Simpson scale.  And he probably didn't know there was such a thing as the Saffir-Simpson scale.  But just when you thought he'd come around on climate change and how it's causing these really nasty storms, he backtracked and started talking about similarly powerful storms dating back to before his own time - "the thirties and the forties," and also "the teens" - the 1910s, to be exact.  But that was exact as he got.  Oh, he's right about the thirties - the 1938 Long Island Express hurricane that destroyed Providence, Rhode Island is one example - but he didn't actually offer that particular hurricane - or any other from before his birth in June 1946 - as an example.  Nor did he concede that most of the Atlantic season in decades past had fewer storms, with seasons like the 2017 season being anomalies.  Screw the nineteen-teens anyway -we have to deal with the twenty-teens! We have to deal with the here and now! And that means dealing with  climate change.

Yes, I still think it.  The United States deserves swift and severe punishment for nixing the Paris Agreement.  And God is indeed punishing this country - with Mother Nature, God's bratty kid sister, dishing out the punishment in the form of these hurricanes.  Texas, Florida, the Southeast . . . is the Northeast next?   If not this year, maybe next  . . ..

No Way - Jose?

Hurricane Jose, after spinning aimlessly in the North Atlantic for a week, is moving again, and it's heading toward the American Northeast.

Jose was expected to move north and then head out to sea, but the chances of it being just a fish storm are now small and diminishing with each passing advisory from the National Hurricane Center.  Computer projections have pushed the storm closer to the coast by September 19 or 20, and while there's no evidence that it will make landfall in the New York City Tri-State area, it will comethisclose to it, pushing waves against the shore even with the center a couple hundred miles away.

We in the Greater New York area can't even look at the bright side of Jose weakening and likely falling apart from being over cooler waters at or around forty degrees latitude north.  That, according to The Weather Channel, is only going to expand the wind field and possibly bring tropical-storm-force winds well inland, even where I live.

There are no watches or warnings yet, and the forecast, as I type this, calls for showers and inconsequential winds where I live.  But all it takes is for the track of the storm to nudge just a little to the west for Greater New York to get Sandy Mark Two.  

I'm not going to rest easy in the meantime.  It's been like this all week.  Just when I think I can rest easy, another computer projection shows the storm  as a greater threat to not just the Greater New York area but also to coastal New England.   And to add insult to injury, Jose isn't going to head out to sea and dissipate after it passes through the waters off the American Northeast.  First the Euro, now the GFS, both have it looping around in a big circle - like a car on the Capital Belaway around Washington - and possibly heading back toward the North American mainland.  The Euro even has it merging with . . . another tropical storm!  Jose is the storm that won't go away.

Needless to say, I might have to deal with Power Outage #42 in a few days, and I may have to shut down my blog - maybe even take down my current Music Video Of the Week early, since any outage  I get might last beyond this coming Friday (September 22) - and computer projections show another storm, a storm that hasn't even formed yet, after that.

Stay tuned.  I may be around.      

Irma . . . Jose?

On this anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, we're taking stock of the aftermath of a disaster of a different sort. 

Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida yesterday, blowing street signs and trees out of the ground, turning pieces of buildings into deadly projectiles, flooding Miami (above), leaving nearly six million people (at last check) in the dark, and rendering the entire state as a wasteland.  And a friend of mine,  a sister of another friend, my maternal cousin, and my paternal uncle and his wife are all in the middle of it. 

And Irma isn't done yet.  It's moving into the Atlanta area and the South Central states, and it will likely bring more misery.  And even with all that, there is still . . . 

. . . Hurricane Jose.

Jose formed on September 5 and is currently looping around in the warm waters of the North Atlantic Ocean just east of the Bahamas.  It won't be a threat to anyone for at least a week, but by next weekend things may change.  Jose will start to move northward, and while it may go out to sea, computer projections from the Global Forecast System and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts - the so-called GFS and Euro models, respectively - show it moving north close to the U.S. East Coast and possibly, sometime during the middle of next week,  hitting the Canadian Maritimes, hitting New England, or . . . making a direct hit on New York City or on Washington, D.C. via the Chesapeake Bay.

Here we go again!

One GFS model run even showed Jose making a hard-left turn, in the manner of Sandy, into southern New Jersey and moving westward toward Baltimore.  And all of these models show Jose's central pressure anywhere between 935 and 955 millibars - which would indicate a more powerful storm than Sandy was.

How much more powerful?  I don't let myself think about it.

To be honest, no one knows what's going to happen with Jose.  New Jersey weather blogger Jonathan Carr notes that the storm could fall apart while it goes around in a circle near the Bahamas and get taken out by trade winds to the northeast or remain intact and still stay out at sea.  But a hit on the Northeast or on southeastern Canada is also possible.  We'll just have to wait.

So, I have to repeat the same spiel I offered here this time last week, albeit with changes of dates.  I may end up blogging less frequently in the days leading up to wherever this hurricane is going. And if it turns out that the storm is zeroing in on New Jersey, I will be putting this blog on hiatus and shutting down my Music Video Of the Week page temporarily, because while I may be able to post a new video on September 15, I may not get to post one on September 22 if the power goes out just before then and stays out for some time to come.  My beautiful-women picture blog - front-loaded with posts scheduled to publish automatically all the way to the end of October - will continue, with or without me. 

It wouldn't surprise me if Jose hit my area of the country.  First Harvey hits Texas, then Irma hits Florida . . . the Northeast would logically be next.  It's as if America, so long a country dedicated to plundering the environment and denying climate science, is suddenly being punished by God, with God's bratty kid sister, Mother Nature, dishing out the punishment.  Twenty seventeen has been a tough year for  this country, with hurricanes on the coast and wildfires in the West.  And even if Jose spares the U.S., worse will almost certainly follow. :-(