I recently signed up for a meteorology class at Colorado State University. The Atmospheric Science Department at CSU doesn’t do that much in the way of general weather prediction. Their main area of focus is the study and forecasting of hurricanes.
On Monday, my lab instructor showed us a prediction of the path and intensity of Hurricane Ivan, using software developed at CSU that maps various hurricane predictions into a single image. My instructor said Ivan was originally predicted to reach Category 4, but the current models show it headed toward Houston, with only one model still predicting it at Category 4, but most downgrading it to either Category 2 or 3.
“That should keep the gas prices down,” he said, smiling.
I signed up for the class because my masters’ thesis is on news media coverage of global warming. I figured it would be helpful to understand greenhouse gases.
But I have a particular fascination with hurricanes, ever since a 1988 Thanksgiving vacation in Fort Myers, FL where my family arrived in time for Hurricane Keith. Though downgraded to a tropical storm, Keith was still spectacular to watch, as the storm surge brought the ocean up to our building, whipped the palm trees and splashed surf to our tenth floor balcony.
That same year, Hurricane Hugo ravaged the Yucatan Peninsula, forcing friends to cancel their diving trip to Cosumel and sinking and killing the crew of the Fantome, the early 20th Century Italian barkentine on which my in-laws took my family for a Windjammer Cruise through the Bahamas in 1982. The last radio from the crew reported 150-foot waves.
There’s a certain strong current in the Gulf of Mexico. If a hurricane crosses that current it accelerates, potentially becoming a Category 4 or 5 storm, taking out everything in its path and cutting production of off-shore drilling rigs in the Gulf. This doesn’t hurt the oil companies much. They pass on the costs of damage and lost production to consumers. But as one of those consumers, I question the cost-effectiveness of drilling for oil in the path of hurricanes.
On Monday, my lab instructor showed us a prediction of the path and intensity of Hurricane Ivan, using software developed at CSU that maps various hurricane predictions into a single image. My instructor said Ivan was originally predicted to reach Category 4, but the current models show it headed toward Houston, with only one model still predicting it at Category 4, but most downgrading it to either Category 2 or 3.
“That should keep the gas prices down,” he said, smiling.
I signed up for the class because my masters’ thesis is on news media coverage of global warming. I figured it would be helpful to understand greenhouse gases.
But I have a particular fascination with hurricanes, ever since a 1988 Thanksgiving vacation in Fort Myers, FL where my family arrived in time for Hurricane Keith. Though downgraded to a tropical storm, Keith was still spectacular to watch, as the storm surge brought the ocean up to our building, whipped the palm trees and splashed surf to our tenth floor balcony.
That same year, Hurricane Hugo ravaged the Yucatan Peninsula, forcing friends to cancel their diving trip to Cosumel and sinking and killing the crew of the Fantome, the early 20th Century Italian barkentine on which my in-laws took my family for a Windjammer Cruise through the Bahamas in 1982. The last radio from the crew reported 150-foot waves.
There’s a certain strong current in the Gulf of Mexico. If a hurricane crosses that current it accelerates, potentially becoming a Category 4 or 5 storm, taking out everything in its path and cutting production of off-shore drilling rigs in the Gulf. This doesn’t hurt the oil companies much. They pass on the costs of damage and lost production to consumers. But as one of those consumers, I question the cost-effectiveness of drilling for oil in the path of hurricanes.
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