Page 39 - 082517

Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Aug. 25, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 056 ~ 39 of 65
WARM WATER
Warm water is the fuel for hurricanes. It’s where storms get their energy. Water needs to be about 79 degrees (26 Celsius) or higher to sustain a hurricane, McNoldy said. Harvey is over part of the Gulf of Mexico where the water is about 87 degrees or 2 degrees above normal for this time of year, said Jeff Masters, a former hurricane hunter meteorologist and meteorology director of Weather Underground.
A crucial factor is something called ocean heat content. It’s not just how warm the surface water is but how deep it goes. And Harvey is over an area where warm enough water goes about 330 feet (100 meters) deep, which is a very large amount of heat content, McNoldy said.
“It can sit there and spin and have plenty of warm water to work with,” McNoldy said.
WEAK WINDS
If winds at 40,000 feet high are strong in the wrong direction it can decapitate a hurricane. Strong winds
high up remove the heat and moisture that hurricanes need near their center and also distort the shape. But the wind up there is weak so Harvey “is free to go nuts basically,” McNoldy said.
PERFECT PATH
Before it hits the Texas coast, Harvey is projected to go over an even deeper and warmer eddy to
supercharge it a bit more, just like what happened to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but not quite as bad, Masters said.
If that’s not bad enough, there’s a good chance that after Harvey hits it will follow a track so close to the coast and not so much inland that it will essentially keep a toe in the water. The storm could be big enough that not all of it is over land. Because of that, the National Hurricane Center forecasts that it will remain at least tropical storm strength — and 40 mph winds — through Tuesday, maybe into Wednesday.
SLOW SPEED
Because it looks like Harvey will be meandering at around 10 mph and then will likely stall out over the coast or just a bit inland, that means it will stay over one place and keep raining, Masters said. Day in, day out until the middle of next week.
“We’re talking feet of rain, not inches,” Masters said.
And the storm’s heavy rains can last not just a few hours but “over a two-, three-, four-day period” from Texas to Louisiana, Uccellini said.
US interior chief recommends changes on some protected lands By MATTHEW BROWN and BRADY McCOMBS, Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Thursday he won’t seek to rescind any national monuments carved from the wilderness and oceans by past presidents. But he said he will press for some boundary changes and left open the possibility of allowing drilling, mining or other indus- tries on the sites.
Twenty-seven monuments were put under review in April by President Donald Trump, who has charged that the millions of acres designated for protection by President Barack Obama were part of a “massive federal land grab.”
If Trump adopts Zinke’s recommendations, it could ease some of the worst fears of the president’s op- ponents, who warned that vast public lands and marine areas could be stripped of federal protection.
But signi cant reductions in the size of the monuments or changes in what activities are allowed on them could trigger erce resistance, too, including lawsuits.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Zinke said he is recommending changes to a “handful” of sites, including unspeci ed boundary adjustments, and suggested some monuments are too large. He would not reveal his recommendations for speci c sites but previously said Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument needs to be reduced in size.
The White House said only that it received Zinke’s recommendations and is reviewing them.
Conservationists and tribal leaders responded with alarm and distrust, demanding the full release of Zinke’s recommendations and vowing to challenge attempts to shrink any monuments.