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Hurricane Hurricane Michael

warneagle

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Dodge County, GA told mobile home residents to evacuate to permanent structures and several counties in central GA have issued curfews.
 

Evan

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Incredible how little Michael has weakened.
 

warneagle

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Oh no. The blue dot is my dad's office (where three of our cats are). I hope it dissipates before it reaches town. Fort Valley has about 10,000 residents. It's in a pretty rural area currently.IMG_9707.PNG
 

warneagle

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It looked like it passed south and west of downtown, but that might mean it passed over Fort Valley State University.

Sorry to be filling the thread with tornado talk hundreds of miles inland but this was (literally) really close to home.

This would be the second hurricane where his office just dodged a tornado. An F2 missed him by about a third of a mile during Katrina and peeled off a few of his shingles.
 
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South AL Wx

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Radar confirmed tornado in GA. From NWS FFC:

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
Tornado Warning
National Weather Service Peachtree City GA
401 PM EDT WED OCT 10 2018

The National Weather Service in Peachtree City has issued a

* Tornado Warning for...
Eastern Upson County in west central Georgia...
Northwestern Crawford County in central Georgia...

* Until 430 PM EDT.

* At 401 PM EDT, a tornado producing storm was located near Horns, or
near Roberta, moving northwest at 40 mph.

HAZARD...Damaging tornado.

SOURCE...Radar confirmed tornado.
 

warneagle

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Radar confirmed tornado in GA. From NWS FFC:

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
Tornado Warning
National Weather Service Peachtree City GA
401 PM EDT WED OCT 10 2018

The National Weather Service in Peachtree City has issued a

* Tornado Warning for...
Eastern Upson County in west central Georgia...
Northwestern Crawford County in central Georgia...

* Until 430 PM EDT.

* At 401 PM EDT, a tornado producing storm was located near Horns, or
near Roberta, moving northwest at 40 mph.

HAZARD...Damaging tornado.

SOURCE...Radar confirmed tornado.
That's the same cell that produced a tornado near Fort Valley (Peach County). No confirmed damage yet but a couple of photos that show an apparent TOG and there was a TDS.
 

Evan

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We've definitely got to have a better way to rate and classify hurricanes than the Saffir Simpson scale.

Please understand that there is catastrophic damage in places. This was an incredibly dangerous storm and there are areas that will take months/years to recover. But, NWS Tallahassee is reporting a preliminary max surge/inundation of 6-8ft with another 1-2ft possible. While the wind damage pictures are gruesome, they certainly don't look like Homestead after Andrew.

Remember the integrated kinetic energy that we all talked about for Florence? It likely maxxed out around 50TJ.





I'm not attempting to downplay Michael whatsoever. By the Saffir Simpson scale he very well likely did reach Category 5 strength. But, I think we'll find the total damage he produced (wind and surge) to be less than Katrina, Ivan, Ike, etc.

I think measuring the potential kinetic energy gives us a better understanding of the overall damage producing capability than the Saffir Simpson scale does. Perhaps we'll eventually hear of surge over 12ft, but the SLOSH model predicted a lot higher surge for a Cat 4/5 than what has been reported so far. I think Michael's relatively compact size prevented the kind of damage we'd normally associate with a high-end Cat 4 or a Cat 5.

I know this storm is still fresh and its impacts are still ongoing. I don't mean to minimize the impact of Michael whatsoever. I have family directly impacted by Michael that were only about 10-15nm from landfall. But I think this merits discussion. I'm sure we've yet to see the worst damage or the overall scale of it. I'm glad Michael wasn't a much larger storm because if he had been we'd be looking at catastrophic damage on a much broader scale. Perhaps his compact size is also what allowed him to continue to intensify. The eventual academic research on Michael and this subject will be very interesting.

Edited to add: Michael's accelerating forward speed might've played a role in this as well.
 
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