| cieldumort |
| (Moderator) |
| Sat Aug 27 2011 03:22 PM |
|
Re: Hurricane Irene Landfalls at Cape Lookout, NC
|
Quote:
Ouragan:
The biggest threat from a storm that has moved well inland is in the form of tornadoes. The large amount of spin in a storm can generate a large number of tornadoes. The second big threat from a storm is the rainfall. It looks like the storm will pass your area relatively quickly, but be prepared for quite a few inches of rain with the possibility of flash flooding.
Wind will be less of an issue at your distance from the Atlantic coast. The storm will still pack quite a lot, but most of it will not be reaching the ground. Most likely you'll get your strongest winds within embedded thunderstorms rather than from the cyclone itself.
This is actually not correct in general, and particularly not with Irene.
The primary, greatest threat from tropical cyclones once they have moved well inland is actually from inland flooding.
Tornadoes rank relatively low on the threats from inland tropical cyclones. Most of the misunderstanding is the result of a disproportionate number of hurricanes making landfall in the south, where extremely warm water temps do tend to encourage enough convection to occasionally result in what could legitimately be called a big tornado outbreak; from there, the media, Internet and such, do the rest in creating this perception.
This is not to say that tornadoes are not, or will not, be a threat with Irene. Indeed, several brief tornadoes have already occurred, and will likely continue to do so for some time as Irene travels up the coast.
When it comes to Irene, much of the northeast has experienced one of its wettest Augusts on record, and Irene is producing very copious rains over large areas of land that are already well saturated. Irene is moving relatively slow (especially for a hurricane moving up the east coast), and this 1-2 punch is creating a very high flood threat.
You can read more about the threats associated with inland tropical cyclones here.