Hurricane Maria

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I certainly hope the world community (and rich tourists) sees fit to provide a monumental amount of aid to these areas.

The Turks and Caicos and the southeastern Bahamas will be next. The core of the storm will come close or move over those islands. Whether Maria will have an opportunity to restrengthen by then is unknown. It depends on the level of disruption to the circulation as the storm encounters with the mountainous islands. In any case, Maria is still expected to be a powerful hurricane.

After that, all indications are that Maria will turn north well offshore of Florida and possibly east of the rest of the Bahamas. There does not appear to be any threat to Florida from Maria.

Farther north, however, the future track remains in question. By the time Maria reaches near or offshore of North Carolina, the steering pattern will involve two systems late in the weekend or early next week. A high pressure system that slid east from Canada blocking the way north and out to sea for what was HURRICANE JOSE will come into play. That will remain in place to one degree or the other well into next week.

Jose has now been downgraded to a tropical storm, but still has a robust circulation. What’s left of Jose is expected to have weakened further by the time Maria is moving north, but still be near or offshore of the Mid-Atlantic coast for the next several days trapped under that high.

If ex-Jose still has a decent circulation early next week, it would tend to kick Maria away from the coast, out from under the blocking high, and out to sea. If, however, Jose fizzles out or has moved out of the picture, the high might take over and deflect Maria close to or over the East Coast between North Carolina and southern New England. Eventually the high breaks down and Maria should get swept east next week, but the timing of all this is tricky, and it's too far in advance to pin down.

It appears that this will be another situation where the hurricane might slow or stall under a regime of light steering winds, at least for a bit, so forecasts will be low confidence.

Hopefully things will get clearer by the end of the week, but don’t bet on it. The potential threat from Maria to East Coast, if it develops, comes at from the beginning to the middle of next week, stretching from North Carolina to southeastern New England.

Puerto Rico's office of emergency management confirmed that 100 percent of the U.S. territory had lost power, noting that anyone with electricity was using a generator.

Telecommunications throughout the island have "collapsed," Abner Gomez Cortes, executive director of Puerto Rico's office of emergency management and disaster administration, told ABC News.

BULLETIN
Hurricane Maria Advisory Number 22
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL AL152017
1100 AM AST Thu Sep 21 2017

...MARIA HEADING TOWARD THE TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS...
...HEAVY RAINFALL AND FLOODING CONTINUES IN PUERTO RICO AND THE
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC...


SUMMARY OF 1100 AM AST...1500 UTC...INFORMATION
-----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...20.2N 69.1W
ABOUT 105 MI...175 KM ENE OF PUERTO PLATA DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
ABOUT 155 MI...255 KM SE OF GRAND TURK ISLAND
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...115 MPH...185 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NW OR 310 DEGREES AT 9 MPH...15 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...960 MB...28.35 INCHES

Sunday update: HURRICANE MARIA is on track for a close brush with eastern North Carolina and the southern part of the Mid-Atlantic coast midweek. Winds will increase in North Carolina on Tuesday and spread north to eastern Virginia and the Delmarva Tuesday night into Wednesday. Odds slightly favor the worst of Maria’s winds staying offshore, but damaging winds are increasingly likely.

Maria is forecast to continue weakening, but is still expected to be a hurricane when it arrives in the coastal waters of North Carolina. The storm has grown larger – the eye is now about 35 miles across and the winds over 40 mph extend out nearly 200 miles on the west side of the storm, increasing the likelihood of the strong winds extending inland.
A notable aspect to this storm is going to be its slow motion – meaning the winds will seem to relentlessly blow off the ocean – when it tracks near North Carolina. Strong east to northeast winds are going to persist for two days or more on the Outer Banks and a good part of that time in the Tidewater of Virginia and the Delmarva. Persistent strong winds loosen trees and power poles and are more likely to cause outages, as we saw in Irma in South Florida.

The steering continues to be subtle and complex. Currently Maria is being steered north around the west end of the Atlantic high-pressure system into a gap cause by former-hurricane Jose. Jose is gone, but a slight weakness in the high persists. By Tuesday, however, the gap will fill and a Canadian high, which trapped Jose off the north coast last week, will briefly control the steering, pushing Maria toward the coast and slowing it down – much like Jose was affected off New England. The high keeps Maria near or over eastern North Carolina through much of Thursday when a dip in the jet stream comes along to scoop up Maria and fling it out into the Atlantic.

The precise strength and, therefore, influence of these weather systems is impossible to know, which adds uncertainty to the forecast. In addition, because the strongest winds will still be concentrated near the center of Maria, a slight jog one way or other will make a big difference in the strength of the winds at the coast.

Hurricane or Tropical Storm Watches are likely along the coast. Be ready for a long-duration wind event on the Outer Banks, the Sounds, and nearby areas

...TROPICAL STORM AND STORM SURGE WATCHES ISSUED FOR A PORTION OF
THE COAST OF NORTH CAROLINA...


SUMMARY OF 500 PM EDT...2100 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...29.4N 73.0W
ABOUT 425 MI...685 KM SSE OF CAPE HATTERAS NORTH CAROLINA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...105 MPH...165 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...N OR 350 DEGREES AT 9 MPH...15 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...941 MB...27.79 INCHES

KEY MESSAGES:

1. Maria is forecast to continue moving northward, paralleling the
U.S. east coast, and it is likely that some direct impacts will
occur along portions of the coast beginning Tuesday, and a Tropical
Storm Watch has been issued for a portion of the coast of North
Carolina.

2. Storm surge flooding especially along the sound side of the
North Carolina Outer Banks is possible beginning Tuesday, and a
Storm Surge Watch has been issued for a portion of the North
Carolina Outer Banks.

3. Swells from Maria are increasing along the coast of the
southeastern United States and are expected to reach the Mid-
Atlantic coast today. These swells will likely cause dangerous
surf and rip currents at beaches in these areas through much of
the week.

Maria continues on a slow but steady track to the north. It is likely that the worst of Maria’s winds will remain over the ocean, but a good part of the circulation will still impact land, which prompted the NHC to alert eastern North Carolina including the inland waters to the likelihood of winds over 40 mph and dangerous storm surge.

It will be breezy in eastern North Carolina today and become windy tonight or early tomorrow. Maria will move even more slowly when it reaches the coastal waters off the Outer Banks, however, which will make this an unusually long-duration wind event. Strong winds will blow from the east to northeast for 2 days or more, which increases the threat of tree damage, power outages, and sound-side storm surge. The peak winds are expected Wednesday into Wednesday night, decreasing fairly quickly through the afternoon on Thursday.

The persistent northeast wind will push water, especially from Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, as high as 2 to 4 feet above normally dry ground at high tide. Since the wind will persist through multiple tide cycles, the likelihood of storm surge flooding is increased. Pounding surf from the swells generated by Maria will continue on the ocean side of the Outer Banks and in the Mid Atlantic until well after the winds subside.

The storm has weakened a bit more quickly than forecast. Maria is looking frayed on the satellite as some dry air has wrapped into the circulation, and/or the cooler ocean water stirred up by former-hurricane Jose are starving the storm of some fuel. The weakening trend is expected to continue over the next few days as the center of Maria slides east of North Carolina before being swept out to sea late Thursday.

Maria’s large circulation will reach north into the Virginia Tidewater and the Delmarva Peninsula with winds gusting over 40 mph and some tidal flooding is possible.

Once Maria move out, we should get a break from the tropics for a bit as the far eastern Atlantic begins to slow down. In October, we start watching for developments in the Caribbean Sea or the southern Gulf of Mexico.

A cold front is forecast to push Maria far to the east on Wednesday/Thursday after it affects the North Carolina/Virginia coast.

It is not slated to affect the NYC area--except for rip currents.

It's really a very lousy situation in Puerto Rico right now.

100% without power. Flooding everywhere. Only if you experience it can you imagine its magnitude.

I wish we could find a way to cool the waters of the Caribbean Basin a couple of degrees Celsius....

Puerto Rico authorities said Friday that nearly half of power customers in the U.S. territory still lack electricity more than three months after Hurricane Maria.

Officials said 55 percent of the nearly 1.5 million customers have power, marking the first time the government has provided that statistic since the Category 4 storm hit on Sept. 20 with winds of up to 154 mph. Officials had previously reported power generation, which stands at nearly 70 percent of pre-storm levels.

"The damage was severe," power company spokesman Geraldo Quinones told The Associated Press. "A lot of work remains."

One of Puerto Rico 78 municipalities remains entirely without power, and it's unclear when some electricity will be restored to the central mountain town of Ciales. Crews this week restored power for the first time to parts of the southeast coastal town of Yabucoa, which received the first hit from Maria.

Quinones said power remains out across the island equally, although he wasn't able to immediately say what percentage of businesses and homes now have electricity.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello had pledged 95 percent power generation by Dec. 15, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said the entire island will have power by May.

Fredyson Martinez, vice president of a union that represents workers with Puerto Rico's power company, told the AP on Friday that a recent study by local engineers found that 90 percent of industries and 75 percent of businesses already have power, meaning residential areas are disproportionately in the dark.

Martinez also said that a lack of supplies and equipment is slowing power restoration efforts, echoing an early concern by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Government officials said nearly 14,000 poles already have been shipped to Puerto Rico, and that another 7,000 will arrive in upcoming days. In addition, some 3,500 workers are trying to restore power across the island

Carlos Torres, who is overseeing power restoration efforts, said that crews are still finding unexpected damage including what he called severely impacted substations

Puerto Rico's governor on Friday said that he has requested up to 1,500 additional workers from electric companies across the U.S. mainland to help restore power, and said he has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to increase its capacity to provide assistance.

Perhaps 5,000 people died in Puerto Rico in 2017 for reasons related to September's Hurricane Maria, according to a study that dismisses the official death toll of 64 as "a substantial underestimate."

A research team led by scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health didn't simply attempt to count dead bodies in the wake of the powerful storm. Instead, they surveyed randomly chosen households and asked the occupants about their experiences.

From that approach, they concluded that between Sept. 20 and Dec. 31, 2017, there were 4,645 "excess deaths" — that is, deaths that would not have occurred if the island hadn't been plunged into a prolonged disaster following the devastating storm.

But the estimate isn't as precise as the figure implies. The researchers calculate there is a 95 percent likelihood the death toll was somewhere between about 800 and 8,500 people. They say about 5,000 is a likely figure.

The findings are being published Tuesday by The New England Journal of Medicine.

The research team randomly selected 3,299 households in Puerto Rico. Local scientists surveyed them over the course of three weeks in January. People in those homes reported a total of 38 deaths. The scientists then extrapolated that finding to the island's total population of 3.4 million people to estimate the number of deaths. The researchers then subtracted deaths recorded during that same period in 2016 and concluded that the mortality rate in Puerto Rico had jumped 62 percent in the three months following the storm.

The death rate is a contentious subject, in part because federal and island governments haven't responded as rapidly to the disaster as they have in other hurricane emergencies. The study notes that 83 percent of the households in Puerto Rico were without electrical power for the time period looked at, more than 100 days, from the date of the hurricane until the end of 2017.

Puerto Rico residents and outside observers have long argued that the official death toll is hopelessly inadequate. It captures the number of deaths the medical examiner attributed directly to the storm — the high water and howling winds in the worst natural disaster on record for the U.S. territory. Maria came ashore as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds gusting at over 110 mph and drenching rainfall.

CNN surveyed funeral homes after the storm and tallied 499 hurricane-related deaths. The New York Times compared official death records from September and October 2017 and identified more than 1,000 excess deaths, compared with the average for 2015 and 2016. Alexis Santos, a researcher at Penn State University, and a colleague, used death certificates to come up with a similar estimate.

The government of Puerto Rico commissioned researchers from George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health to estimate excess deaths. Results of that study have been delayed and are due out this summer.

"Our approach is complementary to that and it provides a different kind of estimate and a different kind of insight into the impact of the hurricane," says Caroline Buckee, a lead author of the new study and epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers suggested that the government in Puerto Rico could use its methods in an even larger survey to reduce the large uncertainties in their findings.

The Harvard study covers a greater time period than The New York Times' calculation, a difference that could partly account for the much higher figure.

The household survey is a widely accepted technique for estimating casualties following a disaster. But it can be misleading if the sample isn't truly random or if some households have been wiped out altogether and are therefore missing from the survey. In the latter, the result would underestimate the true toll. In fact, the Harvard team says its results are "likely to be an underestimate" because of this bias.

The survey looked at deaths through the end of 2017, but the scientists suspect that the excess deaths continued into this year. "We saw consistent, high rates, in September, October, November, December," says Rafael Irizarry, a biostatistician on the research team. "There's no reason to think that on Jan. 1 this trend stops."

"Hurricane Maria caused massive infrastructural damage to Puerto Rico," the Harvard team writes in its study.

"In our survey, interruption of medical care was the primary cause of sustained high mortality rates in the months following the hurricane," the wrote. Hospitals and doctors struggled to provide care, and many people simply had trouble getting to the doctor or the hospital to seek medical care. The survey finds that one-third of the total deaths in the months following the storm were caused by delayed or interrupted health care.

Understanding the true number is important for many reasons. "There are ramifications not only for families, not only for closure, but also financial ramifications" such as for aid and preparedness, says Dr. Satchit Balsari, one of the lead investigators, who is a physician at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights.