Hurricane Dean

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Get a load of this monster about to hammer Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Winds near the eye are 160 mph, and it looks like the city of Chetumal could take a direct hit, especially if the eye wobbles any at all south of its current track, which has been just ever-so-slightly north of due west. Looks bad for the banana crop and the Maya ruins.

This image is from weather.com and will self-update.

I'm allergic to bananas so I don't care if every banana tree in the world died. I'm more concerned about the people. I noticed this generally apathy at work that since it likely won't hit Texas no one gives a damn if it hits some other country.

What do you think about rumors on the internet, or more like conspiracy theories, that this Hurricane is man-made just like they say Katrina was created by the govt.

That is tightly wound storm. I enjoyed seeing the eye on the visible satellite a few hours before sunset. Looks like it has intensified further yet. The Yucatan has been slammed a lot these past few years. Just two years ago they dealt with both Emily and Wilma. They seem to get hit even more than Florida.

Making landfall right now. Wow. Scary.

That is scary. Those poor people, the devastation of Katerina was just a dress rehearsal compared to what Dean is doing to the Yucatan.

The other night they were saying it might go all the way to a category 6 hurricane which has not been recorded in history.

Actually on the Saffir-Simpson Scale the Category 5 has no upper limit, so therefore there can be no 6.

Anyway this storm is really bad because it is actually deepening as it approaches land. The central pressure dropped from 920 mb to 907 mb between 11:00 and 2:00, which is a bad sign -- this means the winds could actually go higher than 160 mph just as the eye comes onshore (similar to what Andrew did in 1992 over Dade County, Florida). There is no doubt that it will be a cat 5 at landfall. Look at this image as of 3 am Central Time. You can see one of the offshore barrier islands is actually inside the eye.

I'm saying a little prayer for all the people over there that they will find safety from the Hurricane.

The damage this storm does where the eyewall comes onshore will look very much like what happened to Homestead, Florida with Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The storm intensity is similar, as is the forward movement, the nature of the eyewall itself, as well as the type of terrain it will be moving over. Not good at all.

The damage will be mainly wind damage, as most of the cities are along a highway that runs parallel to the shore about 20 miles inland. Thus we should not see entire cities wiped out by the storm surge like what happened in Mississippi during Katrina. Like Homestead, FL, these towns are far enough inland that they should escape most of the surge. However, the winds in this storm will be vicious, just as Andrew's were, and will cause extensive structural damage well inland as was the case in south Florida in 1992.

This storm also has a resemblance to Hurricane Mitch, in 1998.

Tim

Wasn't Mitch the one that killed hundreds or thousands of people in South America? I also hope better evacuation plans have been made than when the other cyclone hit New Orleans.

Mitch killed between 11,000 and 18,000 in Central America.

As for evacuation, it was Rita, not Katrina, that prompted improvements to evacuation procedures. Rita was headed for Houston, and many of the people who evacuated didn't really have to. And then there was the bus fire south of Dallas that killed 23 retirement home residents.

Tim

I heard that if there was an F6 on the Fujita scale (which measures tornadoes), one of the twisters during the 1999 outbreak in Oklahoma would have qualified.

Tim

I know this probably sounds mean, but I'm rather pleased that it is not hitting us here in florida. We had a few hurricanes hit our state in 2004 and the home insurance companies bailed out or raised the rates terribly. I saw my insurance premium triple, and my home was not even in the areas hit! I believe that when a hurricane hits us here the people in Mexico feel it is better for them, too, so i do not feel bad about feeling the way i do.

Hurricane Dean weakens as it hits Mexican coast
Reuters
Published: Tuesday, August 21, 2007
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico -- Hurricane Dean weakened to a Category 3 storm after hitting Mexico's Caribbean coast on Tuesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.


Dean, a huge Category 5 storm when it made landfall, lashed Mexico's Caribbean coast on Tuesday morning, with heavy rain and howling winds that battered beach resorts where thousands of tourists huddled in shelters.


Seas churned as the storm, which has already killed 11 people on its rampage through the Caribbean, began to whip Mexico's "Mayan Riviera" hotel strip.

say. . .this sounds like those people that will blindly pass along unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about how marijuana is worse for you than recalled prescription drugs and cautionary stories of unhappy stoners, then run off from the thread because they know they have no actual research documentation, just wild accusations!