Buzzsaw Hurricane Matthew Was LIke An Immense Tornado

In the eyewall of Hurricane Michael. Photo by Joe Randle/Getty Images

Imagine if you were in your house when a strong tornado hit it.  You would cower in the your basement as the twister pulled the house to pieces, but the good news it is all over in a minute or so.

Imagine having to endure that for an hour or more.  

That's basically what people in and around Panana City, Florida had to deal with as Hurricane Michael came onshore yesterday.

IT WAS BAD

Maximum sustained winds in Hurricane Michael were 155 mph - just shy of Category 5, which would be the worst hurricane possible.  Videos taken in the Florida Panhandle of the 100 to 130 mph gusts that were common in region were just like videos I've seen taken inside of tornadoes.

Roof went airborne. Debris swirled everywhere. Scary stuff, made worse by an immense storm surge that sent walls of watering crashing through seaside towns. Storm surges reached over ten feet high as predicted, washing many neighborhoods completely away.

One person said Panama Beach looks like it has been nuked. A major U.S. Air Force base is in ruins.

There are several videos of news reports, the storm in full progress and the terrible aftermath at the bottom of this post.

It's amazing that as of this writing, I'm aware of only two deaths associated with Michael. I'm sure teh death toll will rise, but still, the casuality list is so far mercifully short.  Damage photos from the area look like it was hit by a 10 or 20 mile wide EF-4 tornado.

We've had a lot of unusual, and unusually strong hurricanes lately. This one fit that bill. Forecasters had known right along since at least Sunday Hurricane Michael would strengthen pretty steadily as it worked its way north across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.

Wild close up satellite view of Hurricane Michael eye

The strengthening was stunning, however. The hope was that Michael would limit itself to a Category 2 storm. Instead, it was a much worse, high end Category 4 monster.

It was the third most powerful hurricane to hit the United States in centuries. Michael was the strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. since Camille in 1969.

Michael was yet another example of how forecasters have gotten much better at predicting the path of hurricanes, but we need work on predicting the strength.

The forecast was pretty good in this case, as the National Hurricane Center very early on caught on to the idea that Michael would strengthen.

They just had no idea it would get that bad. I'm sure researchers continue to study how to better forecast hurricane strength. If there's a tiny silver lining to Hurricane Michael, it is that it will probably provide more, valuable data to the researchers.

Nonetheless the National Hurricane Center, local National Weather Service meteorologists, broadcast meteorologists and emergency managers deserve a huge amount of credit. Their timely and increasingly strident warnings prompted a huge number of people to flee out of harm's way. That's why the death toll is so far surprisingly low.

Of course, we don't know to what extent, if any, climate change had to do with Hurricane Michael's strength. We do know the Gulf of Mexico water temperature was warmer than normal, which certainly fed Michael.  Was the water warm due to climate change, a normal cycle, a fluke or a combination?

From television station WFLA. Mexico Beach, Florida after Michael

As Scientific American points out, cold fronts usually start pressing in from the north and into the Gulf of Mexico by this time of year. These cold fronts stir up the atmosphere and increase upper level winds.

That disrupts hurricanes. The cold fronts add a bit of chill to the Gulf of Mexico waters, too. No cold fronts, no chill, no disruptive winds. Michael had a strangely perfect environment to strengthen. Which is weird for so late in the season.

Ocean water temperatures have risen all around the globe due to climate change, so we can suspect that had an influence on Michael. And why haven't the autumn cold fronts reached the Gulf of Mexico yet? Global warming or a fluke or both?  

Generally speaking, hurricanes that are relatively small in size have a greater chance of intensifying rapidly than big, sprawling storms. Michael was kind of small in area, so it was better able to take advantage of perfect atmospheric conditions to strengthen.

Michael actually reminded me a lot of Hurricane Charley, which behaved very much like Michael as it blasted into southwestern Florida in 2004.

Contrarians will say that climate change is not having an influence on hurricanes, or they'll say that climate change doesn't exist. They'll point to the fact there has been no real trendline in the number of hurricanes that pop up every year. True, but it does seem like many of the stronger ones are even more intense than they were previously.  

These contrarians will also say there have been plenty of tropical storms and hurricanes this year and previously that didn't amount to much, and behaved pretty much the way all tropical systems have in the past. That's all very true. But is something weird going on with these particularly strong ones?

Other hurricanes, like Harvey last year and Florence this year stalled an meandered, dumping incredible rains on Houston in 2017 and the Carolinas this year. There has been some research and more than some speculation that these stalls are influence by changes in the the jet stream. Which in turn have been influenced by global warming.

Some of our contrarians will point out, quite accurately, that Hurricane Michael moved right along. No stalls, no meanders, no loop de loops. It just plowed ashore and kept right on going to the Carolinas, where it was this morning as a tropical storm. Michael is still racing forward, and will move off the East Coast tonight.

If hurricanes are stalling, why didn't Michael? our contrarians will ask. Climate change doesn't nullify basic physics. Not all hurricanes will stall and meander. Most, like Michael, get picked up by upper level winds and steered briskly toward their destinations.

By the way, there is currently an aimlessly meandering hurricane out there. Hurricane Leslie, out in the central Atlantic Ocean, has been moving to and fro and not making much headway in any particular direction for more than a week now.  It's now moving back toward Africa, where it came front. Forecasters say it will weaken, and do another U-turn in a couple days.

Michael is still quite a danger, despite the fact that its 155 mph sustained winds are long gone. (Top sustained winds were 50 mph as of 8 a.m. today. Michael is still unleashing torrential rain and causing renewed flooding in the Carolinas.

Plus, as many dying tropical systems do when they're inland, there's a high potential that Michael will spin off tornadoes today in North Carolina and Virginia.

Now, some videos:

This video shows large masses of debris from wrecked homes  floating around in the storm surge:



The Washington Post gives a great overview of what it was like. Even the satellite image of Hurricane Michael's eye coming ashore is scary as hell:



ABC meteorologist Ginger Zee rode out the storm in a concrete condominium that held - barely.  Her report is fraught to say the least. Especially the part where she describes the blue house across the street just rolling away:



The following video is often blurry, but it's an aerial view of Mexico Beach, Florida. Utter devastation: