<Wind power: some lessons from 2006The Oil DrumDrumBeat: June 4, 2007>

290 comments on Cyclone Gonu Thread 1

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expat on June 4, 2007 - 12:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

In a comment which ended up not posting itself correctly, I pointed out that the element of surprise is going to play a major, major role in magnifying any damage.

This happened in 1999 where I live in Germany - a truly respectable pocket hurricane blasted through on Dec. 26 - and most people had no idea of what that meant.

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graywulffe on June 4, 2007 - 1:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I haven't heard the term "pocket hurricane". But I'm always up for learning something new on TOD. I suspect it refers to a tropospheric V-fold event, or a very intense midlatitude cyclone. Perhaps falling along the wrong side of a well-developed bent-back occlusion.

I've seen the footage of that forest being flattened in the 1999 event. Truly amazing.

-best,

Wolf

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expat on June 4, 2007 - 1:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

There isn't really a good term for what happened during that storm - 'pocket hurricane' is my own invention.

It was an 'Orkantief' (literal translation - 'hurricane low' or more accurately, 'intense low-pressure system') which started in the Bay of Biscay and which then barrelled through France, Switzerland, and Germany. It was actually quite narrow and focused - but very, very powerful by any measure. There does not seem to have been any rotation of the storm, for example, and the temperature was only mildly above freezing.

But it lacked several 'normal' hurricane features - no real flooding, no real severe lightning.

But for a number of reasons, Germany was totally unprepared for what happened -
1. Dec 26 is part of the Christmas holidays - most everyone was at home, including the weather service employees and radio/TV news departments.
2. Hurricanes as such don't happen here - meaning that no one really had any idea what was happening - or more importantly, what was going to happen. I suspect this factor will play a very major role in the Persian Gulf.
3. The weather had been freezing around a week before the hurricane, but everything had thawed in the heavy rains in the days before the storm - this is a major reason why so many trees were uprooted - of course, about half of the trees which were destroyed simply snapped in half, but of the remaining half, if the ground had been more firm, they likely would have survived better.

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entropy on June 4, 2007 - 6:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hurricanes don't usually produce much lightning.

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expat on June 5, 2007 - 12:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

My memories are from Virginia - and the thunderstorms before and after a hurricane were always very, very impressive.

This was one of the things that made Agnes so interesting to a child - it rained for days, but only rarely was there any lightning, so we could all play outside in the downpours, and watch the flooding first hand at the local creeks.

Generally, these are just first hand impressions describing personal experience.

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