The Caribbean island nation of Dominica sustained “mind boggling” damage from Hurricane Maria, its prime minister said Tuesday, after the storm hit with maximum sustained winds of nearly 160 miles per hour that ripped roofs off buildings, including his own home.
There was no immediate word of deaths or injuries on the island from the storm, the third in a string of devastating hurricanes to sweep through the region in recent weeks.
The National Hurricane Center said Tuesday morning that Maria, now moving away from Dominica, had regained Category 5 strength, after briefly dropping to Category 4. The “potentially catastrophic” storm is expected to approach the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on Wednesday, the center said.
.
Flooding in Fort-de-France, Martinique. The island suffered limited damage, French officials said.Credit Lionel Chamoiseau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Hurricane Maria’s brute force doubled in strength as it barreled toward Caribbean islands already devastated by Hurricane Irma.
On Monday afternoon, Maria was hurling winds of 125 mph (200 kilometers per hour) as it closed in on the Caribbean and took aim at Puerto Rico.
.
That’s nearly twice the hurricane’s strength from just 24 hours earlier — and Maria is expected to keep growing before slamming into the Leeward Islands this evening.
Tropical Storm Jose has strengthened back into a hurricane, according to a 5 p.m. ET Friday update from the National Hurricane Center.
The storm, which could bring rain and wind to the northeastern United States later this week, had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and was 640 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, according to the hurricane center.
.
Jose remains out in the Atlantic Ocean and is moving toward the northwest, and that motion will bring it closer to the United States through the weekend. Just how far it moves west before turning to the north will tell forecasters a great deal about the likelihood of whether it will make landfall somewhere along the eastern US coastline.
It might seem premature when people in the Caribbean, Florida and Texas are still mucking out their flooded homes.
.
And no, changes in our planet’s atmosphere did not cause Hurricanes Harvey or Irma. But the consensus among scientists is that the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and warmer oceans, made those storms far more destructive than they would have been in previous decades.
.
“The short version is, climate change makes these very bad storms worse,” said Sean Sublette, a meteorologist with Climate Central, a nonprofit group that studies climate change. “It’s not the approximate cause of the storm, but it makes these bad storms worse. And in the case of a really bad storm, climate change can make it totally disastrous or catastrophic.”
Special relativity teaches us that the three dimensions of space and the solitary dimension of time are woven together like a fabric. It’s impossible to think of them as separate entities, only a singular unified entity — space-time. We can’t think of motion through space without being mindful of motion through time, and vice versa. Left-right, up-down, back-forth and past-future are all on equal footing.
And yet, time does seem a little different. We have complete freedom of movement within space, but we cannot avoid our future. Time seems to have an “arrow,” whereas the spatial dimensions are ambidextrous. Given the unity between time and space, it leads to the obvious question: Is time travel, of any sort, possible? Under any circumstances? At all? [How Time Travel Works in Science Fiction (Infographic)]
A weakened Irma took its parting shot at Florida on Monday, triggering severe flooding in the state’s northeastern corner, while authorities along the storm’s 400-mile path struggled to rush aid to victims and take the full measure of the damage.
The monster hurricane that hit the Florida Keys on Sunday as a Category 4 was downgraded to a tropical storm as it finally pushed its way out of the state and into Georgia, where it caused more misery.
During its rainy, windy run up the length of Florida, Irma swamped homes, uprooted trees, flooded streets, cast boats ashore, snapped miles of power lines and toppled construction cranes.
“How are we going to survive from here?” asked Gwen Bush, who waded through thigh-deep floodwaters outside her central Florida home to reach National Guard rescuers and get a ride to a shelter. “What’s going to happen now? I just don’t know.”
.
Building owner Catharine Taylor Woods, front, and Jessica Newman, of the City of Wauchula clean up broke glass after an awning blew off in Hurricane Irma and broke several windows early Monday, Sept. 11, 2017, in Wauchula, Fla.
As Hurricane Irma bears down on the East coast, Floridians may be wondering where all the hurricanes come from, and why they all follow a similar course. In fact, Irma, Harvey, and Jose were all born on the other side of the Atlantic, off the coast of Africa, and the Sahara desert may be to blame.
An expected delay in the onset of El Niño may increase the number of tropical storms and hurricanes to form in the Atlantic during 2017.
El Niño is part of a routine fluctuation in sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific. When these waters enter a warm phase of a few degrees Fahrenheit or greater compared to average for several consecutive months, the pattern is designated as El Niño.
When El Niño occurs, it typically creates strong winds from the west at mid-levels of the atmosphere. These winds tend to prevent formation, limit strengthening and can lead to an early demise of tropical storms.
.
Waves break over the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans, as Tropical Storm Cindy brewed in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, June 20, 2017. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Extremely dangerous Hurricane Irma first crashed into the Florida Keys on Sunday morning and then made a second landfall on Marco Island on Florida’s west coast Sunday afternoon, unleashing violent wind gusts up to 142 mph and storm-surge flooding. As the powerful storm scoots up Florida’s west coast into this evening, forecasters fear that this storm will go down as one of the worst in the state’s history.
At 10 p.m., the storm was centered 50 miles east-northeast of Fort Myers. Its eyewall – containing the storm’s most violent winds – was about 30 miles west of Sarasota. The storm center was headed north at 14 mph toward the east side of Tampa, where wind gusts of 75 to 100 mph were possible through midnight or 1 a.m. Just before 10 p.m., weather stations in Tampa Bay and Clearwater clocked gusts of 78 mph.
Ocean levels rose quickly in Southwest Florida as the storm center lifted north. In Naples, the storm surge raised water levels 8 feet in two hours, between about 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. before stabilizing by around 8 p.m. But waters were just starting to rise or had yet to begin their rapid rise from Ft. Myers northward.
.
Video from Brickell, Miami shows scenes before and after Hurricane Irma struck. (Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Hurricane Maria intensifying
Satellite dish-like grill
Hurricane Jose
Climate change made Harvey and Irma worse
Building owner Catharine Taylor Woods, front, and Jessica Newman, of the City of Wauchula clean up broke glass after an awning blew off in Hurricane Irma and broke several windows early Monday, Sept. 11, 2017, in Wauchula, Fla.
.
James' World 2 