AP, CP: Earl’s close swipe. How about the Fundy bore on Saturday morning?
At AP one finds Seth Borenstein providing an explainer for big, if now weakening, Hurricane Earl whirling north just a little seaward of the US east coast. One thing to wonder, before reading it, is whether he brings up global warming and, if so, how it’s handled.
Answers: Yes, and just fine.
His story, as far as I can tell with no meteorology expertise, provides a clear explanation of the weather peculiarities in play. They include a low pressure trough that formed just right to prevent Earl from the usual hard-right turn of such storms that reach Bermuda’s neighborhood. We learn about “fish storms” and why this may not be one and instead is on a fairly rare course.
He does not venture to call this a global warming storm. And he doesn’t quite embrace another trope – saying it is consistent with global warming or a sign of what will come, turning a storm story into another global warming story. I mean, most of us have already bought GW as a dreadful challenge to mankind. But he does tie together two separate factors that are in play. First, those peculiarities that are keeping the storm track close and, if things had been slightly different, could have sent it ashore in states that don’t get many hurricanes. Second, that the mid-Atlantic is getting warmer. So while the east coast may not worry about being hit more often by hurricanes or their fading remnants, warmer waters easily foreseen in virtually all global circulation models under greenhouse forces ought to keep them more dangerous to more northern latitudes than has been the norm.
It flows along naturally from that, he writes, that some day other factors combined with this (he doesn’t say it, but one recalls wind shear over warmer seas) may make dangerous hurricanes less frequent in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
One thing that hit me on seeing the map that AP ran. It shows the projected path headed straight at the Maritimes in Canada, shooting right up the Bay of Fundy. Holy cow, a hurricane there!? Isn’t that something? Not unprecedented, but still…
Borenstein doesn’t pay that attention. It does get coverage in Canadian media. At the Canadian Press, Melanie Patten reports yep its aimed at Nova Scotia and yep right up Fundy’s gut. But by then it ought to be, we read here, a Category 1 and fading fast. A serious storm so close the shutters and take the boat out of the water but no monster. Maybe the water is not warm enough. Yet.
- Charlie Petit
