No, Helene's ACE will remain unchanged until the post-season analysis of both storms. It's a measure of the storm's duration and intensity; Helene was a rather short-lived storm with the intense period only occuring for a short time compared to Beryl which is why it has such a lower value than Beryl.
I'm unfamiliar with the term, or what it means, though the concept seems interesting.
What it apparently isn't, is a measure of the total available or potential storm energy within a basin, which seems to me an interesting concept. I'd presume that would mostly be dependent on sea surface temperature, and SST might well be the best measure of that which exists.
If ACE is the total energy released via cyclonic storms, then the ACE:TPSE ratio might indicate future risk within a storm season for a basin.
Storm incidence is predicated on other factors, so far as I understand most especially high-altitude wind shear and total humidity. High wind shear and low humidity can both depress storm formation and development, and may have been a factor in the August lull for the 2024 North Atlantic hurricane season.
It was a bad disaster. I was scheduled to be there, but took a look at the NOAA rainfall map the night before and canceled my trip.
Calling it unthinkable is really overselling it though. Mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot. If you search past years google search results for Chimney Rock, it floods with 3" to 5" inches of rain. The town is just a few feet above water level - I've walked along the river.
> Mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot.
> Chimney Rock, it floods with 3" to 5" inches of rain.
This was no ordinary flood - Chimney Rock was basically wiped off the map. This isn't a "dry it out and replace the sheetrock" situation, most of the town is gone.
That's not to say building several feet above a mountain river is a smart idea (or any river, for that matter), but this level of destruction hasn't been seen since the 1916 flood.
I think they mean more literally historical, in the sense that like this is when people will remember becoming aware that inland mountain ranges are catastrophically vulnerable to hurricanes now.
> Meteorologist Ben Noll said that the level of moisture transported to western North Carolina is more than 1.5 times greater than any event in the historical record for the region.
This is a little more than "mountains flood when it rains" it seems.
What did people expect when they built in floodplains with no flood insurance? My question is why taxpayers have to keep subsidizing the cleanup and rebuilding in these areas.
I'd agree, but if it's a floodplain, I think it's fair to be annoyed when you pay taxes into this fund AND you pay into your own insurance, yet a bunch of folks choose not to buy insurance when they should and expect to get paid out of this fund instead. It should be a last resort, not an "I just decided not to buy my own insurance" backup plan.
there is very little living space in the US that is not subject to some sort of natural disaster. where i live in california, e.g., fire insurance is getting increasingly expensive and many insurance companies are opting out of offering it altogether. what you should be annoyed about is that you have to pay for private natural disaster insurance on a per-disaster-type basis rather than the government explicitly providing a national pool by default.
edit: also it's worth considering that the worse the land in terms of risk, the poorer the people who will be forced to live there because they were priced out of everything else. with climate change accelerating this will increasingly be a factor, and it is unconscionable to expect those people to bear the burden of insurance themselves. this is what a civilisation is for.
If I'm understanding you right, I totally agree with your idea of a national government-provided disaster insurance akin to universal health insurance. Throw it on the stack of things that should be like that and not run by for-profit companies. Unfortunately that will likely never happen. Except maybe Florida right now because it's almost happening by default.
We should also fix the part where some dunce with a letter put a town where physics (at least occasionally) put a river.
What we call a civilization should have education at least equivalent to a seven year old sand castle architect. Not hubris so large we go broke attempting to occupy the waterspouts of the world just because there’s pipe and cable there.
Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/
The figure in parentheses is ACE, averaged over 30 years up to and including September 30th: 77.8 (94.1)
There's more detail here, including a helpful chart: https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=...
EDIT: Interesting that Beryl had more ACE than Helene. I wonder if that figure will change as the effects from Helene are investigated further?
No, Helene's ACE will remain unchanged until the post-season analysis of both storms. It's a measure of the storm's duration and intensity; Helene was a rather short-lived storm with the intense period only occuring for a short time compared to Beryl which is why it has such a lower value than Beryl.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy
For more information there's a Wikipedia entry:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy>
I'm unfamiliar with the term, or what it means, though the concept seems interesting.
What it apparently isn't, is a measure of the total available or potential storm energy within a basin, which seems to me an interesting concept. I'd presume that would mostly be dependent on sea surface temperature, and SST might well be the best measure of that which exists.
If ACE is the total energy released via cyclonic storms, then the ACE:TPSE ratio might indicate future risk within a storm season for a basin.
Storm incidence is predicated on other factors, so far as I understand most especially high-altitude wind shear and total humidity. High wind shear and low humidity can both depress storm formation and development, and may have been a factor in the August lull for the 2024 North Atlantic hurricane season.
It was a bad disaster. I was scheduled to be there, but took a look at the NOAA rainfall map the night before and canceled my trip.
Calling it unthinkable is really overselling it though. Mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot. If you search past years google search results for Chimney Rock, it floods with 3" to 5" inches of rain. The town is just a few feet above water level - I've walked along the river.
> Mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot.
> Chimney Rock, it floods with 3" to 5" inches of rain.
This was no ordinary flood - Chimney Rock was basically wiped off the map. This isn't a "dry it out and replace the sheetrock" situation, most of the town is gone.
That's not to say building several feet above a mountain river is a smart idea (or any river, for that matter), but this level of destruction hasn't been seen since the 1916 flood.
I think they mean more literally historical, in the sense that like this is when people will remember becoming aware that inland mountain ranges are catastrophically vulnerable to hurricanes now.
> Meteorologist Ben Noll said that the level of moisture transported to western North Carolina is more than 1.5 times greater than any event in the historical record for the region.
This is a little more than "mountains flood when it rains" it seems.
So you're saying it's a region already especially vulnerable to flooding. How is that supposed to be better?
They're not saying it was better, they're saying it was foreseeable.
Doh! Thanks, that makes sense.
What did people expect when they built in floodplains with no flood insurance? My question is why taxpayers have to keep subsidizing the cleanup and rebuilding in these areas.
think of it as your taxes and their taxes both paying into a national disaster insurance scheme run by the government.
I'd agree, but if it's a floodplain, I think it's fair to be annoyed when you pay taxes into this fund AND you pay into your own insurance, yet a bunch of folks choose not to buy insurance when they should and expect to get paid out of this fund instead. It should be a last resort, not an "I just decided not to buy my own insurance" backup plan.
there is very little living space in the US that is not subject to some sort of natural disaster. where i live in california, e.g., fire insurance is getting increasingly expensive and many insurance companies are opting out of offering it altogether. what you should be annoyed about is that you have to pay for private natural disaster insurance on a per-disaster-type basis rather than the government explicitly providing a national pool by default.
edit: also it's worth considering that the worse the land in terms of risk, the poorer the people who will be forced to live there because they were priced out of everything else. with climate change accelerating this will increasingly be a factor, and it is unconscionable to expect those people to bear the burden of insurance themselves. this is what a civilisation is for.
If I'm understanding you right, I totally agree with your idea of a national government-provided disaster insurance akin to universal health insurance. Throw it on the stack of things that should be like that and not run by for-profit companies. Unfortunately that will likely never happen. Except maybe Florida right now because it's almost happening by default.
We should also fix the part where some dunce with a letter put a town where physics (at least occasionally) put a river.
What we call a civilization should have education at least equivalent to a seven year old sand castle architect. Not hubris so large we go broke attempting to occupy the waterspouts of the world just because there’s pipe and cable there.
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