Hurricane Irene’s wake

My entire family was evacuated from Holden Beach, NC last Friday where we gathered for our annual vacation. The extent of Hurricane Irene caused damage from my home in Charleston, SC up to my sister’s house on Long Island, NY. We both had tree limbs coming down close to our houses. My brother and sister in inland North Carolina are still without power. Last night, tornadoes were spinning off of the storm in Cary, NC where my parents live. We were lucky that Irene lost strength but there are still many people facing storm damage. Areas that are typically not hit by storms such as Vermont and Maine experienced epic floods. This was truly a huge storm.

Paraphrased from Global Climate Change: A Primer: It is still speculative as to whether global change and the warming ocean will lead to more frequent and intense storms. It seems reasonable to assume that since storms gain their energy from the warm surface waters of the oceans, that when these waters warm, hurricanes will get more powerful. However, the change in intensity is probably best evaluated over decades rather than year to year. Whether or not storm intensity or frequency increases, sea level rise allows storm surge to penetrate further inland.

My heart goes out to the people still cleaning up and who lost loved ones.

My boss, Orrin Pilkey, wrote an op-ed piece for CNN tilted “When will we ever learn the lessons of hurricanes?” where he predicted the Outer Banks Highway 12 wipe out, seen above.

NASA photo, the eye of Hurricane Irene hits Cape Lookout, NC

NASA photo, global perspective of Hurricane Irene