Joe Bastardi, late of Accuweather, now forecasting for a start-up called Weather BELL, thinks (as of this afternoon) that Hurricane Irene is of the “genre” of Hurricane Ike which whacked Galveston in 2008. Same low central pressure calculation (950 mb), he says, and a tighter eye than Ike as Irene moves north “riding a path only seen a couple of times in 200 years.”
The picture above is of the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston which Ike cleared of vacation homes and the people still in them who had refused to leave. So, while some forecasters are calling hype on Irene, Joe is betting parts of the Northeast Coast are going to look something like the above.
Hope not. But there it is. We shall see.
UPDATE: She did not, in the sense that she did not produce Ike’s storm surge waves that cleared Bolivar. So far, inland flooding is her big story.
UPDATE: As of 9/29: At least ten billion dollars in damages and 40 deaths, so far. Epic flooding of rivers and streams from Irene’s drenching rains, from North Carolina north to Vermont.
People who refused evacuation are now surrounded by rising floodwaters. Albany, NY, as far inland as that is, is having 100-year flooding. Irene was not the wimp some are saying she was.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 