Did Idalia Really Have 125 MPH Winds?
By Paul Homewood
Regular readers will know that I have often queried the windspeeds claimed nowadays for hurricanes.
The problem stems from the fact that in the past windspeeds were estimated on the basis of central pressure. Certainly anemometers would never have been able to withstand the strongest winds; nor would they have been likely to have been in the exact location where winds were strongest.
In recent years however winds are estimated using satellite and aircraft dropsonde data.
The problem, however, is that consistently we find that windspeeds and central pressure do not reconcile in the same way as they did in the past.
Idalia came ashore with sustained winds, so we are told, of 125 mph, and a central pressure of 949 MB.
The chart below plots the windspeeds of all US landfalling hurricanes with central pressure of 948, 949 and 950 MB at landfall:
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html
As is instantly obvious, nearly all those historical hurricanes had estimated winds of between 100 and 115 mph. The oddity is the 1926 hurricane which was said to be only 75 mph, but had central pressure of 949 MB.
But sticking out like a sore thumb is Idalia, with winds of at least 10 mph higher than any others. This clearly cannot be right.
If it is true that Idalia really did have 125 mph winds, then clearly all of those hurricanes in the past have been grossly underestimated.
The figure of 125 mph came in this instance from a Hurricane Hunter aircraft, but it is worth noting that Keaton Beach, where landfall was made, the weather station there only recorded 61 mph:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2023/al10/al102023.update.08301145.shtml?
I’ll leave you with one last thought.
Two hurricanes in the 1920s utterly devastated Florida:
- The 1926 Great Miami Hurricane
This storm razed much of Miami to the ground, and is reckoned to be the costliest Atlantic hurricane of all time, at current prices, even more so than Katrina.
But according to the US National Hurricane Center, it also made landfall with winds of 125 mph just like Idalia, despite much lower central pressure of 930 MB.
- 1928 Lake Okechobee
http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1920s/Okeechobee/
Two years later, Florida was hit by another catastrophic hurricane, which had already decimated Guadeloupe, destroying nearly every building there and killing over 1000 people.
Coastal South Florida saw catastrophic damage as well, the heaviest in Palm Beach County. Towns greatly affected were Jupiter, Delray, Lake Worth, Pompano, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, all of which were impacted by the hurricane’s 3 m (10 ft) storm surge. In West Palm Beach, 1,711 homes were destroyed and 6,363 more were damaged. The greatest devastation occurred, however, along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee. There, the 3 m (10 ft) surge washed over the lake’s 1.5-2.4 m (5-8 ft) dikes and flooded an area 120 km (75 mi) wide. At Belle Glade, one of the hardest hit areas, the floodwaters rose to a height of 2.1 meters (7 ft) at a rate of about 25 mm (1 in) per minute. In all, between 2,500 and 3,000 people died making this hurricane the second deadliest hurricane in U.S. History after the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. Total damages from the storm amounted to $100 million (1928 USD) across the Caribbean and the US.
It is interesting that at the time windspeeds at landfall were estimated at 150 mph. But since this has been downgraded by the National Hurricane Center to 125 mph, despite central pressure of 929 MB.
Was Idalia truly as strong as these two storms? Did they all have 125 mph winds?
It is clear that the damage wrought by Idalia was not on the same scale as the 1926 and 1928 ones. Indeed most resulted from the storm surge, which we know was much lower. There’s a CBS video from Cedar Key, which was hit hardest by Idalia, and which shows may buildings barely damaged at all.
This together with the central pressure data tells us that it is absurd to claim that Idalia was as strong.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
One of the key elements in analytical chemistry (at least when I was involved!) was that any change in analytical methodology required a thorough comparison, known as qualification and validation, between the old and the new methods and if there were differences, a true correction factor (again fully validated!) was applied. Clearly this is not considered necessary in any climate-related work, particularly when the new methodologies give more scary results!
Off topic , but does deserve a mention .
The Soil Association wants the UK to cut down on fertilisers .
This worked in Sri Lanka where they completely destroyed the economy .
So by doing the same here they are hoping this will lead towards their goal of turning the country into part of the Socialist new world order . https://www.technocracy.news/un-agenda-2030-a-recipe-for-global-socialism/
There is a difference between cutting down and banning altogether. Farmers would be happy to take advantage of any efficiencies in fertiliser use as it will reduce their costs. I read that Sri Lanka still has problems as having destroyed the economy they have not got the funds to restart it and begin generating money from tea exports again.
For a week or so before Idalia made landfall the “news” lead with how damaging this “unprecedented” rapidly growing hurricane would be as a result of the “record” high sea temperatures caused by you know what. The worst ever was coming.
The day after it landed, downgraded to a mere category 3 storm, it was not mentioned again in the “news” because it turned out to be nothing special, or simply “not news”! No one has apologised, no one has even owned up to being wrong. That hyper enthusiastic green electric car owner BBC reporter of American affairs Christian Fraser has seemingly just crossed it off his list (if not I missed it and am sorry).
They should be ashamed. They and their imaginative “modellers” got it completely wrong. If they were so wrong with a forecast just days ahead then they must not expect me to believe any single word they say about 2050. That for certain is wrong.
Yes, Thursday evening I was waiting for the BBC to say that Idalia was much less catastrophic than they had said it was going to be and there had been no 16ft storm surge after all (NOT!)
Their rationale is the expectation that people will remember the PREDICTIONS more than the ACTUALITY as time goes on. Unfortunately, Joe Public generally does!!
‘Climate change’ is a half-dozen fallacies bundled up with science.
This story highlights false precision fallacy.
Using maths/numbers implies precision. So when NHC tags Idalia as 125 mph, people think NHC knows. As Paul shows, they don’t really know.
Like their “keeping temperature rise to 1.5C.” We have no clue what global mean temperature was 150 years ago.
And now a huge trillion $ industry that will require some effort to kill off.
I looked at
https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map/
none of the coastal station gauges where the eye reached land were over 70 MPH. It was a tropical storm.
Roy Hartwell’s comment is VERY on target, given what I know from college physics lab experiments and my first jobs. (Caveat: I’m an applied statistician with a focus on probability. I do bank risk management. I’m NOT a meteorologist!)
At my first jobs, I modeled performance, mean-time-to failure, hazard rates, etc. for disk drives at IBM GPD San Jose, and 15 yrs later, for Motorola mobile phones. I used probability and applied queuing models. Getting good input data for IBM products wasn’t a problem. Performance comparisons with other manufacturers’ products was a different matter!
The competitive analysis engineering lab down the hall bought non-IBM hardware and took it apart to measure specs. As Roy described, a change in measurement method (e.g. necessitated by a competitor’s novel product design), underwent a standardized comparison with prior methods. Sometimes, correction-like factors were applied to the results, to ensure consistency with prior and current product data. Even after data was released to users (we weren’t the only ones), the competitive analysis guys checked if we saw unexpected performance ceteris paribus RPM, GBs, etc. I guess that’s analogous to Roy’s validation step?
Climate modeling can’t do this with older historical data, i.e. data recorded using pre-modern or unknown measurement devices with unknown calibration status. Is a comparison/validation/correction process even used now, for data from measurement devices of the 1950s versus those manufactured using 2010 era tech? (Maybe the precision is similar, idk.)
The figure of 125 mph came in this instance from a Hurricane Hunter aircraft, but it is worth noting that Keaton Beach, where landfall was made, the weather station there only recorded 61 mph
As the aircraft recorded double the ground speed maybe it was being blown along by the hurricane 😎
On our news here in NZ we were shown an image of a car being flipped over by the winds. Whether real or fraudulent the public would likely connect it to climate change. The public are already conditioned.
Both NuSchool Wind and Ventusky showed real time sustained wind speeds of 100kph to 110kph.
Everyone knows the higher you go above the 6ft meteorogical standard for measurement the higher the wind speeds get.
They are comparing apples to oranges with the deliberate intention of scaring the public.
One more thought… sorry so chatty and lengthy. Paul is being a bit generous in describing how anomalous Idalia was reported, based on that chart. Historical windspeeds of all US landfalling hurricanes with central pressure of 948 – 950 millibar at landfall had estimated winds of 95 – 115 mph not 100 – 115 mph. Not a big deal, but the aberrant Idalia makes me wonder if someone got their units wrong, i.e. mph confused with km/h. Not Paul! I confirmed that his plot correctly uses NOAA Hurricane Data from their website, URL cited by Paul.
One land-based measuring tower in south Florida measured sustained winds at 77 mph. Another recorded a maximum gust of 68 mph. Yet the Hurricane Hunter aircraft reported Idalia windspeeds at 125 mph. If Idalia’s maximum windspeed were 125 km/h (not 125 mph) that converts to 78 mph. 78 mph winds are more consistent with the damage done. Yet then I wonder if the 949 mbars of pressure was accurate or if it was in fact higher. (Lower pressure occurs during worse storms.)
This is scary. I now doubt a formerly high-trust institution like NOAA, because their incongruous weather reports suggest that even REAL (not modeled!) data is being distorted to fit the climate change narrative.
How do you think I feel? I was in the U.S. Air Force. This is evidence that they, flying the hurricane hunters, have been corrupted, too.
I’m sorry. My father was in the U.S. Air Force, a VFW. Decades later, he returned to work as a cardiologist for the USAF. I grew up hearing about his time in the service. I am so proud of him. It breaks my heart about those pilots.
Many people are either afraid to fight the deception, or feel it is futile to try. The latter is mostly true now. Yet so many people who should know better are believers.