When I think of a top weather story for 2008 or any period in time I can either measure it by its meteorological significance, or the part that means the most to me, how it affects the people. As is the case frequently the impacts on humans far outweigh the meteorological wow.
Either way there are 2 events that standout vividly for me. Hurricane Ike and The Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak. (see image below)
Courtesy NOAA
What makes this tornado outbreak so significant is that it happened in the middle of meteorological winter when no one would have even thought of a tornado - especially large, long track tornadoes like you would get in Spring not February 5th and 6th !!! 87 tornadoes and 57 deaths later a clearer path to the White House would persevere. Just after 9:00 PM CST on the 5th, a supercell that spawned tornadoes over northern Mississippi as well as fatalities in Hardin County, TN moved to the northeast over Nashville as a funnel cloud with NO significant damage reported in the city. Had this tornado not cycled up over the city it could have been the top weather story of the year with huge losses in life and property. After Nashville that is when a 51-mile path of death and destruction began with one EF3 tornado that took 23 lives in all.
This was part of a very active and record setting pace of tornadoes that until October's and November's tornado drought was on pace to be the biggest on record.
Ike obviously is the biggest weather story of the year on many fronts. First of all, the impacts were felt well inland all the way to New York State !!! (see image)
Wind and flooding with a hurricane that I will argue never fully lost its tropical characteristics well after landfall as evidenced by the massive amounts of wind damage in KY and OH as well as the large swath of heavy rain even flooding O'hare Airport. I can't help but think: what if Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican did not take a little bit of the steam out of Ike? Could it have been a Cat 4 and eclipsed Katrina in many aspects? Yes and yes !!! Ike was already one the largest hurricanes on record in the Atlantic basin even as a Cat 2 !! The biggest difference from Katrina has nothing to do with the meteorology though - it's in the way all levels of Government reacted to this storm. I will never forget the Armada of help that defense Secretary Chertoff had en route to the Texas coast within 18 hours after landfall. This would not be another Katrina !!! On many levels of Government, Ike was a success and ironically because things went well with response and recovery victims of Ike didn't get the media attention that New Orleans got after Katrina. That coupled with a historic race for the White House put Ike a far second in terms of media coverage. Still the impacts of Ike were far reaching.
Ike was the 3rd in 4 MAJOR hurricanes to hit Cuba in 2008 (a record) and this shed light on one of the most important facts in what was a very busy season in terms of numbers and land impacts. If the Dominican, Haiti and/or Cuba hadn't bore the brunt of several storms including Fay, Gustav, and Ike the United States would have had an even worse season than what is already one of the costliest in history.
Because I am a glass half full guy I will leave you with this. The 2008 hurricane season shined some bright lights on some mistakes of our past and brought forth a glaring need for an enhanced Saffir-Simpson Scale. There is no doubt we can evacuate some cities. With the proper communication and pre planned procedure we can move large numbers of people out of harms way. Both New Orleans and Houston executed effective evacuations for Gustav and Ike respectively. We have taught our viewers the pressure / wind relationship and what it means in terms of a hurricanes strength and wind. What we haven't taught them is that isn't the only factor that determines a hurricanes impacts. Ike is the perfect example of this. There is already research and talk of either upgrading our current Saffir-Simpson scale to include the massage wave setup that can occur with a storm of Ike's size, or come up with another WARNING that projects the types of impacts from waves and surge regardless of its Category and landfall point.
I want to hear what you think about the year's top stories. Submit your comments here, and we may use them on Evening Edition.
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