More Hurricanes Are Lingering For Days, A New Study Found. Here Are The Places Most At Risk.

Soon after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas in 2017 as a major storm, it weakened — and then lingered. As a tropical storm with relatively low-end winds, it stalled over Houston for four days, drenching the region with rains and winds that would be so destructive, Harvey would tie Hurricane Katrina as the country’s costliest tropical cyclone on record.

It exemplified a growing risk, according to new research: More tropical cyclones are stalling for days at a time along that stretch of Gulf Coast, as well as off the Southeast U.S. and around Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. That’s especially true in September and October, the study found, months when Atlantic waters are warm, more storms develop and steering patterns that might otherwise speed them along tend to calm.

That is raising threats that even weaker storms, the kind hardy residents might shrug off, could unleash outsize impacts as they batter communities with uninterrupted downpours and unrelenting winds. The findings add to proof that human-caused global warming is intensifying rainfall and encouraging hurricanes to rapidly strengthen, revealing yet another sign of storms’ increasing potential for destruction.

“It doesn’t have to be a Category 4 [storm] to do major damage,” said Jill Trepanier, a professor at Louisiana State University who led the study. “It’s really about these consistent, unrelenting conditions, over and over, day after day.”

The study, published this month in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, defined stalling storms as tropical systems that remained within a circular area about 250 miles wide for at least 72 hours. The frequency of stalls increased by 1.5 percent per year from 1966 to 2020, it found.

The new findings are in line with previous research, including a 2018 study that found Atlantic tropical cyclones’ forward speed decreased by 10 percent between 1949 and 2016 because of uneven planetary warming: As polar regions warm up fastest, they contrast less with tropical warmth, a change that slows down circulation patterns.

Continue reading for free

Disclaimer

The information contained in South Florida Reporter is for general information purposes only.
The South Florida Reporter assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in the contents of the Service.
In no event shall the South Florida Reporter be liable for any special, direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental damages or any damages whatsoever, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tort, arising out of or in connection with the use of the Service or the contents of the Service. The Company reserves the right to make additions, deletions, or modifications to the contents of the Service at any time without prior notice.
The Company does not warrant that the Service is free of viruses or other harmful components