I've issued a lot of tornado, severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings in my career, but it really hit me personally yesterday.
Back on the graveyard shift Thursday morning I was scanning Southwest and other airlines for flights to go to SW Florida to chase the storm, however model data steered me otherwise. This wasn't an ordinary August thursday morning as we were sitting at a record 47 degrees and the front was surging toward the gulf. Strong upper level divergence with the approaching longwave and very very warm surface waters suggested a.) Charley was going to explode just before landfall ala Opal and b.) it was going to turn right much quicker than NHC had anticipated. My "chase" target ended up being Punta Gorda as a major hurricane...I think I said 940mb in IRC? (yes I have numerous witnesses to back this up).
A small problem arose with that forecast. My godparents (aunt/uncle) and my father both have houses in Punta Gorda, at 2 feet elevation, both on canals a mile from the Gulf. The thought of chasing quickly turned into panic as I am very familiar with this area and the thought of 10-15 feet of water coming up Charlotte Harbor (a VERY shallow water body) would have meant total devistation miles inland....nevermind the winds.
My dad still lives in Rhode Island and is renting out the house, but my aunt/uncle had just come back from the store with supplies and planned to hold down the condo when I called down there Thursday morning. Thankfully, I was able to plead for them to go to Boca Raton on the east coast and stay with my grandparents as they highly valued my sense of urgency and expectations for total devistation. My aunt just had surgery last week and my uncle is recovering from a bout with cancer, so you can imagine that convincing them to leave everything they own was quite a challenge. The convincing arguement ended up being "Hey, if it misses to the north, then the damage is fairly minor and you got to spend the day with your sister".
And so the story goes...my hurricane chase partner, one of the lead forecasters at the NWS decided to head down to FL (he was thinking cat 2 in Tampa like everyone else). I declined the invite as it would be pretty two-faced to evacuate my own family and then go down and get myself killed. Doug Keisling was also in FL at Tampa/St Pete.
Both Wes and Doug ended up practically across the street from each other...one at the hospital and one at the court house in Punta Gorda. Thank God, both are OK and I talked to both last night. Wes suffered a much more traumatizing experience as part of the hospital collapsed and numerous windows blew in, injuring numerous patients and staff who were huddled in the interior on the 3rd floor. He had been through both Andrew and Opal, and said the winds were FAR worse, even though it only lasted 20 minutes or so. This may be true as I've now heard that the hospital's anemometer clocked a 173 mph gust before blowing away. Furthermore, it's interesting to note that Punta Gorda's last observation had a 109 mph wind gust with a SLP of 997.4mb. This was only 15-20 miles NE of the center. This meant that another *50+* mb pressure fall had to occur in that short distance to acheive the measured SLP of 941mb, so by rough calculations...cat 5 winds in Punta Gorda were entirely possible.
There is total devistation there and it's nearly impossible to get in/out which is probably why I've seen so little footage of the worst damage. Based on what I've heard, the death toll is going to be a lot higher than what early reports have suggested. The only saving grace is that the NE winds ahead of the storm and barrier islands apparently spared Charlotte Harbor of the worst storm surge, which actually was worse farther south toward FMY.
Whether or not my aunt/uncle and father have anything to come back to remains to be seen. At least I know they're alive and material items can be replaced. Despite a perfect forecast, my uncle said it best last night during a tear filled phone conversation: "No matter how obvious it may seem to evacuate and spend a lousy day out of harms way, for many elderly residents along the coast, our homes are our children that they've worked all their lives for. Would you want to abandon your "child" that easily?"
Just some food for thought and a story. As an aside, we captured some incredible imagery with the upcoming StormLab 3.0 yesterday. Here's a glimpse of the concentric eyewalls that resulted in the rapid deepening of Charley just as it came ashore (you may need to use the image scrollbars to see the right half).
Evan Bookbinder
Springfield, MO
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