A video review of the Atlantic hurricane season from NOAA (ERN NEWS REVIEW TO BE PUBLISHED 12.1.23)
As expected when the Category Five was forecast only a few hours before it hit, the Mexican city of tourism and high rise hotels has been knocked out of commission by Hurricane Otis. Only today, Thursday, did the picture of the full extent of the massive damage begin to emerge. The various news reports say that 27 people died but given the photos and video coming out of Acapluco, it is easy to understand that the totals might be three times, even four times, that number.
A Category five hitting directly on a city of 850 thousand to nearly one million residents was, indeed, a nightmare scenario, as the Hurricane Center described late Tuesday. There just wasn't time enough, with current systems, to warn people and there was absolutely no window of opportunity for any sort of mass evacuations.
This storm points to the probablity of a new era in hurricane tracking and forecasting. It is virtually unheard of for a storm to go from below hurricane level to Cat. Five in a matter of hours, as this one did.
Here are some elements that will have to be addressed in the coming months:
1. Is there are flaw in the forecasting system or are storms with extremely rapid intensification to be normal in the future?
2. How can we make for better warning systems that are active, not passive, in getting messages to residents about to be hit with such a storm? We need the means to push emergency notifications to the public and the capacity to issue detailed advisories, something the Hurricane Center is reluctant or unable to do.
3. How can governments and NGOs, be better equipped for rapid aid to supply water, food and communications to impacted areas?
4. For the government of Mexico, what are residents supposed to do when the city they live in has become uninhabitable to a major degree?
There are many more questions seeking answers that need to be answered as this hurricane season moves toward the conclusion at the end of November.
FROM THE LA TIMES:
ACAPULCO, Mexico —
At least 27 people were killed and others remained missing a day after Mexico’s strongest hurricane in memory slammed into the resort city of Acapulco, ravaging homes, hotels and hospitals and submerging entire neighborhoods in debris-strewn floodwaters.
Hurricane Otis made landfall as a Category 5 storm early Wednesday morning, lashing this city of nearly 1 million with 165-mph winds.
The fast-moving storm weakened as it headed inland but left a trail of devastation, with roofs and facades ripped from shopping centers and roads blocked by mangled metal, uprooted trees and boats tossed from the sea.
State officials said 80% of the city’s hotels suffered damage. Many worried that the city’s poorest communities, where many live in shacks constructed of cinder block and tin, may have fared much worse.
Authorities said they had been forced to evacuate 200 patients from a damaged hospital and said the city’s hard-hit airport would remain closed until further notice.
On Thursday, the clouds had cleared and the sun had emerged, but survivors were growing increasingly panicked, with many leaving severely damaged homes to seek food and water and desperately search for missing loved ones.
Efrén Garcia, a 61-year-old from the working-class beachside community of Barra Vieja, had traveled miles to seek food from a shopping center in the upscale Punta Diamante neighborhood.
The storm, Garcia said, had been “two hours of hell.”
“It was the most terrible thing I ever lived through,” he said. “It was two hours of fear and panic. Everything was flying. I saw entire trees flying, and the tin roofs of houses flying off.”
“It was a nightmare,” Garcia said. “I give thanks to God that I’m alive.”
Here's a link to the FULL LA Times story about the disaster:
BELOW is a link to a NY Times story about the desperate times right now in Acapulco. This link should be OPEN, no sub required.
A science writer for the NY Times, David Wallace-Wells, looked at the Acapulco disaster and what it means for the future. An open link to the full article is below. This is an OPINION article, meaning the writer is permitted to express his personal views, unlike ordinary reporting.
As of last Monday night in Acapulco, Mexico, no formal hurricane warning had been issued for what would become, barely a day later, the first Category 5 storm ever to make landfall on the Pacific Coast of North or South America.
Forecasts from 36 hours before landfall had projected maximum winds of 60 miles per hour. Sixteen hours before landfall, the National Hurricane Center still forecast only a Category 1 hurricane. Within hours, what had been a quotidian tropical storm grew into a record-breaking, city-splintering Category 5 monster. The wind reached 165 miles per hour, more than 100 miles per hour greater than had been forecast around bedtime on Monday. Dozens died. **
The resort city, home to one million people, was left “in ruins”: the electricity cut out, as did water and internet service. The damage was almost certain to make the storm the most expensive one in Mexican history. “In all of Acapulco there is not a standing pole,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said on Thursday. One station registered wind above 200 miles per hour; the local forest was so thoroughly cleared of branches and leaves that satellite images flipped from green to brown.
Some large high-rises had been ripped apart, others made skeletal; you could see clear through the building frames, an empty stack of boxes open to the winds. A day or two before, people living in those apartments might not have even heard about the storm.
The damage is, if spectacular, also tragically familiar. But the out-of-nowhere arrival is profoundly new. Hurricane Otis had the second-most drastic intensification of any storm on record in the eastern Pacific. The most dramatic one intensified much farther from shore, and did not make landfall as a Category 5.(The link below is intended to be a free, open link, no sub required)
**ERN News advised evacuating the city several hours before land fall for those able to get out and also advised those in high rise buildings of the dangers on the upper floors.
ERN News did not previously post video from Acapulco because that available was very limited, some of it was of dubious value and we could not find any that showed the full story of what happened to the city. The above video is also poorly shot in various spots but still reveals much more of how devastation Otis was to the coastal city. NOTE: the best section of video begins around 11:40 into the video so you should use the red sider at the bottom of the playback to move toward that section. The earlier part contains far too much panning in which details cannot be seen. If you are shooting video anytime, it is important to hold the camera still, point it at the action and let the action tell the story. Panning left and right becomes unviewable.
Explaining what happened, OTIS, T.S. to Cat 5
Another view of post-hurricane Acapulco that also shows some of the outlying areas. Note, to skip the commentary, go to 3:11 in to the video. (Use the slider at the bottom of the page to move forward.) This video isn't great, some of it was shot through a dirty windshield, but it shows the utter devasation of the area well.
Helicopter views of the hillsides overlooking the resorts of Acapulco. Watch carefully you can see the massive destruction everywhere.
Key Messages:
1. Damaging hurricane-force winds will spread inland over southern
Mexico this morning with extremely destructive winds near the core
during the next few hours.
2. Life-threatening storm surge will continue along the coast of
southern Mexico this morning in areas of onshore winds within the
hurricane warning. Near the coast, the surge will be accompanied by
large and dangerous waves.
3. Heavy rains from Otis will continue to impact areas of southwest
Mexico through Thursday. This rainfall will produce flash and urban
flooding, along with mudslides in areas of higher terrain.
Otis is estimated to have made landfall
around 0625 UTC as a category 5 hurricane with maximum winds of 145
kt. The core of the hurricane moved onshore in the greater Acapulco
area. Now that the center of Otis has moved inland, weakening has
begun and the initial intensity has been lowered to 115 kt for this
advisory.
ERN NEWS: 145 kt. translates inot about 166 mph, indicating the potential for catastrophic damage and significant loss of life. However, it appears the storm might have moved quickly over Acapulco, potentially lowering the risk factors.
From the discussion section of the NHC forecast pages:
Hurricane Otis Discussion Number 12
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL EP182023
1000 PM CDT Tue Oct 24 2023
A nightmare scenario is unfolding for southern Mexico this evening
with rapidly intensifying Otis approaching the coastline. Satellite
images show that Otis has continued to intensify, with Dvorak
Data-T estimates between 130-145 kt during the past few hours. The
initial wind speed is set to 140 kt as a blend of these values,
making Otis a Category 5 hurricane. Otis has explosively
intensified 95 kt during the past 24 hours, a mark only exceeded in
modern times by Patricia in 2015.
Otis should maintain category 5 status before the hurricane makes
landfall near the Acapulco area overnight or early on Wednesday.
The only significant change to mention to the track forecast is
that it has been shifted to the right due to a recent wobble to the
east and the latest model trends, and a general north-northwest
motion at about 8 kt is anticipated through landfall. Rapid
weakening is anticipated after landfall, and Otis should dissipate
tomorrow night over the higher terrain of Mexico.
This is an extremely serious situation for the Acapulco
metropolitan area with the core of the destructive hurricane likely
to come near or over that large city early on Wednesday. There are
no hurricanes on record even close to this intensity for this part
of Mexico.
ERN NEWS: If anyone in Acapulco is able to read this message or if you have friends/relatives there, TELL THEM TO EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY, TONIGHT.
THEY SHOULD GO EAST AND SOUTH AND GET OUT OF THE AREA. A CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE IS FORECAST. BUILDINGS CAN BE SWEPT AWAY, POWER LINES DOWN, PHONE AND INTERNET SERVICE GONE, FLASH FLOODS AND STORM SURGE ARE VERY LIKELY. TOMORROW WILL BE TOO LATE.
THIS IS AN EXTREMELY, LIFE THREATENING SITUATION. IF YOU CAN GO, DO SO, WITHOUT DELAY TAKING ONLY THE BARE ESSENTIALS WITH YOU. THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO SAFE PLACE IN THE PATH OF A CATEGORY FIVE STORM.
If you'd like to know more about the categories of hurricanes and what levels of damage that might be expected, CNN has a great animated graphic and written details on the same page.
This link will take you to the Washington Post with an animated display of hurricane categories.
The flooding in Alcapulco came mainly from Tropical Storm Max, other flooding from Hurricane Lidia.
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