Which is more likely: Blizzard in Miami or Cat 5 hurricane in Newfoundland (temperature, days)
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Umm no. Newfoundland is on a direct path for hurricanes because it's further east. North Atlantic steering currents will aim any hurricanes that survive to Newfoundland. The last hurricane that hit Newfoundland was in 2010. However, all have been category 1 except for the impressive sounding 1775 one, whose strength is unknown. The 1775 one makes the list of top 10 deadliest Atlantic hurricanes, with 4000 deaths, mostly from capsized ships.
As for category 5 hurricanes, not a single category 5 Atlantic hurricane has landfalled north of Florida. Dry air mixing in as well as cool waters should make this impossible anywhere close to Newfoundland, maybe the Carolinas have a remote chance.
But surely these hurricanes are on the verge of being an extratropical storm?
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Originally Posted by 7 Wishes
I'm not sure it was possible 100 years ago either but I'm not sure a slightly warming climate makes it less possible, we've clearly had more extremes lately and a lot of fairly southern places that rarely (though admittedly not rare in the Miami sense) get snow got snowstorms this winter......
Well if global warming is happening then snowstorms in the deep south will slowly become rarer and rarer but spikes or periods of colder weather may occur.
A blizzard in Miami might be possible if a supervolcano (like Yellowstone) erupted and caused a volcanic winter. I could imagine the "ocean effect" snows would be pretty severe too, especially in places such as central Florida.
And on January 19th, 1977, it really did snow in Miami - to this day, the old-timers still talk about it...lol.
I think a blizzard dropping a foot of snow in Miami is more likely. Why? No hurricane has maintained Category 5 strength even up to Bermuda's latitude, let alone Newfoundland's, but blizzards and other great snowstorms have occurred as close as northern Florida; in 1800 Savannah received 18 inches of snow in what was probably a blizzard (judging by the reported gale and the drifts), and in 1895 the Gulf Coast including New Orleans experienced a true blizzard. This region which has received blizzards is far more climatically similar to Miami than Bermuda is to Newfoundland (and keep in mind that Cat 5's have not even made it that far north).
I agree with Cambium that both of these are possible, and I would add that it is likely that both of these events have occurred at some point in this interglacial. For a blizzard in Miami (or anywhere else) all you need is subfreezing air at cloud level combined with sufficient lift and a sufficient pressure gradient. All three elements have occurred just in the past century in Miami, so there is no reason to believe they won't occur simultaneously at some point.
For a Category 5 Hurricane to hit Newfoundland, very warm water is required all the way up the coast coupled with very light wind shear and steering currents just strong enough to steer the storm sufficiently northward. Let's say if there was a 5 year period of unusually intense heat centered over the Gulf Stream waters (warming up the water) coupled with a developing and sufficiently strong annular hurricane as well as the right steering currents, it certainly could happen. In 2005 we saw annular hurricanes persist in waters considered too cold for any tropical development, and this is just in the period of record, which is only a small taste of the full spectrum of weather over millennia.
I would say that it is less likely than a Miami blizzard for the reasons outlined above; a storm of Category 5 strength could and likely has hit Newfoundland, but unless the waters are warm enough and the wind shear is light enough it will over time become a hybrid or extratropical storm, and while it may become even stronger than it was before, the peak wind speeds will be sub-Cat 5 unless it was extraordinarily powerful. Sandy became stronger as it became extratropical, but the 940 mb strength produced Cat 1 winds of 90 mph spread over an enormous area instead of the Cat 4 winds over a small area like a typical 940 mb hurricane.
A more interesting possibility is a fully extratropical storm that produces Category 5 strength winds anyway; winds of Category 3 strength seem to only be produced by extratropical storms that drop below 920 mb such as the 1993 Braer Storm. If I had to guess based on comparisons of different Atlantic storms I'd say an extratropical storm would have to be sub-900 mb to generate Category 5 winds. An 890 mb North Atlantic storm could probably do it. Consider that gale-force winds stretched from Newfoundland to northern Norway (3000 miles) at the height of the 914 mb Braer storm. Our souped-up 890 mb storm would likely be 4000 miles in diameter. On a track towards Newfoundland such a storm would cause gale-force winds from Denver to the Azores.
It might sound outlandish, but consider that such a storm wouldn't really be that much stronger than post-tropical Sandy or the Braer storm; if the conditions for Atlantic extratropical development became significantly more favorable at the right time, such an event could happen.
A blizzard in Miami might be possible if a supervolcano (like Yellowstone) erupted and caused a volcanic winter. I could imagine the "ocean effect" snows would be pretty severe too, especially in places such as central Florida.
And on January 19th, 1977, it really did snow in Miami - to this day, the old-timers still talk about it...lol.
Its not fun its stupid I mean a actual hurricane can't even survive at a latitude as high as 50n (newfoundland) because the waters are too cold the storm would turn into a very strong extratropical storm.
And as to a blizzard in Miami that's impossible in todays climate.
Some fictional climate battles can be meaningful especially if the fictional climates are realistic and can be compared to real life climates. Also maps with carefully thought out climate zones with diagrams to show where the fictional location is in relation to the climate. So discussion can be made on that.
While this silly thread here doesn't bring up any discussion I mean clearly neither is likely.
Yes it can. Ireland has had a hurricane before and its further north than Newfoundland and incase you did not notice they are at 47N.
The ground doesn't have to be frozen in order for snow to accumulate, nor does the temperature have to be below freezing. And while a foot of snow in Miami is extremely unlikely, anything can happen under the right conditions.
I think a Cat 5 striking Newfoundland is more likely, although it's still extremely unlikely.
Yes it does. Snow would never lie on 25c ground.
It probably wouldn't even stick if it was -5c and snowing there its that warm.
The biggest problem I see is geography: all the substantial snowfalls for Florida have been in the northern part not the long peninsula. Any very cold air reaching Miami would rather dry, if moisture mixes in it would probably warm up the air to keep any precipitation liquid, considering the warmth of nearby waters.
The category 5 hit in Newfoundland is more likely and the reason for it is that Newfoundland lies more to the East than actually its distance to the North
Though the waters off Newfoundland are not necessarily warm,
we saw from Superstorm Sandy that quite a force of wind can nurture over warm waters and sustain power under the right conditions, even if temperatures in the outer bands are much much much colder.
So hypothetically though with remote odds, a massively powerful 5+ Atlantic hurricane could gain strength over the Bermuda waters.... Then a super rare strong west-east front across the continental US pushes that storm East
A new tropical depression forms over carribbean, forging a high between the 2 Atlantic storms ....pushes the bermuda storm north
If these forces are great enough, storm could travel great distance north and east at a high velocity such that it makes land in Newfoundland before the cooler waters cause it to weaken below a low category 5
Very unlikely but possible
The foot of snow blizzard in Florida looks impossible because the ground is just too warm for snow to accumulate
But hurricane strength winds can be born and bred in a warm humid spot and travel quickly enough to a colder spot to destroy the colder spot Eventhough the storm wouldn't have been native to the colder spot
And the more north you live on the coast, the more likely cooler weather will NOT proof you from a hurricane. This because storms travel slower in tradewind latitudes than in the westerlies mid-latitudes
A category 5 direct hit on Newfoundland is most likely to occur in middle of August
It probably wouldn't even stick if it was -5c and snowing there its that warm.
No it doesn't, if that was the case it'd be difficult for snow to accumulate in places like NYC, but it isn't. I think it would ultimately come down to the rate that the snow is falling. A few years ago it snowed here in late October, it never went below freezing and the ground was nowhere near frozen, yet the snow accumulated.
Last edited by Infamous92; 05-19-2014 at 10:58 AM..
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