The onshore flow of the winds tends to cause a lot of beach erosion, and because the storm is so stationary, this has been going on for at least four days.
On some level, we're sensitive to negatively stigmatizing people. I guess they could have named (hurricanes) after flowers or other neutral things.
If we get up into that league, we'll have issues larger than naming these storms. The new phrase will be hurricane fatigue. Let's coin that right now.
Surface, or ground level, is where the people are and so that wind speed is what you want to know.
Anything Category 5 and above is likely to cause catastrophic damage.
This current episode started in 1995, when we had 11 hurricanes. Normal is six. This year we expect nine to 11.
They've been right eight years out of eight. I don't know if I'd take a bet on things going over. But it might, and it would be another thing to talk about for the history books.
It really is a very ecumenical product that we put out here. The other sovereign nations that we work with recognize that what goes around comes around so they are willing to help us and we are willing to provide them with what we predict will happen.
It's got similar characteristics, except it's just a little lower in latitude. The issue is what happens when it gets out over the very warm waters of the central Gulf.
The August update to Atlantic hurricane season outlook called for 18 to 21, so I would hope it doesn't go any higher than that, but it's a possibility.
They've got winds of between 39 and 60 miles per hour along the coast of the Carolinas. The radius of 60 mile-per-hour winds is just about at Wilmington now.
The issue, really, this year is the anomalously warm sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic,
I had a woman call me this morning in tears because her daughter was named Katrina, ... and she was traumatized practically to the point where she wouldn't go out of the house.
But I think we've had enough excitement for one year.