Says satellite radar from this morning, Wrightsville Beach NC is just south of Wilmington. Via NHC Twitter:
NEW: #Hurricane #Florence has made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina at 7:15 AM EDT (1115 UTC) with estimated maximum winds of 90 mph (150 km/h), and a minimum central pressure estimate of 958 mb (28.29"). http://hurricanes.gov
Bad data from folks who want to hype and exaggerate the strength of the storm. The same ones who said several days ago that it would hitting the NC coast with 150 mph winds (high Cat 4).
If you mean the Weather Channel, yeah I'd hype up the storm for ratings as well cause that's what TWC turned into. NWS and NHC tuned the track and strength as needed when new data came in and got the message out to get people out of the way of danger. They gave North Carolina a week's worth of lead time before landfall to prepare and evacuate. I say that's a job well done for the NHC and NWS local offices
NHC meaning National Hurricane Center which is part of NOAA which is National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which is part of US Dept of Commerce.
You creatively snipped the list of Wilmington local data that I compiled in realtime. They reported 72 mph which is a lot lower than 90 mph and is not even hurricane strength. Only 2 hours did it even get above the 60s.
Sorry, but scaring the whole middle Atlantic area with Fake Forecasts of a high Cat 4 hitting N.C. is not a responsible way to alert the population to take measures. It is very irresponsible and is driven by scare politicization. I live 120 miles from the Atlantic but I know how nasty things can get even here from when a storm comes ashore in N.C., and I don't need or appreciate this tommyrot. The National Weather Service actually had a forecast several days before landfall that Richmond on Thursday "hurricane conditions possible", that would be 74+ mph sustained winds.
Key word there is "possible". For what it's worth, the NHC never forecasted any landfall above 140 mph. But that's irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that our weather forecasting technology is not perfect. If you had actually read the forecast that far in advance, it likely said something to the effect of "It is too soon to know the exact impacts, but prepare for the worst" or "the intensity forecast is uncertain at this point". That's not a "fake forecast", that's responsible warning. ET21 is right on point here. Last year, Harvey made landfall in Texas as a Category 4, which wasn't expected to happen until it actually did. The NHC wants people to prepare for the worst -- which is proper. If this storm had changed direction and hit SC instead (which could easily have happened), wouldn't you want them to be prepared and evacuated if necessary? This storm had the potential to be worse than Hugo for South Carolina -- and anyone who remembers that isn't likely to want to go through it again.
Sure, there was some hype for this storm, but
absolutely none of that comes from the NHC. Anything to that effect is from news outlets and tabloids looking for clicks and ratings, which is why I wouldn't trust them. I would trust the NHC and NWS over all other forecast outlets.
Also, I wouldn't tell a North Carolinian right now that this storm was overhyped. This storm has already broken the tropical cyclone rainfall record for North Carolina, and several rivers are experiencing catastrophic flood crests, some at record levels. Places have seen more than thirty inches of rain. Dams are failing because of the amount of water. I-40 and I-95 are both shut down, and Wilmington has essentially been cut off from the rest of the world. Nearly 20 people have died. This storm has been worse than Floyd or Matthew, and it might well go down as North Carolina's worst tropical cyclone ever. Oh, and Wilmington didn't get the maximum winds because the storm didn't directly hit Wilmington; it hit Wrightsville Beach.
Who cares what part of the government the NHC is in? If you ask me, just because it's part of the government doesn't make them any less reliable; in fact, it makes them
more reliable, since the government isn't trying to get ratings and clicks like other private forecasting agencies. And insulting the NHC and local NWS offices by calling their forecasts "fake" is, IMO, incredibly rude to the forecasters down there who have spent tireless hours working to help the American people. They did the absolute best they could with what they had at the time, and I appreciate their work.
That's why it's called the Cone of Uncertainty and that they always put in the message "Monitor latest forecasts for track and strength changes". They make the cone that big based on model plots and the size of the hurricane at the time of the advisory to show how large of an area it could affect. So yes, early on it had a possible landfall between Richmond and the SC/GA border. But as the week went on, it shrunk the cone as accuracy improved. Would you rather give people only a couple days heads up to evacuate or at least a week to least have people take notice that there could be a landfall and begin to make a plan of action and monitor the latest track? That's not fear mongering, that's just getting the message out.
I wasn't discussing the size of the cone, I was discussing the intensity. A storm that is barely Cat 1 will have vastly lower effects in wind damage and storm surge, as compared to a high Cat 4. Given the extreme rarity of any Cat 4 storm making landfall in N.C., yes it was fear mongering, pure and simple, any way you slice it.
Nope. Florence was far worse than your average Category 1, because of the large size of the storm and wind field. That means more places experiencing hurricane force winds and rain, but more importantly, it means a larger storm surge. If Florence had been a high-end Category 4, it would almost certainly have been a smaller storm. The winds would have been more destructive near the point of landfall, but areas farther from that point would see much less impact. Remember Sandy? That was "only" a cat 1-equivalent hurricane at landfall, but look what it did.
It's worth noting that the Saffir-Simpson scale only measures winds, which isn't exactly the most helpful indicator of a storm's damage. Winds are not typically the cause of most of the damage; the vast majority of hurricane damage is due to flooding, whether it be storm surge or rainfall. Again, they were preparing people for the worst here. This was not fear mongering; the NHC forecasts were what they felt most confident in at the time.
Also, if you read the forecast discussions, you'll notice the NHC did not play up the forecast intensity of the storm at landfall, as the intensity part of the forecast was much less certain. They focused on the two highest-probability events: storm surge and inland flooding, both of which verified.
