Hurricane season

The second National Bio-containment Lab is at the University of Texas Medical Branch on Galveston Island. This is a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, actually outside the Intra-coastal Waterway that can experience serious weather during hurricane season. In Hurricane Rita during September of 2005, Alison McCook writing in The Scientist... 

Hurricane damage may seem to be increasing, but this may not be a sign of global warming. The 2004 hurricane season may only partially be due to climates change. 

Several factors contribute to hurricane formation, including El Nino cycles, upper stratospheric circulation patterns and the rain in the Sahara area of Africa. The 2004 hurricane season was mostly due to the alignment of these critical elements. The general agreement on climate change and hurricanes is that hurricanes may not become more common but that they may increase in intensity. 

The formation of subtropical storm Andrea on May 9, 2007 marked an earlier beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season. This was the second occasion in five years that a storm formed before the official season start date. 

The hurricane season in 2003 was extremely active in the basin of the Atlantic Ocean with sixteen tropical storms, seven hurricanes, and three super-hurricanes. Five of these tropical cyclones led to landslides in the northeast of Mexico. In 2003, destructive hurricanes devastated New Scotland and Bermuda. The formation of five tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico turned out to be a specific feature of a region in the Atlantic Ocean. Three tropical storms formed outside the usual time interval (June-November), one formed in April, and two in December. In the eastern sector of the Pacific Ocean in the Northern Hemisphere, the activity of storm formation was below usual (there were no large-scale storms here at all). 

The application of simulation to a disaster event can be as simple as using the simulators to drill evacuation procedures at a long-term care (ETC) facility. With hurricane season on us, several ETC organizations will begin to work with their staff to do just that. By programming the simulators to be elderly with chronic conditions and adding a nasal O2 mask, staff will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of their evacuation plan. Or perhaps the placement of patient simulators within a hospital itself... 

The third and most recent stress on the US natural gas system occurred in the summer of 2005, during the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. Figure 2.5 shows the range and average of the 84 basis diiferentials relative to the price at Henry Hub in Louisiana between April 2005 and April... 

FIGURE 5 Vertical profiles of potential temperature e, equivalent potential temperature 6q, and the equivalent potential temperature of a hypothetically saturated atmosphere with the same temperature at each level. The thin, solid vertical line is the equivalent potential temperature of a surface air parcel forced to rise. The parcel s LCL (determined from temperature and moisture information not explicitly available from the diagram) and LFC are noted. The hatched area indicates the region of positive buoyancy, that is, where the equivalent potential temperature of the parcel is greater then 0. [Taken from the mean hurricane season sounding for the West Indies area, Jordan, C. L. (1958). J. Meteorol. 15, 91-97.]... 

There was not a statistically significant change over the decades in the heights of waves generated by extratropical storms, but statistically significant increases were found for the hurricane-generated waves. The increases measured by the three Atlantic buoys for the summer hurricane seasons are documented in Fig. 35.5, graphs... 

Bigger, J.E., Willingham, M.G., Krimgold, F. Mili, L. 2009. Consequences of critical infrastructure interdependencies lessons from the 2004 hurricane season in Florida. International Journal of Critical Infrastructures 5(3) 199-219. 

Natural disasters certainly can disrupt oil supply. For example, in 2005 Hurricane Katrina severely damaged many oil drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, significantly disrupting oil supplies into the United States mainland. Also, some oil refineries were forced to shut down during this hurricane season. 

Replacement of such shelters that have a service life of around 6 months was not initially planned with the intent was to move into T-Shelters by the end of 2010. That did not happen for many reasons, and consequently, there was a shelter gap as the hurricane season rolled in, and another call for replacement tarps and tents was made. This unplanned double effort put more pressure on the overall T-Shelter program and meant a higher workload for shelter agencies together with an unexpected additional budget line. This vulnerability became evident... 

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