Hurricane history "cheat sheet"

Confused by Florida's convoluted hurricane history?

If so, this interactive graph may come in handy.



There's more to this graph than meets the eye:

The dots show the year, month, and strength of each storm which made Florida landfall over the past 110 years. Clicking on each dot transports you to a detailed write-up of each storm. The "outer" dot plots each storm's intensity at peak strength and the "inner" dot at the time it made landfall.


Major patterns?

September is Florida's big month. Late August and October also light up the chart. And three is the most hurricane-strength storms that have made landfall in the peninsular state in any one year. We almost had four in 2004 but the eye of Ivan made its way into land on Alabama shores.



That leads me to one caveat, and its a big one:

The graph only includes "hurricane strength" storms that made "Florida" landfall. That rules out many a monumental rainmaker (i.e., Fay) and any storms whose eye crossed just across state lines.


It's not like those winds and waves stop at county lines.

Ghost orchid scope

Swamp on the rise

Waters are up in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

Last time waters were this high was following Fay in August of 2008.


But as high as Fay filled the swamps that water just as quickly dropped thanks to a “dry” dry season. If I remember correctly that predictable and uninterrupted decline was a boon to the wading birds.

This past dry season was the polar opposite, extremely wet.

April in fact saw waters rise higher than the entire summer before.


That in part helps explain an anomalously early (summer is the norm) and high (some 30 ft) surprise flowering of a rare and enigmatic ghost orchid.


They have a scope on the boardwalk so you can see it.

It’s still blooming.

Morning view from Naples Pier

Call of the cloud

Did you ever have a cloud catch your eye?


Last Saturday morning this one did just that on my way into town. I took a minor detour to get a better look from Naples Pier.

Naples usually gets its mountain-like summer clouds (which quite literally you can climb with your eyes) in the afternoon, not the morning, thanks to the handy work of colliding sea breezes and inland convectional heating plus a steady shove to the west on the wings of the Trades.


As stormy as our afternoons can be …

Mornings are usually sunny and bright.


Morning clouds, just off shore, are also a reliable (if less frequent) summer sighting.

And particularly so along those portions of the coast where the nocturnal nose of the land breeze blows face first into the ambient direction of regional air flow. That’s usually from the south or east, but on occasion also from the west. When and where that happens, the first light of dawn is greeted with cumulonimbus castles of white just off shore which, as the wind blows, can drift onshore for a dose of early morning rains.


For Miami those storms are the norm.


This cloud didn’t bring any rain, but it was a spectacle to see …

And well worth the stop.

Salt and fresh

Century of sea level rise

Is sea level rise real?

At a rate of a width of a nickel per year its hard to tell.


Those nickels add up over time to be sure.

Down at Key West the water's edge has risen 9 inches over the past 100 years. (Graph is courtesy of NOAA.)


Locally, the gulf rises 2-4 ft twice per day, but it always falls back down in between. In particular its fun to walk around during low tide.

If you're lucky you might even find a nickel.

Century of Turner River

Ye Olde Turner River Canal

It’s hard to believe!

This is the only photo of the “unplugged” Turner River Canal that I know exists, or at least that I’ve ever seen.


It was taken from Tamiami Trail looking south.

Or at least I think that’s what it shows. Somebody put this photograph in my mailbox, without a label or other explanation. The canal was plugged in 1996 two years before I arrived.


Here’s a couple view of what the canal looks like now.


I’m sure in scrapbooks scattered around America, in Naples and Miami, and even further abroad are glossy prints of fisherman in boats or tourists casting lines from the shore with prized trophies of snook in hand, or expectations of doing so in short order.

Those photos probably number in the thousands …


Packed in boxes or framed in bulky 4 by 6 photo albums.

The swamp is full of memories that way.

Turner River before roads

Mail bag: Florida's "lost" river?

Mail Bag:

“How is the Turner River doing? I drove by there the other day and noticed it was gone. Or was I imagining things? I couldn’t stop because I was in a hurry on my way to Miami.”


ANSWER:

The river is doing great.

What you saw, or didn’t see, was actually the canal, or what used to be a canal, and not the river itself.


The canal was dug in the 1950s for the purposed of building an elevated roadbed next to it called Turner River Road. That roadbed in turn blocked the swamp’s vital sheetflow from feeding the river’s headwater pools. That caused the natural channel to fill in with a thicket of vegetation.

The new artificial waterway was confusingly named Turner River Canal by merit of its location next to Turner River Road which, over time, shortened to simply being known as the Turner River instead (and who would know the difference anyhow since the natural channel had all but disappeared).


The canal was a popular spot because it connected to tide.

That made for good snook fishing. On the downside it also wasted a lot of precious swamp water prematurely to tide.


That all changed in 1996 when the reach of canal south of Tamiami Trail was filled in back to wetland grade. That stopped the freshet of canal water dead in its tracks, and instead rerouted it back towards the natural channel.


The result?

Turner River sprung back to life with flowing water. Kayakers and canoeists have been happily paddling in it ever since.

S-78 Ortona Dam

Blame it on the rain

When is a flow rate not just a flow rate?

The source of water also matters.


Case in point was last week on the Caloosahatchee.

After a regular routine of spring and summer discharges from the Lake (to date the S-77 has released a little over a half million acre feet into the river) – for the last two weeks those source flows had quieted down to a trickle.


That’s why I was surprised to see a sudden rise in the downstream S-79. It ended Monday at almost 4,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) and averaged 2,000 cfs for the week?

What’s going on?



Blame it on the rain!

The Caloosahatchee Basin got bombarded with 4 inches of it last week. Click here to see a rain chart for your local basin.


Side Note:

Notice how hardly any of last year’s estuarine flows (via the S-79) came from the Lake (S-77) in comparison. That may partly be a result of last year’s tranquil hurricane season, thus creating less of a need to free up storage capacity.

Those rains are unpredictable you know (i.e., Fay in 2008)!

"Big rain day" chart

In search of big rains

Collier County has been getting wetter over the past century. (See article)

In terms of getting water in the swamps, it's the past few weeks that we worry about, which for certain I can say (just looking off the side of the road) have been wet.


The graph above doesn’t include today’s rain totals.

I update rainfalls once per week, and go figure. Usually just when I’m about done is when the sky always seems to open up and come down with an epic deluge. Sometimes I wonder if the rain gods aren’t watching!

Even so, I stick to my weekly ritual.



South Florida wide, we’re still waiting for our first Big Rain Day of the summer.

What exactly is a Big Rain Day? It’s one of those unwritten rules of thumb that humans so often like to construe as a way of distilling and simplifying the complex world in which we live. The idea of the Big Rain Day was first hatched by the meteorologists over in West Palm Beach. Technically they defined it as “any day that all of south Florida averages over 1 inch of rain.” Usually we can count on a few per year.


This year we’ve had 4 so far.

The only catch is that none of them have occurred this summer.

They all came during our unusually wet winter dry season instead.


That may change now that the tropical storms are starting to light up the satellite screen.

Or don't I mean cloud up instead?

Pensacola vs Naples, Fla

Panhandle hot

As hot as it is today up in the Panhandle,

I’m sort of jealous.


Their nighttime temperatures are actually dipping below 70° F. That won’t happen in south Florida until the beginning of October!

Still a good month and half to go.


On the other hand, I’m just thankful not to be in Texas or southern Arizona.

Daytime highs are still topping 100° F.


Here in Naples, daytime highs have reached 95 or higher nine times this summer. June 12th was the hottest at 97° F.

When and what the hottest day in your town?

Leaning giant

The bigger they come ...

It's tough being a giant in hurricane country.

This one got snagged at some point in some way, presumably at the hands of tropical-scale winds or some other natural calamity, but somehow continues to grow onward and up, reborn as a twin.

This one got pushed over at an angle, but not all the way down, which if it had would have made a big splash. What storm did it I am not sure, or if a new storm will come in to finish the job is anyones guess. For now it is all greened out and seemingly doing fine.

And finally, this one is under the tightening grip of a strangler fig. Or is it just a harmless epiphytic embrace? It's hard to tell because the trees don't talk!

All three photos were taken at Corkscrew Swamp.

Shoots and sky

Hydrologic "shoots and ladders"

The water cycle started off so simple:

Clouds formed, it rained, waters rose up and then out and flowed slow motion south toward the coast where it blended with the sea to form brackish water spawning grounds among the mangroves and marshes … and then all over again.

Somewhere along the line it got complicated.

We added 1,800 miles of canals, a couple thousand water control structures (both great and small), uncountable miles of road and a barrage of buildings (mostly along the coastal corridor close to the beach), and of course 6 million citizens who call south Florida home.

Now, people spend their professional lives scratching their heads trying to figure it out.

For every person who has ever had the answer, you can count another ten that says they “don’t,” or why the “can’t,” or how about going back to start and “trying again.”

Or in other words, “better luck next time.”

Not a bad fate if you’re a hydrologist …

Especially the sliding downstream part!

(Granted for each slide there's an "uphill" climb.)

No staying dry here

Boots get wet

It's easy to get turned around in the cypress ...



Eventually, if you're lucky, you'll break through to some pond apple swamp.

That's where the deep water lies.

So much for dry boots!

Anemometer and vane

Wetter than "Upper 48?"

Is sunny Florida wetter than the rest of the "Upper 48?"

In Alaska they are chronically comparing (or contrasting) themselves to the "Lower 48," meaning that part of the union that is continentally contiguous, and usually implying themselves to be bigger or better in some way. But last I checked Florida is a picture perfect peninsular with a hydrology and climate unique to itself, and most definitely not continental at all.

If that's the case, shouldn't it be the "Lower 47" instead?


But to answer the question:

It depends on the season.


As an annual total the Olympic Peninsula leads the way. Upwards of 100 inches of the wet stuff falls on its eastern slopes. Fifty miles away Seattle gets orthographically wrung-out cloud cover. The result is 150 days of clouds but only 40 inches of rain.

The Everglades beats that by 15 inches.


Sadly, Florida cannot even call itself "Rain King" of the Gulf Coast.

That crown goes to coastal Louisiana.

But that's only because Cajun Country gets a bigger dose of the winter and spring fronts sent down from the arctic north. The Florida peninsula, and especially its southern extreme, escapes those weather-inducing incursions of cold air.


With that caveat in mind then, my answer is "yes:"

Come summer Florida is consistently wetter than any other place on the Upper 48.

Inside levee

"New and improved" Lake Chart

How big is Lake Okeechobee?

Answer: Too big to see all at once.

And I’m not talking about its water, but rather its data. Inflows, rainfall, outflows, stage levels and budget. It’s just too much information to fit into one graph …

Or is it?


At the top of the page is a new and improved hydrograph that sort of tries, with one big caveat –

It only goes back 3 years (to 2008).


To go back deeper (years and even decades) is where I recommend using a hydrographic calendar instead.

The one below shows Lake stage from 1940 to August 2010 presented in the same style in which you read the words on the page of a book: years run from top to bottom and months from left to right.


Granted, it’s not Shakespeare,

But that’s a lot of data crammed on one page.

Similar style graphs are available for Lake inflows via the Kissimmee River and estuary outflows down the Caloosahatchee and St Lucie Rivers.



Final question:

Where do I go to week after week to stay up to date with the Lake as it unfolds?

Answer: Just click on the “Lake” tab at the top of the journal. I usually update the graphs there once a week.


Special thanks to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Jacksonville) and South Florida Water Management District for making all this data available! (BTW, the animation is representative of 2009, not 2010)