A is for Audrey

The 1957 Atlantic hurricane season didn't have to wait until the letter "K" to be a disaster:

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of hurricane Audrey, a storm that tore apart Cameron parish. Up until hurricane Katrina, it was Louisiana's most notorious hurricane. Survivors of that storm will gather at the Cameron parish courthouse for a memorial Wednesday. We caught up with a Cameron parish man who was the only member of his family to survive.

"They had weathered hurricanes prior to '57, and what they did not understand was the surge. You see the surge is what killed the 500 plus or whatever people."

It just takes one hurricane. And it could be the first one.

Global Warming Builds Hurricanes Up to Knock Them Down

This is one I haven't heard before:

Study: Global warming may diminish Atlantic hurricane activity

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Vecchi and Soden used 18 complex computer climate models to anticipate the effects of warming in the years 2001-2020 and 2018-2100.

Included in the results were an increase in vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic and eastern Pacific oceans.

Vertical wind shear is a difference in wind speed or direction at different altitudes. When a hurricane encounters vertical wind shear the hurricane can weaken when the heat of rising air dissipates over a larger area.

So, warmer water fuels hurricanes, but can also create more hurricane-weakening wind shear.

We really don't know what's going to happen in the future, do we?