Hurricane Helene: How local weather change is making Florida’s Huge Bend extra weak to tropical threats

Hurricane Helene is heading straight for one of many areas most weak to hurricanes: Florida’s Huge Bend.

Helene is anticipated to make landfall as a harmful main hurricane Thursday evening close to Tallahassee, marking one other direct hit to the Huge Bend. “Probably catastrophic” wind and storm surge is feasible within the area, the place the Florida panhandle joins the southern-facing peninsula alongside the Gulf Coast, in response to the Nationwide Hurricane Middle.

The Huge Bend, nonetheless reeling from Hurricane Idalia in 2022, is commonly within the bullseye of tropical storms forming within the Atlantic basin, specialists advised ABC Information.

Why Florida’s Huge Bend is weak to hurricanes

The Huge Bend’s proximity to the Gulf of Mexico places the area straight in line to be impacted from tropical storm exercise.

“We have seen the Gulf Coast, typically, because the goal for most of the storms during the last 4 or 5 years,” Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program on the College of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, advised ABC Information.

The underwater geology of the Gulf of Mexico leaves a lot of the low-lying coast unguarded towards an enormous inflow of seawater. The continental shelf of the Florida Gulf Coast extends fairly far offshore – as much as 150 miles in some spots, in response to the Nationwide Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – leaving the shallow waters nowhere to go.

The sheer radius of Helene goes to make the storm surge notably problematic, as a result of the extra water will get “shoved” onto the coast for an prolonged period of time, Shepherd stated.

Helene is forecast to deliver a probably life-threatening storm surge and harmful coastal flooding alongside a large swath of the Florida Gulf Coast. The storm surge is projected to rise to twenty ft excessive within the Huge Bend space, forecasts present.

The Huge Bend can even probably be hit by the japanese aspect of the storm, which usually carries the worst of the storm circumstances and packs the strongest winds, Shepherd stated.

“Stronger winds pile up extra water, creating greater storm surges,” Michael Mann, a professor within the Division of Earth and Environmental Science on the College of Pennsylvania, advised ABC Information.

Steering currents within the Gulf of Mexico in recent times may additionally have been directing some storms on related paths by Florida from the Gulf of Mexico, Shepherd stated.

As well as, in depth lack of seagrass could also be contributing to elevated flooding following heavy rainfall and powerful storms, scientists say. The northeastern Gulf of Mexico comprises the second-largest contiguous seagrass meadow within the continental U.S. however had misplaced about 15% of its space between 2001 and 2022, in response to a examine printed final yr within the journal Environmental Administration.

How local weather change is exacerbating the state of affairs

Human-caused local weather change is the first trigger for present-day rising sea ranges, in response to a consensus of local weather scientists. It is also triggering extra frequent and extra intense excessive rainfall occasions, specialists say.

Whereas many components contribute to the magnitude and impacts of storm surge and coastal flooding, common sea ranges for a lot of Gulf Coast communities are greater than six inches larger at present than they had been just some many years in the past, information reveals.

“We will not speak about Hurricane Helene with out speaking about local weather change, which is inflicting stronger and extra damaging storms,” Mann stated.

That sea degree rise can also be accelerating, analysis reveals. Starting in 2020, the general U.S. shoreline is projected to expertise a sea degree rise, on common, of about 11 inches by 2050, in response to the federal authorities’s Fifth Nationwide Local weather Evaluation, a breakdown of the newest in local weather science, printed in November. That quantity of sea degree rise beforehand took 100 years to succeed in (between 1920 and 2020).

Throughout that very same time interval, the japanese Gulf Coast is projected to expertise a mean sea degree rise of 8 to 12 inches, with even better will increase of 12 to 16 inches alongside the western Gulf Coast.

Along with the ocean degree rise, heavy rainfall on prime of current storm surge will enhance Hurricane Helene’s coastal flooding influence alongside Florida’s Gulf Coast, specialists say.

Hotter than common sea floor temperatures are additionally probably having an influence on the storm.

Helene’s path by the Northern Caribbean and Jap Gulf of Mexico introduced it throughout very heat ocean waters. Larger than regular sea floor temperatures in these areas had been made at the least 200 to 500 occasions extra probably as a result of human-caused local weather change, in response to Local weather Central’s Local weather Shift Index. Heat ocean waters present the vitality hurricanes have to kind and intensify.

Nevertheless, whereas a hyperlink has been established between the normally heat sea floor temperatures and human-caused local weather change, it isn’t but recognized to what diploma that local weather change might have influenced Hurricane Helene’s growth.

Analysis means that hurricanes at the moment are intensifying extra rapidly. Hotter than regular oceans maintain a whole lot of additional vitality that these storms can feed on, and about 80% of main hurricanes, between Classes 3 and 5, bear speedy intensification, outlined as a rise within the most sustained winds of a tropical cyclone of about 35 mph or extra in a 24-hour interval.

Observational enhancements and the pure variability of tropical cyclones, particularly within the Atlantic Basin, in current many years additionally play a task within the noticed enhance of speedy intensification occasions, in response to NOAA. Hurricane Helene has ate up report ranges of higher ocean warmth content material within the Gulf, favoring very speedy intensification, Mann stated.

“Helene is a poster-child for the ways in which human-caused local weather change is amplifying the coastal risk from intensified hurricanes mixed with rising sea ranges,” he added.

ABC Information’ Matthew Glasser and Daniel Peck contributed to this report.