Hectic Henri gets depressed
NEW YORK: Henri soaked the US northeast with rain and disrupted transport after being downgraded to a tropical depression.
The former hurricane would produce additional rainfall of 1 to 3 inches (1.25-381mm), with locally higher amounts possible, over portions of Long Island, New England, southeast New York, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania through yesterday, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory.
It caused a trail of power outages and flooded roads along the coast. Dominion Energy was forced to reduce output at the Millstone Power Station.
“Slow-moving Henri is expected to continue to produce heavy rainfall and flooding across portions of southern New England and the Northern Mid-Atlantic states through today,” the National Hurricane Center said. “Heavy rainfall from Henri will continue to result in limited to considerable flash, urban, and small stream flooding impacts, along with minor to isolated moderate river flooding.”
After making landfall in Rhode
Island over the weekend, the depression is now about 144 km west of Hartford, Connecticut, with maximum sustained winds of 48kmph. More than 50 000 homes and businesses are without power across the region, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks outages.
As many as 13500 utility workers from dozens of states were put on standby to help restore power, according to the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group.
Henri is a rare tropical storm to strike America’s northeastern seaboard and comes as the surface layer of oceans warms due to climate change.
The warming is causing cyclones to become more powerful and carry more water, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities, scientists say.
Henri is the latest in a grim parade of extreme weather events worldwide as climate change takes hold. Wildfires have blackened huge swaths of California, Greece, Algeria and Siberia, sending smoke over the North Pole for the first time on record. July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth.
And in a separate major event, heavy rain fell across western and central Tennessee late Friday into Saturday, dropping as much as 17 inches (43 centimeters) in McEwen, a small town west of Nashville, said Brian Hurley, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center. At least 22 people died in the resulting floods, according to the Associated Press.
A continental storm coming across Pennsylvania seems to have sapped some of Henri’s energy and moisture, said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist at the Energy Weather Group. It also helped slow Henri down as it crossed an area of cooler water that robbed it of its strength.
“It didn’t come in as ferocious as predicted,” he said. “I was expecting a bit more out of it but it really hasn’t materialized.”
Hurricanes and tropical storms depend on warm ocean water to build power and maintain strength. The cooler water has just the opposite effect and that could mean that the feared flooding and power outages won’t be as bad.
The winds, rain and surge damage could reach at least $1 billion in losses, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research. Many of those costs will be absorbed by residents, who will make repairs themselves or because the damage won’t reach insurance deductibles. Insured losses will probably top out at $500 million, he said.
Meanwhile, the death toll from hurricane Grace in Mexico has reached 11 people, as the it made lethal landfall in the south-eastern region of the country, local newspaper Razon reported citing local authorities.
The hurricane reportedly surged to a Category Three storm while making landfall on Saturday.
Three of the victims were in the state of Puebla and eight, six of whom where children and teens, in the city of Heroica Veracruz.
Emergency services, thousands of servicemen and the authorities of affected states are carrying out restoration works and clearing debris on roads.