< PreviousBacliff Ace Hardware 607 Grand Ave, Bacliff, TX 77518 Phone: 281-339-1531 www.acehardware.com • Generators • Fire Ladders • Cleaning Supplies • Wet/Dry Vacs • Lumber/Pylwood • Flashlights • Fire Extinguishers • Emergency Kits • Crank Radios • Camping Gear • Gas Stabilizers • Trailer Tie Downs • Batteries • Chainsaws • Sandbags • Fans • Plywood Clips • Gas Cans • Propane Tanks • Ice Chests • Tape • Rope & More We’re here to answer your questions and help you find what you need to protect yourself, your family and your property. Our concrete coatings provide a custom, finished look while adding functionality to your existing concrete surface. At Garage Force, our ultimate goal is to achieve 100% customer satisfaction. We want you to be absolutely thrilled with your project. Offering a full range of products, Garage Force is a leader in floor coating installation across the country. Our coating systems provide a durable finished floor that is both easy to maintain and adds value to your home. Concrete Coating Options That Are A Force To Be Reckoned With. 2710 Villa Pisa Ln. League City, TX 77573 832-596-7978 When a Storm is in the Gulf...It's Too Late! Homeowners . Flood . Windstorm . Life . Commercial Business . Annuities . Long Term Care . Disability Income 30 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2021ROOFING & REPAIRS Protect and beautify your home with the best in the business. Hurricane Season is here! Call the people you can trust. Licensed and Bonded Locally Owned for Over 30 Years 409-762-8068 office@morganroofingtexas.com morganroofingtexas.com Morgan Roofing, LLC Galveston’s #1 Roofing Company 3734 Magnolia Rdg. League City, TX 77573 ATEAMSAC.COM LIC.# TACLA79355E Jennifer’s Cell (409) 526-9087 Jesse’s Cell (281) 838-6167 Free estimates on complete installs. Call today to schedule a $75 Maintenance to keep your system running efficiently and effectively PROUDLY SERVICING GALVESTON AND HARRIS COUNTY Maintenance, Repairs and Installs with guaranteed expertise in all top brands to enhance your air quality. Your Residential & Commercial HVAC Specialists! 2021 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 3132 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2021 HURRICANE ANATOMY OF A Hurricanes are born in the steamy late-summer environment of the tropics when rapidly evaporating ocean waters combine with strong wind currents. Several hundred miles wide and packing winds of more than 100 mph, hurricanes cool the Earth by sucking heat from the Earth’s surface and drawing it into the upper atmosphere (above 40,000 feet). EXHAUST Hot air is drawn into the atmosphere SPIRALING STORM CLOUDS EYE WALL Storm’s fiercest winds EYE Cool air descends into the 20-mile-wide eye, creating a small center of calm weather SPIRALING WINDS SPIN COUNTER- CLOCKWISE In the lower few thousand feet of the hurricane, air flows in toward the center and whirls upward. These spiraling winds gain speed as they approach the central eye, just as currents do in a whirlpool. The narrower the eye, the stronger the winds. HIGH WINDS SOURCE: The National Hurricane Center AP Illustrations SOUTH AMERICA U.S. ATLANTIC OCEAN AFRICA WARM WATERS HURRICANE BREEDING GROUNDS2021 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 33 HURRICANE INTENSITY Any storm of Category 3 or more is considered major. SOURCE: The National Hurricane Center AP Illustrations CATEGORY 1 74-95 mph Damage primarily to trees and unanchored mobile homes; some coastal flooding CATEGORY 2 96-110 mph Some damage to roofs, doors, windows, trees and shrubbery; flooding damage to piers CATEGORY 3 111-130 mph Some structural damage; large trees blown down; flooding near shoreline and possibly inland; mobile homes destroyed CATEGORY 4 131-155 mph Extensive damage to doors and windows; major damage to lower floors near shore; terrain may be flooded well inland CATEGORY 5 155+ mph Complete roof failure and some building failures; massive evacuation; flooding causes major damage to lower floors of all shoreline buldings KNOW THE TERMS • Hurricane: A tropical cyclone with minimum sustained wind speed of 74 mph or higher. • Hurricane season: The portion of the year having a relatively high incidence of hurricanes. The hurricane sea- son in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. • Saffir-Simpson Scale*: Cate- gories of hurricanes based on sustained wind speeds. Storm categories do not correlate to the severity of the storm’s impact on land. • Storm surge: An abnormal rise in sea level that sweeps along the coast near the eye of hurricane landfall. Storm surg- es can reach 25 feet high and be 50-1,000 miles wide. Storm surge is the greatest threat to life and property during a hurricane. • Tropical storm: A tropical cy- clone with minimum sustained wind speed of 39-73 mph. • Tropical storm/hurricane watch: Tropical storm/hurri- cane conditions pose a threat to watch area within 48 hours. • Tropical Storm/hurricane warning: Tropical storm/hurri- cane conditions are expected within 36 hours. *Remember: Storm categories only account for wind speed. Low category hurricanes can be more devastating to life and property than high category storms because of the associ- ated storm surge. Please act on the advice from local officials. SOURCES: City of Galveston, FEMAAFTER THE STORM HURRICANE SEASON: JUNE 1 - NOVEMBER 30 WEAR Be cautious around your home because of debris and other hazards. DISINFECT TREAT MAKE WWW.GCHD.ORG 409.938.7221 SERVICE SPECIAL With This Ad expires 12-31-21 We are here for you when you need us! AFFORDABLE AIR & HEAT SERVICING YOUR CITY SINCE 1994! 34 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2021From staff reports I f the need arises for people to evacuate, there is an equal need for your pets to go with you. Don’t wait for disaster to strike — plan now! Follow these steps to be pre- pared. 1. Make sure your pets always wear clearly marked identification. Dogs should wear leather or nylon collars with tags. Cats should wear breakaway or safety collars, and, yes, they can wear tags, too. Remember, if your pets become frightened, they could get away from you. 2. Consider microchipping your pet as a means of permanent identification. If your pet is al- ready chipped, is your information current? Check with your provider today. 3. Be certain all animals are up- to-date on their vaccinations. Are they wearing their tags? 4. Research safe, welcoming plac- es to take your pet if an evacuation is called. Identify an evacuation route before the storm hits. 5. Make arrangements for family members or friends to evacuate your pet in case you are out of town when an evacuation is ordered. 6. Don’t forget your birds, reptiles or pocket pets (hamsters, gerbils, etc.). They need your protection, too. 7. Don’t forget the importance of planning for horses and other farm animals. Their size, shelter requirements, vaccination needs and transportation needs make planning crucial. 8. Prepare a portable pet disaster kit. Keep your important papers safe by using a sealed, waterproof bag. Prepping pets for hurricanes EVACUATION CHECKLIST Medical and vaccination records; specific care instructions, if needed Medication and dosage instructions (two-week supply) Heartworm preventive Photos of you and your pets together Carrier or cage (labeled) Pet bed and blanket Water and food bowls Two-week supply of water and food Nonelectric (manual) can opener if feeding canned food Leash, collar and harness Favorite toys and treats Paper towels and bags for cleanup Flashlight and batteries Jennifer Reynolds/The Daily News file Rachel Huskey, right, and her daughter, Grace, get a kennel ready for one of the rescued dogs at the Bayou Animal Service’s temporary shelter on Deats Road in Dickinson. The two volunteered to help care for the shelter animals and those rescued during the flooding from Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. 2021 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 35By BOB BERWYN Inside Climate News Hurricanes are not just intensifying faster and drop- ping more rain. Because of global warming, their destruc- tive power persists longer af- ter reaching land, increasing risks to communities farther inland that may be unpre- pared for devastating winds and flooding, recent science shows. That shift was underlined by an analysis of Atlantic hurricanes that made land- fall between 1967 and 2018. The study, published Nov. 11 in Nature, showed that in the second half of the study period, hurricanes weakened almost twice as slowly after hitting land. “As the world continues to warm, the destructive power of hurricanes will extend progressively farther inland,” the researchers wrote in their report. Scientists have known for some time that as global temperatures warm, hurricanes are intensifying and are more likely to stall and produce rain. But Pinaki Chakraborty, se- nior author of the study and a climate researcher with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, said the new analysis found that with warming hurricanes also take longer to decay after landfall, something researchers had not studied before. “It was thought that a warming world has had no pronounced effect on landfalling hurricanes,” Chakraborty said. “We show, not so, unfortunately.” Tropical storms and hur- ricanes are the costliest cli- mate-linked natural disasters. Since 2000, the damage from such extreme storms has add- ed up to $831 billion, about 60 percent of the total caused by climate-related extremes tracked by a federal disaster database. Penn State University climate researcher Michael Mann, who was not involved in the Nature study, said the findings make clear that when hurricanes that already are intensified persist over land, they are likely to do more damage. “Since flooding is the major cause of death and destruc- tion from landfalling tropical storms, this study suggests the potential for even greater risk than has been estab- lished in past studies,” Mann said. “It’s a simple idea, but it requires quite a bit of work to establish that this is really happening. And that’s what the authors, in my view, have done here.” Noting the findings, Jim Kossin, a hurricane expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- tion, who also did not par- ticipate in the study, said, “I find it somewhat remarkable that these trends we keep discovering are so dispropor- tionately for the worse.” “The news is rarely good, unfortunately,” Kossin said. RECORD HURRICANE SEASON Even as scientists scrutinize hurricane trends from the past few decades to find glob- al warming connections, the 2020 season set a record for the total number of named storms: 30 through Nov. 11, more than five a month in the official six-month hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 to Nov. 30. Research since then has made clear that the projection for fewer storms is very un- certain, even though the idea that the number will decrease has been widely repeated as conventional wisdom. And there is even stronger In a warming world, hurricanes weaken more slowly after landfall 36 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2021NASA Astronaut Randy Bresnik took this photo of Tropical Storm Harvey from the International Space Station on Aug. 28, 2017. Harvey made landfall in Texas on Aug. 25, 2017, as a Category 4 storm and then stayed in place for four days, dumping a deluge of rain across the region. Research suggests that recent hurricanes weaken more slowly after making landfall than they did 50 years ago, due to climate change. evidence that more intense major hurricanes will cause increasing damage. Recent studies also show regional nuances, projecting more trop- ical storms for Hawaii, as well as for the Northeastern United States and even Europe. Hurricanes are tiny and irregular features in the larger fabric of global climate change, and previous projec- tions for fewer tropical storms were based on climate models that weren’t good at simulat- ing the formation and devel- opment of hurricanes, said Pe- ter Pfleiderer, a Berlin-based extreme climate researcher with Climate Analytics, an international nonprofit climate research center. “More recent studies using high resolution climate mod- els challenge the projections of fewer storms in a warmer climate,” he said. SEE LANDFALL » PAGE 38 2021 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 37NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information In 2020, the United States experienced a record-smashing 22 weather or climate disasters that each resulted in at least $1 billion in damages, including a record seven linked to landfalling hurricanes or tropical storms. AN ‘AHA!’ MOMENT For Chakraborty, the Na- ture study’s senior author, the “aha!” moment came even before the research started. “We were studying the evolution of landfalling hurricanes using simulations and kept finding features that could not be explained using the prevailing models,” he said. “We realized that the prevailing models are missing a key component: the mois- ture stored in a hurricane.” Hurricanes hold more moisture in a warmer climate because the atmosphere can hold about 7 percent more water for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of warming. Part of a hurricane’s total ener- gy is stored in the water it carries, and that extra fuel helps storms overpower the weakening effect of friction over land, he said. The scientists examined the link between global warming and slower weakening by modeling hurricanes forming at different sea surface tem- peratures and then simulating landfall by cutting off the storms’ moisture supply. Each of the modeled storms made landfall at the same intensity, but the ones that developed over warmer waters weak- ened more slowly. “Making landfall is equiv- alent to stopping the fuel supply to the engine of a car,” said co-author Lin Li, also with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. “Without fuel, the car will decelerate, and without its moisture source, the hurri- cane will decay.” But, storms forming over warmer oceans have more stored fuel, so they keep running longer after the outside supply is cut off, he said. UNCERTAINTIES REMAIN The new study on slower hurricane decay is important because it can help show how trends fit into the long- term historical context, said Amy Frappier, a paleoclimate researcher at Skidmore Col- lege in New York. Tracking long-term shifts in hurricane activity helps make more accurate projections for future risk. Lisa Baldini, a paleoclimate researcher at Teesside Univer- sity in the United Kingdom, said “recognizing that warmer oceans can cause landfalling hurricanes to track farther inland is “critical information that can enhance prepared- ness.” But Baldini said the new study also spanned a time period when natural climate cycles that affect hur- ricanes might have skewed the results. Looking back further in time with chemical clues from cave formations and sediment deposits, could help assess the accuracy of the findings, she said. Those paleoclimate records show how hurricane paths have shifted over centuries and millennia, which also may affect their strength after landfall because their path over the ocean also deter- mines how much moisture they gather. In a 2016 study in Scientific Reports, Baldini found hurri- cane paths have changed sig- nificantly in the past 450 years. “So, I think that we need longer records to assess the long-term trend,” she said. LANDFALL Continued » Page 37 “Making landfall is equivalent to stopping the fuel supply to the engine of a car.” LIN LI, junior research fellow at the Okinawa Institute or Science and Technology 38 | The Daily News | Hurricane Preparedness | 2021NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information Texas leads the United States in total cumulative costs (~$290 billion) from billion-dollar disasters since 1980. “And, we need to look at regional impacts rather than basin-wide trends. Where the tracks are trending is just as important as how many there are when it comes to hurri- cane preparedness.” MIT hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel said the rate of hurricane weakening after land- fall is an “important practical question as it potentially affects decisions to evacuate people.” But the results of the new study don’t mesh with some existing theories and may be sensitive to the way the data were ana- lyzed, he said. “I am persuaded that this is an important problem but do not regard the results as de- finitive. More research will be necessary to confirm or refute the findings,” Emanuel said. COMPOUNDING THREATS Sea level rise and more in- tense storms make up one of the many compounding and unexpected threats of global warming, Frappier said. The new research on the inland persistence of hurricanes reminded her of one this year’s first storms, Cristobal, which formed June 1 and remained a tropical system until it reached Wisconsin 10 days later. Other paleoclimate studies of tropical storms suggest an- other type of compound effect, she said. Layers of sediment deposited by long-ago storms match up with traces of ash in ways that suggest that power- ful storms knock down trees, which subsequently dry and form fuel for big wildfires. This year’s hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season also has led to unprecedented and long-lasting, widespread flooding on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where garages, underpasses and other infra- structure has been swamped this summer. Rosanne Martyr-Koller, who studies coastal vulner- ability and adaptation with Climate Analytics and was not involved in the research, said the new study can help people in hurricane risk areas update plans for protecting homes, infrastructure and agriculture. Even inland communities need to consider increasing risks from wind damage and flooding with hurricanes weakening more slowly, and more widespread effects require more regional prepa- ration, she said. For example, inland communities along rivers can reduce pollution, which bolsters coastal ecosys- tems like mangroves and cor- als that, in turn, buffer coasts from hurricane impacts. “Communities are more likely to be exposed to a storm’s powerful winds, rain, and storm surge for longer periods than in the past, leading to increased dam- ages,” she said. “This study provides a piece of the puzzle to understand why hurricane damage costs have been increasing over time.” Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the envi- ronment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter at insideclimate news.org. 2021 | Hurricane Preparedness | The Daily News | 39Next >