Op-Ed: Hurricane Ian and the coming climate crash
Hurricane Ian is making landfall around the world with an intensity similar to Hurricane Donna. An old-timer was on hand in Tampa, Florida, to gauge the damage.
Homer Simpson would have laughed at the headline on Friday’s post.
On Friday afternoon, when the wind chill in Tampa reached minus-37 degrees, the city’s electric company warned residents to stay inside. All day long, the storm had been a slow tease, a harbinger of trouble to come.
Then it hit. The force of the Category 4 storm came with an intensity that was more devastating than any storm in the recent past.
That’s because, instead of hitting Tampa directly, Hurricane Ian plowed into the state’s eastern coastline.
And then the state’s electric company issued a bulletin warning Tampa residents to prepare for a “lull” in their power for several days. The problem is, that “lull” is what we’re experiencing now.
Ian is an old-timer. He has been wreaking havoc for the past three years, and he’s about to get even more spectacular. The next several days will be the most intense, devastating storm in the history of this region of the world.
Ian is the first major storm that will hit Tampa with the intensity of Hurricane Donna. This year, that hurricane knocked $20 billion out of the state’s economy and flooded an area of the state’s midsection that was home to 20,000 people and a city of about 60,000. It left behind a massive state of emergency and forced the evacuation of the Tampa Bay area for some 400,000 people. (Some of them were never allowed back because they were displaced by Donna and the hurricane.)
And now Ian is coming back to the Tampa Bay area.
Hurricane Donna, a Category 1 storm,
