Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hurricane Hype Continued

First, the idiotic statement:


I find it extraordinary that so many political leaders won’t actually talk about the relationship between climate change, fossil fuels, our continuing irrational exuberance about burning fossil fuels, in light of these storm patterns that we’ve been experiencing. Listen, since I’ve been sworn in as governor just seven months ago, I have dealt with—this is the second major disaster as a result of storms. We had storms this spring that flooded our downtowns and put us through many of the same exercises that we’re going through right now. We didn’t used to get weather patterns like this in Vermont. We didn’t get tropical storms. We didn’t get flash flooding. It wasn’t—you know, our storm patterns weren’t like Costa Rica; they were like Vermont.

That is from noted weather expert Vermont Gov. Pete Shumlin.

The only trouble is he is wrong. Way wrong. Way way way wrong. Way way way "My name is Pete Shumlin, I'm a moron and I don't know what I'm talking about" wrong.


Table 1: Tropical Remnants that Made Landfall In/Proximate to Vermont

Name Year Month, Day
[unnamed] 1927 November 3
Great New England 1938 September 21
#2 1949 August 29–30
Hurricane Baker 1952 September 1–2
Hurricane Carol 1954 August 31
Tropical Storm Brenda 1960 July 30
Hurricane Donna 1960 September 12
Tropical Storm Doria 1971 August 28
Hurricane Belle 1976 August 9–10
Hurricane David 1979 September 6–7
Hurricane Frederic 1979 September 14
Hurricane Gloria 1985 September 27
Tropical Storm Chris 1988 August 29
Hurricane Hugo 1989 September 22–23
Hurricane Bob 1991 August 19
Hurricane Opal 1995 October 5–6
Hurricane Bertha 1996 July 13
Hurricane Fran 1996 September 8–9


Shumlin was born in 1956, so Irene's remnants would be the 14th to have hit the state while Shumlin was around to see it.

"Never" sure ain't what it used to be.

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