Scientists have issued a strong warning of an impending ‘Ultra-Intense Category 6’ storm set to hit the US.
The prediction comes from an international team of more than 60 experts who found that the burning of fossil fuels has dumped an equivalent amount of energy into Earth’s systems, ushering in a dark new era of “mega-hurricanes.”
An “ultra-intensity Category 6 storm” would unleash winds of 186 miles per hour or higher and cause sea levels to rise more than 25 feet.
Although this is a theoretical weather event, experts called it “the most powerful storm ever seen on Earth,” predicting that it will form sometime around 2100 and be named Hurricane Danielle.
The forecast is part of the new book Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them, in which author Porter Fox includes scientific calculations and testimonies from sailors who have encountered extreme weather firsthand.
And although Florida was ravaged by hurricanes this year, Danielle would take a different path: New York.
The experts predicted the storm would move through the narrow channel between Staten Island and Dyker Heights in Brooklyn, which was last occupied by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“The destruction will be on a scale never seen in the Northeast,” Fox wrote, “more like a cyclone on the floodplains of India or Bangladesh than wind events in the three states.”
An “ultra-intensity Category 6 storm” would unleash winds of 186 miles per hour or higher and cause sea levels to rise more than 25 feet. Although this is a theoretical weather event, experts called it “the most powerful storm ever seen on Earth” (STOCK)
And although Florida was ravaged by hurricanes this year, Danielle would take a different path: New York
Fox spoke to save ship crews and tugboat operators, such as Joey Farrell Jr And Stu Molenaarwho clean up after hurricanes with their ships year after year.
When Category 5 Hurricane Michael hit northwest Florida, Miller recalled, “It was like the hand of God went in there and wiped the earth clean.”
“It didn’t matter if it was a steel building, a brick building or a wooden building — there was nothing left standing,” Miller told Fox. “The air pressure was so low that the oil was sucked out of the giant Chevron storage tanks at the marina.”
Fox’s hypothetical ‘Hurricane Danielle’ would roll in New York Harbor leads the way, with strong wind shear that rattles the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
The heavy winds would break the four-foot-thick suspension cables and “send both levels of the roadway into the bay below.”
If this “ultra-intensive Category 6” enters New York Harbor, all of Governors Island will be submerged in “a wall of whitewater.”
“Most of the windows in the Freedom Tower, built to withstand winds of up to two hundred miles per hour, will blow out,” Fox said, ironically “reducing wind force and likely saving the building.”
Retaining walls constructed around Battery Park as part of ongoing work Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Climate Adaptation Plan of over $1.7 billionwill be overwhelmed.
“Ocean and river waters will mingle at the eastern edge of Tompkins Square Park as water flows freely through the streets of Chinatown, Little Italy and the chic boutiques and bistros of NoHo and SoHo,” says Fox.
The experts predicted the storm would move through the narrow channel between Staten Island and Dyker Heights in Brooklyn, which was last occupied by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The photo shows the train system during the hurricane, connecting New Jersey to New York City.
The city’s vulnerability to this deluge will be a consequence not only of the storm, but also of rising sea levels: an example of what the author calls the “combined forces of climate change.”
“If Superstorm Sandy had occurred in 1912 instead of 2012, Lower Manhattan likely would not have flooded,” the book reads.
That’s because sea levels have risen about 30 centimeters in the past hundred years.
After landfall, Hurricane Danielle will batter the Big Apple for 48 hours as denser, more saturated superstorms will plod through a hotter atmosphere.
“Hurricanes will decrease by 15 percent and be saturated with 20 percent more water vapor by 2100,” Fox explains.
“The right quadrant of the storm is still packing gusts of more than 220 miles per hour, strong enough to blow the roof off the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
With “rows of sycamores and oaks in Central Park” uprooted, windows shattered across the city and even more bridges collapsed, the hurricane’s force will then splinter into ‘up to fifty tornadoes.’
Porter Fox – a journalist and lifelong sailor – spoke to oceanographers, meteorologists, hurricane recovery ship crews and more for his new book, ‘Category Five’
“This swarm of cyclones will cause unthinkable damage to small parts of the city,” Fox said, “leaving ruts in parks, neighborhoods and streets.”
The explanation for this incredible intensity comes from the heat energy released into Earth’s oceans and skies due to the greenhouse gas effect.
“To laypeople, storms are an atmospheric disturbance, separate from the Earth, apart from the damage they cause,” the book reads.
“In fact, much of a hurricane’s power comes from the boundary between the ocean and the air,” Fox said, “what scientists call the ‘planetary boundary layer.’
This fact is critical to understand so that we can accurately extrapolate the carnage a future megastorm like Danielle will one day be capable of.
Wind friction from a tropical cyclone “not only floats over the sea,” Fox wrote, “they lean on it, drag it, and propel it.”
When water vapor involved in this process rises, he writes, “it cools and condenses into rain, releasing latent heat that fuels convection and grows the storm system.”
He drew a likely and chilling scenario of countless New Yorkers trapped in skyscrapers.
“Those fortunate enough to live in a modern, structurally sound skyscraper on high ground in Midtown or Upper Manhattan will watch from the upper floors as frothy brown water channels flow through the streets,” he writes.
“The water will soon overwhelm the city’s gutters and storm drains, penetrating Manhattan’s intricate substructure and knocking out power, internet and cell service.”
Fox estimated that the death toll from an “Ultra-Intense Category 6” attack on Gotham would approach nearly 42,000 lives.
“Thousands of families torn apart,” he writes. ‘Hundreds of neighborhoods wiped out.’
‘Industries disappeared. Transit is paralyzed. The character and viability of America’s greatest city collapsed […] In the weeks and months that follow, residents and officials will struggle with the impossible question of whether or not to rebuild.’
The widespread destruction of the city’s infrastructure, destroyed communications and fiber optic cables, roads and bridges will make rescue operations in the wake of the story “almost impossible.”
New York City is just one of America’s best-known coastal metropolises, Fox notes, while many others are at risk of a similar or worse fate.
“One bright spot: Miamians will no longer have to worry about superstorms, seawalls, building codes or insurance lapses by 2100 because the city will no longer exist.”