The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

A20 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020

county line to Ponte Vedra Beach

were under a tropical storm

warning, while a tropical storm

watch was issued from north of

Ponte Vedra Beach in Florida to

the South Santee River in South

Carolina, including Jacksonville,

Fla., Simons Island, Ga., and

Charleston.

Meanwhile, a storm surge

watch covers the zone from Jupi-

ter Inlet to Ponte Vedra Beach.

The surge is the storm-driven

rise in ocean water above nor-

mally dry land, which could lead

to several feet of coastline inun-

dation.

Since Friday, the storm has

drenched the southeastern and

central Bahamas, buffeting the

islands with hurricane-force

winds while also likely produc-

ing several feet of storm surge

inundation. Northwest Bahamas

caught the brunt of Isaias on

Saturday as it closed in on Flori-

da, where forecast models sug-

gest the storm may make landfall

Sunday.

The tropical threat comes as

BY JASON SAMENOW,

ANDREW FREEDMAN

AND MATTHEW CAPPUCCI

Isaias began a multiday as-
sault on the East Coast, with
tropical storm conditions devel-
oping over Florida on Saturday
night and hurricane conditions
expected on Sunday. The system
was reclassified as a tropical
storm by the National Hurricane
Center, but it was forecast to
briefly regain hurricane strength
on Sunday. As of 11 p.m. Saturday,
it was showing signs that it might
intensify.
The storm is expected to ride
up the East Coast on Sunday
night and into the middle of the
week, spending most of its time
as a strong tropical storm. It may
unleash torrential rain and high
winds and cause coastal flooding
as far north as Maine.
The Hurricane Center report-
ed that the storm’s outer bands
had already produced wind gusts
of 40 to 60 mph in parts of
southeast Florida.
In Florida, hurricane warn-
ings were in effect from Boca
Raton to the Volusia-Flagler
county line, which includes West
Palm Beach, Jupiter, Vero Beach
and Melbourne.
Fort Lauderdale was under a
hurricane watch. Isaias’s ap-
proach is expected to take it just
far enough north that the city
could escape the worst effects.
Areas from the Volusia-Flagler

the Sunshine State continues to

grapple with a sharp increase in

coronavirus cases.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) issued a

state of emergency for counties

along Florida’s Atlantic coast. He

said the state and local commu-

nities are opening shelters while

ensuring proper protocols are

taken in the face of the pandem-

ic.

North Carolina may also be hit

hard by the storm from Monday

into Tuesday, where Isaias could

make a second landfall after

slamming the Florida coast. A

mandatory evacuation for Ocra-

coke Island was ordered begin-

ning at 6 a.m. Saturday.

Gov. Roy Cooper (D) issued a

state of emergency and urged

anyone who needs to evacuate to

stay with family and friends or at

a hotel, if possible, because of

social distancing precautions at

shelters. Shelters will provide

personal protective equipment,

Cooper said.

“With the right protection and

sheltering, we can keep people

safe from the storm while at the

same time trying to avoid mak-

ing the pandemic worse,” Cooper

said via Twitter. “A hurricane

during a pandemic is double

trouble. But the state has been

carefully preparing for this sce-

nario.”

Other states, including Vir-

ginia, had also issued states of

emergency ahead of the storm.

At 11 p.m. Saturday, Isaias was

about 80 miles east-southeast of

Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and mov-

ing northwest at 9 mph. The

storm’s maximum sustained

winds had weakened from 75 to

70 mph earlier in the evening,

reclassifying it from a hurricane

to a tropical storm.

Wind shear, or a change of

wind speed and direction with

height, along with dry air, contin-

ues to affect I saias, putting a lid

on its intensity. However, the

Hurricane Center expects the

storm to restrengthen to a hurri-

cane on approach to Florida.

After the storm makes its clos-

est approach to the Florida Pen-

insula, potentially making land-

fall Saturday night or early Sun-

day, slow weakening is predicted.

On Monday, Isaias may drop

back to strong tropical storm

intensity as it departs Florida’s

northeastern shores.

The weather is behind NASA

and SpaceX’s decision to bring

the crew of SpaceX’s Endeavour

spacecraft, which undocked from

the International Space Station

on Saturday evening and was to

arrive Sunday afternoon for the

first astronaut splashdown in the

Gulf of Mexico, away from Isaias.

The space agency and its private-

sector partner are aiming for a

landing near Pensacola, where

waves are forecast to be one to

two feet.

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Tropical storm Isaias heads near Florida; East Coast surge expected

NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tropical storm Isaias, shown in a satellite image over the Bahamas on Saturday, has headed toward the

Florida coast, where officials said they were closing beaches, parks and coronavirus testing sites.

BY JASON SAMENOW

AND ANDREW FREEDMAN

Vacationing on Nantucket in
early July, Terrence Boylan cast
his line into the strangely warm
surf. The creature he reeled in
left the veteran angler baffled. It
was a skinny, four-foot-long fish
with a needlelike mouth and
menacing teeth.
“He was completely sur-
prised,” his wife, Jennifer, said.
“He didn’t know what it was.”
The Boylans would soon learn
Terrence had hooked a hound-
fish, a warm-water species that
may never have been caught
before along the Massachusetts
shore.
By itself, the catch would be
just a fluke. But it is one of a slew
of unusual fish reports from the
shores of New England in recent
years. Scientists studying the
warming waters in the region say
it is part of a pattern and an
ominous signal of climate
change.
Ocean temperatures along the
East Coast are near or above
their warmest levels on record
for this time of year, and they are
not only drawing in unusual sea
creatures but also helping to fuel
the busiest Atlantic hurricane
season on record to date.
Now, Hurricane Isaias is
poised to draw energy from these
abnormally toasty waters as it
rides up the East Coast and,
depending on its course and
speed, the consequences could
be severe from Florida to Maine.

A marine heat wave

Much of the Eastern Seaboard,

from the Georgia coast to south-

ern Maine, is in the midst of what

scientists define as a marine heat

wave. They occur when ocean

temperatures are abnormally

warm (in the 90th percentile of

available data) for an extended

period (at least five days).

Marine heat wave intensity is

categorized from moderate to

extreme. While the waters off the

Southeast coast are mostly in a

moderate heat wave, the inten-

sity becomes strong along pock-

ets of the Mid-Atlantic coast

before swelling to strong to se-

vere off the shores of Massachu-

setts and southeast Maine.

Temperatures off the North-

east coast are 5.4 to 7.2 degrees

above normal, said Andrew Per-

shing, the chief scientific officer

at the Gulf of Maine Research

Institute, in an email.

Because of human-caused

buildup of greenhouse gases in

the atmosphere, marine heat

waves have increased dramati-

cally in frequency, size and sever-

ity in recent decades.

A study published in Decem-

ber warns that by late this cen-

tury there may be “a permanent

marine heat wave state” in many

parts of the ocean b ecause of

continued warming. The oceans

are absorbing the vast majority

of the extra heat pumped into the

climate by the highest levels of

greenhouse gases in human his-

tory, and marine heat waves and

altered ocean currents are just

some of the consequences.

The heat waves have profound

effects on marine ecosystems, by

supporting some species a nd dis-

rupting others. The website of

the Marine Heatwaves Interna-

tional Working Group, operated

by leading researchers studying

the topic, notes “[r]ogue animals

can also find their way well

outside their normal range, fol-

lowing the warm waters of a

marine heat wave.”

Odd creatures

According to an online data-

base of observed sea life main-

tained by Duke University,

houndfish, the species caught by

Boylan, have b een spotted only

twice north of Cape Hatteras,

N.C., and never in Massachu-

setts.

David Policansky, a retired

scientist who worked at the Na-

tional Academy of Sciences, sees

the catch of a species outside its

normal zone as not necessarily

caused by the warm water, but

made more likely.

The houndfish is just the latest

example of a subtropical species

finding its way to the Massachu-

setts coast.

A fisherman himself, Polican-

sky recalls another angler hook-

ing an adult tarpon, a warm

water fish common to the Florida

coast, on Nantucket last year.

“He was shaking when he came

in the shop to tell us about it,”

Policansky wrote in an email.

“[F]or sure nobody had reported

hooking one off the beach on

Nantucket previously.”

“These warm waters are con-

cerning,” said Glen Gawarkie-

wicz, an oceanographer at

Woods Hole Oceanographic In-

stitution. “We’ve been seeing re-

ally weird things the last couple

years.”

In an interview, he described

Gulf Stream fish being caught in

30 meters of water off Block

Island, R.I., in January 2017 and

increases in the “rate and

amount” of species like mahi-

mahi passing through.

“A lot of these species you

think of [as living] south of Cape

Hatteras and now you’re seeing

them in southern New England,”

Gawarkiewicz said.

Record northbound shifts

Warm waters are oozing north

farther than they have in modern

records, says Kris Karnauskas, a

professor of atmospheric and

oceanic sciences at the Univer-

sity of Colorado.

In a tweet, he showed that

water temperatures as high as

82 degrees (28 Celsius) were

about as far north as they’ve

been since such data began in

1982. This is just above the
      temperature threshold for fuel-
      ing and sustaining hurricanes.
      Next he showed the zone of
      64-degree t emperatures (18 Cel-
      sius) had also shifted farthest
      north on record.
      “It’s pretty shocking actually,”
      he said in an interview. “The gap
      between this year and the next
      northernmost year is huge.”

Karnauskas says the Gulf of

Maine is “warming excessively.”

Indeed, analyses have shown

the Gulf of Maine has been

warming seven times faster than

the rest of the world’s oceans

during the past 15 years.

Both short-term (back to the

early 1980s) data drawn from

weather satellites and longer-

term (back to the late 1800s)

indicators show significant

warming in this region, but the

warming has accelerated in re-

cent decades.

Karnauskas said human-

caused climate change is driving

much of the warming, but natu-

ral fluctuations in this region are

adding more heat compared to

surrounding areas, where tem-

peratures are not rising at the

same rate.

Potentially dire implications

The marine heat wave doesn’t

just have consequences for fish.

The warm waters, not only

next to the East Coast but sprawl-

ing over much of the tropical

Atlantic Ocean, are fueling what

is the most active hurricane

season on record to date.

Tropical storms and hurri-

canes derive their energy from

warm ocean waters, which

makes the presence of such a

large area of unusually warm

water so worrying to meteorolo-

gists. An ocean with high heat

content values, with warm water

extending through the water col-

umn, can increase the odds for

storms to rapidly intensify.

Hurricane Isaias, which is tak-

ing aim at the entire East Coast,

became the earliest ninth Atlan-

tic-named storm on record

Wednesday night. The fifth-

named storm to form last month

tied the 2005 record for having

the most storms on record dur-

ing July.

Some of the storms which

have formed since June have

done so much farther north than

usual, in areas where ocean tem-

peratures were well above aver-

age. Dolly, in late June, flared up

farther north than any tropical

storm on record during the

month, tweeted Sam Lillo, a

postdoctoral researcher at the

National Oceanic and Atmos-

pheric Administration.

As a measure of h ow warm the

water was in the northwest At-

lantic when Dolly formed, a buoy

at Georges Bank, 170 nautical

miles east of Hyannis, Mass.,

recorded a sea surface tempera-

ture above 80 degrees on June

26. Data shows such a water
    temperature is unprecedented
    during the month at that loca-
    tion dating back to at least 1984.
    Gawarkiewicz identified the
    warmer-than-normal water tem-
    peratures south of Cape Hatteras
    as a particular concern. “If we do
    a get a hurricane coming up the
    East Coast, that’s an area where
    we could get intensification,” he
    said Tuesday.
    Isaias will pass through those
    waters Monday.
    [email protected]
    [email protected]

Hot East Coast waters a ttract ‘weird’ fish and supercharge the storm season

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