A description of Hurricane Florence from meteorologist Eric Holthaus via WaPo:
Since modern tracking began, no hurricane with its origins in the hundreds-of-miles-wide patch of the central Atlantic where Florence traveled has ever made landfall on the East Coast, or even come close. Thanks to unusually warm ocean waters, Florence has intensified at one of the fastest rates in recorded history for a hurricane so far north. Thanks in part to unusually warm ocean waters between New England and Greenland, the atmosphere has formed a near-record-strength blocking pattern — not unlike the one that steered Hurricane Sandy into New York Harbor in 2012 — that is propelling Florence toward the Southeast coastline. Another blocking pattern, expected to emerge later this week over the Great Lakes, could lock Florence in place for days — which would result in an abject freshwater flood that could extend hundreds of miles inland.
Will it be enough to change some climate change deniers minds? Probably not. The problem is not the sort we’re equipped to even recognize, and some folks just can’t get over they’re preconceptions to understand that the world is changing all around them.
And, if this continues, their kids will have a lot worse set of conditions to contend with than current generations.
