Ponce
22nd May 2010, 11:50 AM
What a most stupid coment.......remember that the oil is still coming out.
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Hurricane season may make spill worse.
As hurricane season looms, forecasters, scientists and residents along the Gulf Coast worry that a major storm could make the oil spill worse.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a hurricane, or a succession of them, may bring oil up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico and then push it ashore. Forecasters say a season with multiple storms could send oil farther inland and spread it as far as Cape Hatteras, N.C.
"To think a storm surge could resuscitate a huge sum of oil (from the deep) and deposit it on land is truly catastrophic," says Joe Jaworski, mayor of Galveston, Texas, a city hit by Hurricane Ike in 2008.
This year's hurricane season, June 1 to Nov. 30, is expected to be above average with 15 tropical storms of which eight could be hurricanes, according to experts at Colorado State University, the nation's oldest hurricane forecasting team.
Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at forecaster Weather Underground, says the oil spill adds "an exclamation mark" to the "sense of foreboding" he has over the hurricane season. Storms tend to break up and dilute large spills, but they also spread them over a greater area, he says.
In 1989, when the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons near the coast of Alaska, workers contained the spill, but a storm with 70 mph winds "made the damage much greater," Masters says. A hurricane blows at 74 mph. In 1979, the IXTOC I oil well blowout spilled 140 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico. Padre Island, Texas, "got a huge fouling," Masters says, but "then a big storm came through, scrubbed all the oil off and it turned out to be a good thing."
The federal Climate Prediction Center will issue its hurricane outlook May 27. Masters and AccuWeather.com's Joe Bastardi say record high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic and cooling in the Pacific Ocean resemble conditions in 2004, 2005 and 2008, when multiple storms battered the USA.
Kerry St. Pé, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program in Thibodaux, La., which was hit by storm surges from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, says a storm surge would carry oil over the wetlands and deposit it farther inland.
A hurricane might render the oil less toxic, "but it might destroy a lot of homes," St. Pé says.
None of the scenarios are good for the ecosystem, says Jim Edson, a University of Connecticut marine meteorologist.
"We've never dealt with anything like this before," Edson says
================================================== ==
Hurricane season may make spill worse.
As hurricane season looms, forecasters, scientists and residents along the Gulf Coast worry that a major storm could make the oil spill worse.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a hurricane, or a succession of them, may bring oil up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico and then push it ashore. Forecasters say a season with multiple storms could send oil farther inland and spread it as far as Cape Hatteras, N.C.
"To think a storm surge could resuscitate a huge sum of oil (from the deep) and deposit it on land is truly catastrophic," says Joe Jaworski, mayor of Galveston, Texas, a city hit by Hurricane Ike in 2008.
This year's hurricane season, June 1 to Nov. 30, is expected to be above average with 15 tropical storms of which eight could be hurricanes, according to experts at Colorado State University, the nation's oldest hurricane forecasting team.
Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at forecaster Weather Underground, says the oil spill adds "an exclamation mark" to the "sense of foreboding" he has over the hurricane season. Storms tend to break up and dilute large spills, but they also spread them over a greater area, he says.
In 1989, when the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons near the coast of Alaska, workers contained the spill, but a storm with 70 mph winds "made the damage much greater," Masters says. A hurricane blows at 74 mph. In 1979, the IXTOC I oil well blowout spilled 140 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico. Padre Island, Texas, "got a huge fouling," Masters says, but "then a big storm came through, scrubbed all the oil off and it turned out to be a good thing."
The federal Climate Prediction Center will issue its hurricane outlook May 27. Masters and AccuWeather.com's Joe Bastardi say record high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic and cooling in the Pacific Ocean resemble conditions in 2004, 2005 and 2008, when multiple storms battered the USA.
Kerry St. Pé, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program in Thibodaux, La., which was hit by storm surges from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, says a storm surge would carry oil over the wetlands and deposit it farther inland.
A hurricane might render the oil less toxic, "but it might destroy a lot of homes," St. Pé says.
None of the scenarios are good for the ecosystem, says Jim Edson, a University of Connecticut marine meteorologist.
"We've never dealt with anything like this before," Edson says