Oceanic Eddies: Changing the Way We Look at Hurricanes

Hurricane Harvey devastated the state of Texas when it made landfall on August 25. According to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, relief and recovery efforts could cost as much as $180 billion. To put this in perspective, the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina was estimated at $128 billion while Hurricane Sandy caused $62 billion. More importantly, Harvey claimed the lives of at least 39 people and displaced more than a million people from their homes.

With so many lives lost and over a million more affected, it’s easy to dismiss Harvey as just a rare occurrence, an anomaly in the workings of nature, or an effect of climate change for which we could not have prepared.

But is Harvey really just an anomaly? Could we really not have prepared for it?

The Scientific American published an informative post explaining how Hurricane Harvey came to be. On August 23, Harvey was a mere tropical depression. But overnight, the tropical depression formed a hurricane eye wall and, in just another day, it turned from a Category 1 to a Category 4 hurricane. In just a span of two days, Harvey evolved from a tropical depression to a devastating hurricane leaving Texas and the entire nation very little time to prepare. But the bigger question is, how? How did Hurricane Harvey become a Category 4 hurricane in just a short amount of time?

According to the Scientific American, the tropical depression passed over a “region of extremely warm ocean water” in the Gulf of Mexico. This warm water region is called a cold-core ring or a cyclonic eddy. The cyclonic eddy drove more energy into Harvey, intensifying it into a Category 4 hurricane in a short span of time.

Unfortunately, cyclonic eddies are difficult to monitor and identify using satellite images, which are commonly used for analyzing storms. Since satellite images measure surface temperature, the cold-core rings are often masked by the warm surface water, especially in the Gulf Stream, making it difficult to identify the occurrence and location of cyclonic eddies. This also would have made it difficult to predict the intensity of Harvey after it was impacted by the cyclonic eddy. Because of the unpredictability and the difficulty of identifying cyclonic eddies, could we still have been better prepared for Harvey?

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina also passed over a cyclonic eddy in the Gulf of Mexico, creating one of the deadliest and costliest hurricanes in history. Unfortunately, it was not just a coincidence that they both passed over a cold-core ring in the same gulf. Permanent and semi-permanent eddies — those that form within the same location and on a seasonal or a periodic basis — are found in abundance in the large bodies of water around the world. The cyclonic eddy in the Gulf of Mexico is considered as a semi-permanent eddy as it periodically forms in the gulf. This means that we should always be prepared for intense hurricanes forming in the Gulf of Mexico.

Understanding cyclonic eddies should also change the way we understand and prepare for hurricanes. In fact, with data available from more than a decade ago regarding oceanic eddies, we should have already been prepared for Harvey and, perhaps, even Katrina. And as Hurricane Irma draws near, hopefully, we should have learned our lesson and become more proactive when it comes to preparing and dealing with these implacable forces of nature.

Just as in the case of cyclonic eddies, having the right data can give businesses a wider and deeper understanding of what is happening, thus changing the way decision makers plan and respond to challenges. It enables us to better respond to our customer’s needs, drive efficiencies in our business processes, and make objective decisions. That’s why from product creation to customer support, more and more enterprises are embracing a data-driven approach.

You can download our ebook to understand how Liaison and our managed services approach to data can help you prepare your company for a data-inspired future.

As Irma approaches, our thoughts and prayers are with those in the path of yet another devastating hurricane.

With prayers

Rob