Tropical Storm Irene?

I’d seen this earlier, but I hadn’t seen any follow-up until now. There appears to be decent evidence that “Hurricane” Irene was never, in fact, a hurricane. At least, not at any point where she made landfall. In fact, it appears that once it cleared the Carolina’s, it was barely a tropical storm.

The theory also does a neat job of explaining why the storm surge failed to materialize as expected: the winds weren’t strong enough.

I’ll be curious to see if this gets any traction from the likes of The Weather Channel or The National Weather Service. It doesn’t change the fact that Irene did do damage once she made landfall. But it is important from a decision making standpoint, allowing the people in charge to determine the appropriate actions to take in preparation for the storm, as the above link points out. It’ll also be a serious blackeye for the “over hyping” of weather. As such, I expect this to be quietly swept under the rug, if it’s dealt with at all.

One more thing: if the storm really was as weak as the evidence suggests, I’d say it’s even more damning for our local power company, whom seems to be pretty hamfisted in terms of getting power back on in a timely manner. They’ve already cost a lot of kids an entire week of school, in addition to all the other frustrations being without power entails. Makes me shudder to consider the results if Irene really had been a hurricane when she got here.