{"id":309776,"date":"2026-06-16T22:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T22:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/309776\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T22:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T22:05:10","slug":"hurricanes-are-changing-how-do-we-get-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/309776\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricanes are changing. How do we get ready?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With hurricane season underway, scientists are racing to understand the changing dynamic of increasingly intense storms on a warming planet.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWe know that conditions are changing. We know that our storms are intensifying,\u201d said Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos, an engineering professor at the University of Miami who specializes in designing more resilient structures. \u201cThis will bring a different type of demand to our structures.\u201d<\/p>\n

To better understand that, Rhode-Barbarigos has been subjecting dollhouse-sized structures \u2014 a tiny red stilt house and a plexiglass model meant to replicate one of South Florida\u2019s plentiful concrete block houses \u2014 to the furious winds and waves generated in the hurricane wave tank at UM\u2019s Rosenstiel School on Virginia Key.<\/p>\n

At about 175-feet long and capable of holding 38,000 gallons of seawater, the Sustain tank can whip up Cat 5 storm conditions. And so far, cranking up the wind and water is producing some unexpected findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we combine those two forces, so the wind forces and the forces that come from the water, the combined action is not always the same as one plus one equals two,\u201d he said. \u200a\u201dIt\u2019s complex geographically and spatially and in timescale with the storms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The fierce hurricane reached Cat 5 status in the Gulf of Mexico, then weakened to a Cat 3 before landfall. But when it roared ashore just over 50 miles south of New Orleans, it still delivered a Cat 5-size storm surge, said Andy Hazelton, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s UM-based marine and atmospheric cooperative institute. Same with Hurricane Ike. The 2008 hurricane reached Cat 4 intensity in the Gulf. It hit Galveston,Texas as Cat 2, but still pushed ashore a storm surge\u00a0over 12 feet deep<\/a>\u00a0at the Louisiana border.<\/p>\n

\u201dAll that water is gonna pile up ahead of [a storm]. So even if it weakens from a five to a four or three, it still has all that water and it can still push all of that ashore,\u201d Hazelton said.<\/p>\n

That scenario is expected to become more common as climate change warms the planet. Scientists don\u2019t think storms will become more frequent, but they do predict more intense hurricanes that\u00a0strengthen more quickly<\/a>, under a process called rapid intensification. Why is still\u00a0not fully understood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a forecast challenge,\u201d Hazelton said.<\/p>\n

\"TwoJenny Staletovich \/ WLRN Researchers used these model structures to test hurricane wind and wave forces in a 38,000-gallon tank at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School.<\/p>\n

So while Rhode-Barbarigos studies what that will mean for structures to improve building codes, Hazelton is looking more closely at interactions in the hurricane tank to solve the forecast challenge. Understanding the energy exchange between warmer water and the atmosphere with sensors throughout the tank can also help shed light on the hazards produced by monster storms.<\/p>\n

\u201dHeat exchange, that\u2019s really what drives the storm, makes it stronger,\u201d he said. \u201cIntensity forecasts have gotten better, especially over the last decade as we\u2019ve had more computer power, better models, better understanding. But there\u2019s still cases, like Milton, like Melissa, where that rapid intensification happens really fast, and we don\u2019t fully understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2025, Milton\u2019s winds accelerated by more than 90 miles per hour in 24 hours, jumping from a Cat 1 to a Cat 5 and causing more than $34 billion in damage, mostly in Florida. Fifteen people were killed and another 27 died from illness or injury related to the storm. Last year Melissa slammed Jamaica, with winds jumping more than 90 miles per hour\u00a0in just 12 hours<\/a>. At least 93 people were killed by the storm, with damage in Jamaica alone estimated at over $12 billion.<\/p>\n

When it comes to protecting communities, Rhode-Barbarigos said engineers are racing to make recommendations to improve building codes when it comes to storm surge.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aIt\u2019s the combined action of wind and waves,\u201d he said. \u201cIn our codes right now, these two are captured by two different models.\u201d<\/p>\n

While codes regarding wind vastly improved after Hurricane Andrew, the complicated forces of water have room for improvement. Repeated waves as small as three feet can knock down a small house, he said. To make structures more resilient, he said the forces exerted by wind and water have to be examined together.<\/p>\n

\u201dWhen we think about storm surge, we typically think about water level. And it\u2019s not just the water level,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the power that comes with that water level hitting a structure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With hurricane season underway, scientists are racing to understand the changing dynamic of increasingly intense storms on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-309776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}