Hurricane Watch 2017

10/2/2017 (Permalink)

The 2017 hurricane season has proven to be intense and highly active. This may be because of the ideal conditions for a lot of big, powerful storms. These conditions include low wind shear and high ocean temperatures.

On average, 12 tropical storms form in the Atlantic during hurricane season and this year has already seen 13. Of these 13 named tropical storms, eight were hurricanes and of those, four were major hurricanes. These major hurricanes have been Category 3 and greater and hurricane season still has two months left to go.

 Hurricane Harvey hit Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana, dropping 19 trillion gallons of rain water on the unfortunate cities in these areas. The heavy rains triggered unprecedented flooding, that is estimated to cost $180 billion in damages, which is more costly than Hurricane Katrina was.

Hurricane Irma was the next hurricane and quickly became one of the strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean. Irma set the record for most intense storm for a long duration with wind speeds of 180mph blowing for 37 hours. Irma began in the Florida Keys before rolling through both Florida coasts causing much damage and knocking out power to millions of people is some areas.

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico and was the strongest storm to hit the island since 1928 when the San Felipe hurricane terrorized the island. All of Puerto Rico lost power and was plagued with many flash flood warnings. The storm thrashed the island with winds over 100mph and more than 30 inches of rain.

People are still reaping the affects of these hurricanes and the total damages are still unknown. As a Certified Large Loss Response Team Franchise, SERVPRO of Glendora/San Dimas & Irwindale/Baldwin Park has access to Semi-truck Trailers of emergency equipment and hundreds of experienced personnel so if any of these areas affected by hurricanes need us to respond, we can be there in a moment’s notice.