UW expert on tropical storms discusses Hurricane Ian

Shuyi Chen , a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, was traveling to a conference in Boston as Hurricane Ian approached the Gulf of Mexico. During breaks at the conference, she provided her thoughts on the closely watched catastrophic storm system that made landfall in Florida on Sept. Q: What are your thoughts on Hurricane Ian? How does it compare to other storms? SSC: Each hurricane is unique in many ways. However, Hurricane Ian has some similarity to Hurricane Irma in 2017 in terms of landfall location on the southwest coast of Florida. Both hurricanes caused large storm surges - about 10 feet of water - near Naples and Fort Myers with strong onshore winds, while the water got "sucked” out of Tampa Bay by offshore winds associated with the hurricane. Ian is a larger storm than Irma, in terms of size of strong wind and rain areas. Q: What are your thoughts on this year's Atlantic hurricane season, with Hurricane Fiona and now Hurricane Ian both expected to have severe impacts? SSC: The overall Atlantic hurricane season this year has been slower, with less named storms and generally weaker and shorter-lived storms than the recent average, especially compared with the last two busy years in 2020 and 2021. However, hurricane impacts on society are not necessarily correlated the number of storms. It depends on individual storms and where they occur. Land-falling hurricanes, like Fiona and Ian, have very high impacts, including extreme wind, rain, storm surge and flooding. In fact, one of the most costly events, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, occurred during a year when we had one of the lowest number of storms. Q: You are working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to use Saildrone observations. What do you hope to learn from this new technology?