THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508170527
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE AND LISE OLSEN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
In the world of weather, hurricanes aren't the biggest bullies on the block.
Disturbances like Felix terrorize people, but they are only medium-sized atmospheric weather systems, and they are pushed around by bigger, stronger systems.
That's what's happening to Felix. The large hurricane has played patsy to even larger weather systems. First, a low-pressure trough led Felix up the Atlantic; then a high-pressure system blocked the storm's path toward the Southeast coast.
Most hurricanes in this latitude are pulled northeast by the jet stream, a river of high-speed air. But there's no jet stream to pick it up this time.
So Felix was left drifting east of Hatteras Wednesday night, whirling counter-clockwise and stoking its engines with evaporation from warm ocean water. Meanwhile, scientists are trying to predict where it will head next and what type of damage it might cause when it gets there.
Hurricanes are unpredictable because they're affected by many factors, including the Gulf Stream, upper-level winds, contact with land, and water temperature. Particularly unpredictable hurricanes, like Felix, are called ``bad actors'' by climatologists. (The Gulf Stream, incidentally, is a warm current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico along the East Coast - then turns east, to Europe, once it hits Newfoundland.)
The lack of jet stream influence could be bad news, some experts said, because it means Felix probably won't be swept out to sea or carried away from us up the coast, like other hurricanes that have missed Hampton Roads. And the same environmental factors that weakened the hurricane Wednesday could strengthen it again, said Patrick A. Dixon, senior meteorologist at the Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Center in Norfolk.
The typical hurricane skirts the edge of the ``Bermuda high,'' a semi-permanent high-pressure system that hangs around Bermuda, said Fred Gadomski, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University who has been tracking Felix.
But the Bermuda high has shifted far east. At the same time, a very strong high-pressure system is sitting over the southeastern United States. For much of Wednesday, Felix was ``essentially caught between these two zones of high pressure.''
``Until the hurricane gets captured by one of these weather systems,'' he said, it's not going to move.
Felix's slow movement and its size - more than 300 miles wide - could make it particularly bad for flooding and beach erosion.
The slow pace makes it more likely that the storm will be around when high tide hits, said Spencer Rogers, a specialist in hurricane damage with the federal Sea Grant program and the University of North Carolina.
The typical hurricane whips through an area in a few hours. If residents are lucky, the storm hits during low tide. ``This one is so big it's going to take more than a few hours just to get by'' if it hits land, Rogers said.
If Felix stalls, it could be around for several high tides, increasing the likelihood of flooding.
In that respect, Felix invites comparison to the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962. Northeasters like the Ash Wednesday storm tend to cause flooding because they can hang around for days.
While Felix has been sitting offshore, it has also had plenty of time to create big waves. The size of the hurricane means the waves have a long distance to travel, growing larger as they go.
The constant pounding of high waves contributes to erosion, and fragile coastal areas could take a big hit.
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE FELIX by CNB