My daughter asked me this question about the oil spill...

[CoffeeCat]

I admit that I don't know the answer to this question. It came from
my nine-year old daughter and I thought it was an intriguing question
that deserved an answer, so I'm asking her question here.

She asked, "Mom, since hurricane season is coming up and there's so much
oil in the ocean and more will continue to spill--is there any chance that
a strong hurricane could pick up that oil and carry it inland and get it all
over buildings and cars and lawns?"

I thought that was an interesting question! I was concerned about hurricanes,
because a storm could whip up the oil and carry more of it to the coast. However,
I didn't think about the oil being dumped beyond the coast and on land.

Is this even possible?

[Motown_Johnny]

1. others here have posted the possibility. I don't know if those posts are credible

but it seems reasonable to me

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Sure seems like a good probability........

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/archive/2010/05/will_hurricanes_spread_gulf_oi.shtml

What we don't know:

-There is the possibility that hurricane force winds could lift oil off the sea surface and send it airborne in a blowing oily sea spray. If the oil and dispersant is aerosolized, it could be carried far inland and become a threat to crops and human health. We don't know what kind of wind speeds it would take to do this, and how far the toxic oily spray could travel. This is likely a worst case scenario.

-Will the Gulf Loop Current tap into the oil slick and drive it around Florida and toward the east coast? This may increase the likelihood of a hurricane impact over an oil slicked area.



Bottom line: A hurricane over a major oil spill has never happened before in human history. We are literally in uncharted waters here. This is like a big lab experiment that may take place over the next 6 months. We just don't know how an oil slick this size and hurricanes will interact.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

more at

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/25/94809/gulf-oil-spill-plus-hurricane.html

BILOXI — If a storm passes through an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, it could spray oil on the beach and inland when it makes landfall, weather experts say.

"One of the ways we could get more oil on shore is for a strong hurricane or tropical storm that would bring the oil on shore," said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and creator of Weather Underground.

"Also, if it's a strong storm, it could bring oil inland, which could do more damage to the ecosystem."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/25/94809/gulf-oil-spill-plus-hurricane.html#ixzz0p04H8tJi


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aT6DhRX99OXk
Gulf Faces ‘Difficult Reality’ of Storm-Whipped Oil (Update1)
Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A

By Brian K. Sullivan

May 21 (Bloomberg) -- As oil, tar balls and dead wildlife wash up on the coast of Louisiana from a leaking well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, another threat looms on the horizon -- hurricane season, which officially starts June 1.

“It is a very difficult reality for people to fathom right now,” said Courtney Howell, 32, the executive director of Bayou Grace Community Services in Chauvin, Louisiana. “They know how big this threat is, but trying to think about that on top of a hurricane is too much to bear.”

Forecasters are calling for 14 to 18 storms with sustained winds of at least 39 miles (62 kilometers) per hour to form in the Atlantic before Nov. 30. Sitting in the Gulf is the slick created by the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, leased by BP Plc from Transocean Ltd.

“It’s a huge mess and the liabilities are in the billions possibly the tens of billions,” said Gregory W. Slayton, an adjunct professor and expert on reinsurance at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in Hanover, New Hampshire. “This is a failure of risk management of epic proportions.”

If Storm Hits

If one or more storms hit the slick before making landfall, work on plugging the leak would have to stop and oil may be pushed miles inland, soiling beaches and marshes or even spreading all over the Gulf, said Barry Keim, Louisiana’s climatologist and a professor at Louisiana State University.

Waves of about 25 feet can come with a tropical storm and 50 to 75 feet with a hurricane, Keim said.

“If we do get a storm, even a tropical storm, it is going to hamper all these efforts to try to cope with the spill,” Keim said. “You can’t put people out there under those circumstances. Any boom that you put down is rendered virtually useless.”

A storm that took a track similar to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 would also push oil into Lake Pontchartrain, on the northern edge of New Orleans, Keim said. Chauvin is in Terrebonne Parish, where the ocean rose by 9 feet during hurricanes Gustav in 2008 and Rita in 2005, Howell said.

[CoffeeCat]

5. Thanks for taking the time...

...to post those articles and all of the links.

Very interesting and disconcerting.

I appreciate the info BrklynLiberal. :hi:

[BrklynLiberal]

9. De nada..

:thumbsup: :hi:

[skeptical cynic]

3. A hurricane of tropical storm would drive more oil inland

Storm surge, waves...

I assume that to the degree salt water is normally picked up and deposited inland, so will be the oil.

[rurallib]

4. I talked with my science teacher daughter about this a month ago

We don't know.
I live in Iowa ( big, big farms). A lot of our moisture pulls up from the Gulf on those sultry summer nights. We think it would depend on how big and cohesive the oils drops are.

[MadMaddie]

6. If we look at Katrina and Hugo I would say there is a high

probability of it happening.

I am no expert though your daughter is very smart!!

[Ruby the Liberal]

7. No one knows

I have seen opinions stating that the oil will snuff a hurricane and opinions that it will blow oil everywhere. All from weather sites.

They just don't know is what I gathered.

Congrats to your daughter for knowing to ask!

[BadgerKid]

8. I think basically yes.

It could be worse, too, because by that time some of the more volatile compounds in the oil (compounds like hexane, octane, etc.) could have evaporated into the atmosphere, making the oil more tar-like if it blows ashore. A scarier notion to me is having dispersant plus oil splash ashore and not only cover things but seep into the water table. If it is the case that the dispersant is tuned to combining with oil under ocean salinity conditions, then globs of oil (plus dispersant) landing in fresh water would be a different ball game.

[woodsprite]

10. In 1979 there was a large oil spill in the southern Gulf

A few hurricanes tracked through that and 'supposedly' the hurricanes were not that affected by the spill where they spread oil up over Texas and Louisiana. Hurricanes Bob and Claudette passed through. The date of the oil spill was 7/9/1979. It wasn't capped until early 1980. I haven't researched it any further, and that info came from Accuweather, so I want to actually verify it with other references.

Edited to add that they probably weren't using dispersants then either.

[Jamastiene]

11. Sounds like your daughter is thinking like I've been thinking.

I think is going to be an even more horrendous hurricane season because of the spill. Even if it doesn't pick the oil up and dump it inland, the disturbance in the ocean will spread it a lot further than it has already spread on its own.

[Individualist]

12. Another question is whether a hurricane would pick up that toxic dispersant

and drop it inland.

[Journeyman]

13. Slate.com asked the same question. Here's what they found. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2253834

Hurricane vs. Oil Slick
What would happen if a tropical storm hit the oil floating in the Gulf?
By Chris Mooney
Posted Friday, May 21, 2010, at 5:24 PM ET

BP claims to be capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day from the leaking well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, but more continues to gush into the water. Meanwhile, the annual hurricane season begins on June 1, and some scientists are predicting an above-average year with 15 named storms and eight hurricanes (PDF). It sounds like a deadly combination—but what would actually happen if a storm like Katrina tracked across the spill in the Gulf?

It could make things even worse. At least one forecast team puts the chance of a strong hurricane hammering some part of the Gulf Coast this year at 44 percent, and any such storm would threaten to disrupt ongoing containment or environmental protection measures. In an absolute worst-case scenario, powerful hurricane winds might drive the oil slick towards land and push some of it ashore with the ensuing storm surge.
Much depends on the angle at which the storm crosses the slick. In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricanes rotate counterclockwise, with the largest storm surge occurring where the winds blow in the direction the storm as a whole is traveling—that's in front of the eye and off to the right. (Meteorologists worry over a hurricane's dangerous "right-front quadrant.") So if a powerful storm approached the slick from the southwest, say, its most potent winds would push the oil forward, instead of sweeping it off to the side and out of the storm's path. If the storm then plowed into the Gulf Coast, you'd expect an oily landfall.

The strength, movement, and size of the storm would also make a difference. Fortunately, the height of the Atlantic hurricane season, featuring the strongest storms, doesn't arrive until August. We might reasonably hope to have cleaned up the oil by that point.

So the storm could move the slick. Could the slick affect the storm? Hurricanes draw their energy from the evaporation of warm seawater—that's why they occur over the summer and into the fall. Given that fact, you might think that oil on the surface of the ocean would interfere with a hurricane's access to its power source. Indeed, some have proposed to combat hurricanes by coating the ocean surface with an oily substance (not crude oil, of course) in order to reduce evaporation and quench a storm's strength.

More. Much more.