Hurricane Irene: It’s the rain
Precipitation is the underestimated, mundane, unexotic hazard of a tropical storm. No one fears rain. It is familiar, unlike a wind that gusts to 110 miles an hour or a sea that foams and rages.
But floods can be killers, their effects felt far inland. That fact was demonstrated this week as Irene, a hurricane that on paper had dwindled to a tropical storm, inundated the steep valleys of Vermont, the farmland of Upstate New York and many other places nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean.
"People aren't scared of rain; they're scared of wind," said Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor of atmospheric science who has studied hurricanes. "In most people's minds, a hurricane is principally a wind event, and if they have heavy rain — it's incidental, it's too bad."
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