WATER QUALITY REPORT FOR OCT. 6, 2024

Part one of a two-part series

Major Hurricane Helene was about 200 miles due west of Fort Myers last Thursday when a wind gust of 58 mph was recorded near Estero. It was blustery. Rain bands lasting minutes to a half-hour repeated themselves. Storm surge stripped the shoreline of the tons of new sand just placed there to restore beaches lost to Hurricane Ian. The surge, combined with a late high tide, flooded backyards with canal water and created 3-foot-deep ponds at intersections along Cape Coral Parkway.

A colleague asked about the strong and large hurricane’s damage potential when it made landfall soon in Florida’s Big Bend.

The hurricane was going to ramp up to a Category 4 before making landfall, I said, but to temper that point I noted, in relative terms, Helene was going to hit in a lesser-inhabited part of Florida.

It didn’t cross my mind to think about the millions of people who live in Georgia and South Carolina and Tennessee and North Carolina, because hurricanes just don’t hold together for hundreds of miles inland once they make landfall because their supply of hurricane fuel is cut off and they die.

But Helene was a whole new type of hurricane. I’ve dubbed it an atmospheric sponge.

During her birth run from the southern Gulf of Mexico to landfall at Florida’s Big Bend, she sucked up an impossible amount of water.

Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, used satellite measurements coupled with ground readings to calculate that Hurricane Helene, coupled with some rainwater on the ground from a typical storm previously, meant 40 trillion gallons of water fell from the hurricane through last Sunday.

“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, told The Associated Press. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.’’

We have an impressive 86 billion neurons in our brains, designed to grasp anything from the answer to 1+1 to the vastness of space.

But 40 trillion of anything is too hard to imagine.

Just think: Lake Okeechobee is the second-largest lake in the nation. It’s huge. Yet the more than 725 square miles of water below the surface area contains one trillion gallons of water.

Helene held 39 more trillion gallons of water – in the air.

Forty trillion gallons of water is, without a doubt, an ungraspable amount.

That is how much those in the stricken areas of the southeastern U.S. have dealt with.

Water quantity, quality lethal

The remnants of Hurricane Helene were considered no longer tropical when the storm was near Louisville, Kentucky, at 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27, when it was forecast to stall over the Tennessee Valley for the weekend.

“Over portions of the central and southern Appalachians, Helene is expected to produce additional rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches leading to widespread total rainfall accumulations of 6 to 12 inches, with isolated totals exceeding 20 inches,” wrote the NWS in an advisory. “This rainfall will result in catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding, along with record-level river flooding in many instances. Numerous significant landslides are expected in steep terrain across the southern Appalachians.”

This blog normally focuses on the water quality and quantity issues in Southwest Florida, but sometimes the water quantity and water quality issues somewhere else in the Southeast U.S. take precedence.

That is the nearly unbelievable situation today.

A quantity of water unimaginably high caused events that resulted in nearly 200 deaths as of Friday, Oct. 4, which tops how many perished during Hurricane Ian’s rampage through Southwest Florida and points north two years ago to the week. Some 600 people are still missing from Hurricane Helene’s ravages.

Some amount of all of that water rushed down mountains and up swales and destroyed homes, schools, and businesses, washed out pipes circulating drinking water throughout the region, and created landsides that took out roads and bridges that would allow for relief aid like clean water to be more easily brought in. For now, life-saving supplies are being brought in too slowly by helicopter and by – catch this — mule teams.

That means water quality in the region includes the death, dirt, and diseases in the rivers flowing through the towns and cities the residents are forced to rely on for household water by five-gallon bucket.

If only there were thousands of those buckets filled with a smidgen of the 40 trillion gallons of clean, fresh water that fell from Hurricane Helene, the future deaths from parasites, pollutants, and places with no water at all could be avoided.

The atmospheric sponge named Hurricane Helene held so much rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero told the AP.

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that led the enormous amount of rain,” Maue, the former NOAA scientist said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6,000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”
 

Changing climate or random event?

Those who believe in global warming point to Hurricane Helene’s unimaginable strength, longevity, and ability to hold so much water as irrefutable proof of changing climatic morns for all of those who don’t share their point of view.

Those who question climate change point to Hurricane Helene’s uniqueness as undeniable proof that global warming is not a thing because the hurricane’s freakish abilities are just that: odd, not seen before, a one-off.

There is no doubt meteorologists are locked in heated debate whether Hurricane Helene was in all or in part a product of planet damage being done by its ruling inhabitants, or not.

Next week, in part two of WGCU’s Water Quality Report: Hurricane Helene Special Edition, climatologists and global warming skeptics will weigh in and square off on whether global warming and climate change had anything to do with Helene’s long-lasting abilities to act like an atmospheric sponge, or if the hurricane was a freak storm that, by its very nature, won’t happen again anytime soon.

Then again, this planet does odd things. Maybe the answer will be there isn’t one.

Right now, we join WGCU’s regularly scheduled Water Quality Report in its entirety because I, for one, need the distraction for a few minutes.

RED TIDE 

Red tide has been discovered in samples all around Pinellas County, which is the isthmus of land that is the northwestern edge of Tampa Bay. 

More than a dozen samples tested positive for red tide during the past week, ranging from background concentrations to very high offshore places such as Caladesi Island, Clearwater Beach, Redington Shores, and St. Pete Beach.

When Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida two years ago, about a week later red tide started popping up in some of the same places. Then blooms of the harmful algae moved south over the next several months, eventually causing tons of dead fish on Sanibel and Captiva islands and people coughing and sneezing at area beaches.

It was about a week before the samples were taken that Hurricane Helene ripped up Florida’s West Coast and reshaped all of the beaches along the way. Or has nutrient-polluted water running off land and back into the seas off West Florida?

SPECIAL NOTE: Stirred up water thanks to Hurricane Helene made water testing and visual observations for most other water quality issues impossible last week, so here is a summary of the week prior.

There have not been any reports of dead fish washing ashore nor any red tide-toxin-related respiratory irritation reported off Collier, Lee, or Charlotte counties.

The Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife on Sanibel Island reported five animals were brought in for care due to exposure to red tide toxins, and two died.
 

BLUE-GREEN ALGAE

The Florida Department of Health has There were no discoveries of blue-green algae in the region.

The agency reminds residents that winds and tides tend to push the components of blue-green algae around, so people in that region should be watchful for the potentially toxic bloom.
 
Lake Okeechobee shows low to moderate bloom potential on approximately xx% of the lake, primarily in The most recent satellite imagery for Lake Okeechobee shows widely scattered bloom potential on visible portions of the lake with the northern portion of the lake showing the lowest bloom potential.

The most recent satellite imagery for the Caloosahatchee estuary shows

The FDEP says it is important to remember the blue-green algae potential is subject to change due to rapidly changing environmental conditions or satellite inconsistencies.

What is red tide?

Red tide is one type of harmful algal bloom caused by high concentrations of the toxic dinoflagellate K. brevis, which is a type of microscopic algae found in the Gulf of Mexico.

Red tide typically forms naturally offshore, commonly in late summer or early fall, and is carried into coastal waters by winds and currents. Once inshore, these opportunistic organisms can use nearshore nutrient sources to fuel their growth.

Blooms typically last into winter or spring, but in some cases, can endure for more than one year.

Is red tide harmful?

K. brevis produces potent neurotoxins that can be harmful to the health of both wildlife and people. Wind and wave action can break open K. brevis cells and release toxins into the air. This is why you should monitor conditions and stay away from beaches where red tide is in bloom.

People in coastal areas can experience varying degrees of eye, nose and throat irritation during a red tide bloom. Some individuals with chronic respiratory conditions like asthma or chronic lung disease might experience more severe symptoms.

Red tide toxins can also affect the central nervous system of fish and other marine life, which can lead to fish kills.

What causes red tide?

A red tide bloom develops naturally, but recent studies have discovered mankind’s infusion of other nutrients into the mix can make the red tide last longer or get stronger. But biology (the organisms), chemistry (natural or man-made nutrients for growth) and physics (concentrating and transport mechanisms) interact to produce the algal bloom. No one factor causes the development of a red tide bloom.

What is blue-green algae?

Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, are a group of organisms that can live in freshwater, saltwater or brackish water.

Large concentrations, called blooms, can change the water color to blue, green, brown, orange or red. Some cyanobacterial blooms can look like foam, scum, or mats on the surface of freshwater lakes and ponds. As algae in a cyanobacterial bloom die, the water may smell like something with a naturally unpleasant odor has now started to rot, too.

Is blue-green algae harmful?

Different types of blue-green algal bloom species can look different and have different impacts. However, regardless of species, many types of blue-green algae can produce toxins that can make you or your pets sick if swallowed or possibly cause skin and eye irritation.

The FDEP advises staying out of water where algae is visibly present as specks or mats or where water is discolored. Pets or livestock should not come into contact with algal bloom-impacted water or with algal bloom material or fish on the shoreline. If they do, wash the animals right away.

What causes blue-green algae?

Blue-green algae blooms occur when the algae that are typically present grow in numbers more the normal. Within a few days, a bloom can cause clear water to become cloudy.

Winds tend to push the floating blooms to the shore where they become more noticeable. Cyanobacterial blooms can form in warm, slow-moving waters that are rich in nutrients. Blooms can occur at any time, but most often occur in late summer or early fall.

If any major type of water quality alert is issued, you can find the details here in WGCU’s Water Quality Report.

Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.

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