Re: Katrina jogs east -- The Big Easy lives to party on


dkomo wrote:
> Robert Grumbine wrote:
> > In article <jtmdnTkOhtyzVIjeRVn-qw@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
> > dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >>Robert Grumbine wrote:
> >>
> >>>In article <df3gme$s32$4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> >>>Bobby D. Bryant <bdbryant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, "Dan Luke" <c172rg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>"*Hemidactylus*" wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>It does seem to me, subjectively, that there's a trend towards more
> >>>>>>activity in my neck of the woods too. I vaguely recall David back in
> >>>>>>79
> >>>>>>and being evacuated for that. I didn't remember David being too bad in
> >>>>>>its local aftermath, but there were some branches and trees down. It
> >>>>>>was a Cat 2 I think when it hit us. That was a long time ago and the
> >>>>>>only storm of note in my childhood.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Same here. Born and raised in Houston, I was at ground zero for one
> >>>>>major storm in 43 years, and less than a half dozen minimal hurricanes
> >>>>>and tropical storms. In the last 15 years in Mobile, I've experienced
> >>>>>five hurricanes and four tropical storms, plus enough wind from storms
> >>>>>hitting the Florida panhandle to knock out my power three more times.
> >>>>>Something ain't right, I tell ya!
> >>>>
> >>>>ISTM that more are hitting Florida and the TexMex border than what used
> >>>>to happen, and fewer are hitting the mid- and upper Texas coast.
> >>>>
> >>>>(Anyone have *facts* about the historical distribution, to substitute
> >>>>for my ISTMs?)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Insofar as you can allow for changes in observing (more people living
> >>>on the coast, better comms, better observing methods, etc.) there is
> >>>apparently no trend in hurricane frequency or intensity. Bill Gray
> >>>and Chris Landsea (a former student of Gray's) are two names to search
> >>>on. See also the IPCC report, http://www.ipcc.ch/. The dollar cost
> >>>of damage has exploded, but that's mostly a matter of more stuff being
> >>>built in easily hurricane-damaged areas.
> >>>
> >>> For the Florida vs. upper Texas observation, depending on your
> >>>time scales you're correct. There is, apparently, an
> >>>oscillation as to where the hurricanes tend to aim. Andrew marked
> >>>the end (Gray was saying in 1992 or 3, when he was talking at my
> >>>work) of an about 25 year period of few or no strong hurricanes
> >>>hitting Florida. He expected then that the swing he expected,
> >>>correctly as it has developed, towards more Florida hurricanes
> >>>would produce tremendous damage totals as so much building had
> >>>been done on the expectation from the previous 25 years that
> >>>'hurricanes don't hit Florida any more'.
> >>>
> >>> The trend, or lack thereof, is a pretty hot matter in the
> >>>hurricane community. If you incite my peeve of a previous
> >>>note (and this is the source of my peeve) and ascribe all
> >>>of hurricane formation to sea surface temperature (sst), then
> >>>in a warming world we certainly expect to see more hurricanes
> >>>and stronger ones. The warming already observed, if sst were
> >>>the be-all end-all of hurricanes, would probably be enough to
> >>>have produced a detectable trend. But no trend, so either
> >>>sst isn't as overwhelming, our observations aren't as good as we
> >>>thought, or 'other'. There are, in truth, a number of other
> >>>factors in hurricane formation, and it isn't obvious that they
> >>>are necessarily going to change in the direction of increased
> >>>hurricane formation.
> >>>
> >>
> >>I caught a brief interview on one of the cable new channels yesterday.
> >>The guy being interviewed, whose name I don't recall, was some sort of
> >>expert on climate change. He stated that only 10% of the variation in
> >>hurricane intensity is due to sea surface temperatures. He also stated
> >>that globally there has been no noticeable trend in hurricance/cyclone
> >>frequency and intensity over decades.
> >>
> >>Another tidbit I caught on NPR Monday was that the small rise in sst due
> >>to global warming is completely negligible compared to the multi-decade
> >>Atlantic hurricane cycle.
> >>
> >>Still, I'd love to see an explanation of what climatic and oceanographic
> >>factors combined to make Katrina such an ass kicker of a hurricane. So
> >>far I haven't found one.
> >
> >
> > You probably won't. She wasn't.
> >
> > Seriously -- Katrina was a cat 5 hurricane for a while, and
> > nudged just under that to a strong cat 4 at landfall. These are
> > _normal_ storm levels. cat 4 and 5 hurricanes have struck in the
> > Caribbean and central america before, dropped greater rain loads
> > before, washed the faces of entire mountain ranges to the sea
> > (the one that stalled in recent years and just pounded its area),
> > and levelled entire cities and large portions of countries. Such
> > things don't make the US news except in the tepid 'something bad
> > happened to some country you don't care about' way they cover
> > such things (because that's also their market's level of interest).
> > _This_ is what has been happening to those other countries,
> > minus the stupidity of building the major city below sea level,
> > which takes too much money for them to emulate.
> >
> > Most of the major 'ass kicking' was that people and things were in
> > the path waiting to be hit. The storm itself was not particularly
> > special, and such storms _will_ happen again.
>
> I beg to differ. Katrina *was* special in its ass kicking ability.
> Time and again the news channels had interviews with people who stated
> that they had been through hurricane Camille and that was a cakewalk
> compared to Katrina. One woman pointed to a spot hundreds of yards back
> down toward the beach and said that was as far as Camille's storm surge
> had gotten. Katrina's traveled *much* further. Old houses that had come
> through Camille just fine were totally destroyed by Katrina.

You do realize that the two hurricanes did not hit at the exact
same place on the coast?

An amazing things about hurricanes is that while they are huge
in many ways, their most extreme damage can be fairly local.
Sure, 200 miles of coastline get high winds but the highest
winds and the greatest storm surge can be restricted to a
few tens of miles of coast.

This creates problems in perception. There will be people
who had the eye travel over them who are pretty sure
they saw the worst of it all. They didn't. Yes they survived
the hurricane but they didn't see the worst of it. Their
stories of survival make people think they can roll the dice
and either dodge the worst or survive just like so and so did.


> This
> morning I saw a report from one of the Gulf Coast towns that indicated
> that flood waters had traveled a *mile and a half* from the sea and
> wiped out strong buildings.
>
> Camille was a cat 5 and Katrina a cat 4 when it hit land. So what was
> so special about Katrina? Certainly one factor was its huge size.
> Perhaps that was why it was able to generate such a tremendous storm
> surge. These are the questions I want answered.
>
> Stronger storms will
> > also happen (irrespective of climate change).
> >
> > Are we, as a nation, going to learn anything from this?

> Perhaps how to detect the intensity of storm surges while they are still
> building up out in the ocean. Should be similar to tsunami detection.
>
> Personally, I'd like a *complete* explanation of how Katrina progressed
> from a dinky storm over Florida to become the monster it eventually became.

The storm surge was predicted to potentially be about 25-28 feet as of
Sat. The estimates dropped it to 20-25 feet as of early Sun. with
significant variability possible. Some of the wave height monitors
went off line later Sunday. All this I recall from casual monitoring
of the news.

Even before Katrina hit Florida, the models were predicting that
it could gain significantly in strength once it hit the Gulf of
Mexico. Even when it was heading due West, the models had it
making a sharp right and heading, first into the florida pan
handle and later into New Orleans.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al122005.discus.011.shtml?ALL

HURRICANE KATRINA DISCUSSION NUMBER 11
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
5 AM EDT FRI AUG 26 2005
...
INDICATIONS ARE THAT KATRINA WILL BE A DANGEROUS HURRICANE IN
THE NORTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO WITHIN THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.
THIS SEEMS EVEN MORE LIKELY NOW GIVEN ITS CURRENT STRENGTH EMERGING
AGAIN OVER WATER. AS KATRINA MOVES FARTHER NORTH IN THE EASTERN
GULF OF MEXICO... ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS SHOULD ONLY BECOME MORE
CONDUCIVE FOR STRENGTHENING AS A LARGE UPPER LEVEL ANTICYCLONE
DOMINATES OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST IS CLOSE
TO THE SHIPS GUIDANCE IN BRINGING KATRINA TO 90 KT BY 72 HOURS....
BUT THIS COULD BE CONSERVATIVE SINCE THE GFDL AND GFDN FORECAST A
MAJOR HURRICANE. IT IS CERTAINLY POSSIBLE THAT KATRINA COULD
ATTAIN MAJOR HURRICANE STATUS BEFORE MAKING LANDFALL SOMEWHERE ON
THE NORTHERN GULF COAST.

.

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