Hurricane Ida could be close to Cat 4, dump up to 20“ of rain in S.E. Louisiana
nola.com
nola.com
If you're in New Orleans, I recommend considering an evacuation if you have somewhere to go.
The best way to describe rainfall is by... giving the rates and cumulative amount of rainfall. Flash flood warnings exist when excessive rain causes... flash flooding.
As for direction: hurricanes are circles. Everyone knows the east eyewall is the worst part.
Idk what else you'd want to incorporate/describe that's useful. Except that people that haven't been through bad hurricanes always think what they experience must be worse than the category of the storm.
Eg: Sandy not being hurricane strength when it came ashore, so they made up the term "Superstorm Sandy" because "just" tropical storm somehow lessons their experience.
I wasn't necessarily saying there was a problem with the system. However, when these terms/systems are used in the primary means of communicating dangers to the public (mass media: tv, radio, web) then they are doing a disservice. For a layman, the only difference between a cat 4 and a cat 5 hurricane is that the cat 5 is worse. Yet, for different areas, the category doesn't actually speak of the dangers. And, you risk people thinking "oh, I was in a category 4 before" and not realizing the potential of a 'lower' storm depending on the conditions.
I think the recent flooding in NY from the remnants of Hurricane Ida speak to that.
Honestly, I think it's a little incredible that someone might think they would be prepared. The city was woefully unprepared for Katrina, and the only cities I can think of that might have a more robust history of political corruption and wasted tax dollars are Chicago and Washington, D.C.. Of course nothing has changed and they're entirely unprepared for a hurricane.
https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Portals/56/docs/PAO/Brochures...
"Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was authorized and funded to design and construct the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System for southeast Louisiana. The Corps strengthened and improved virtually all of the levees, floodwalls, pump stations and surge barriers that form the 133-mile Greater New Orleans perimeter system. The system that is in place now is stronger and more resilient than it has ever been in the area’s history. The new system is capable of defending against a 100-year level storm."
"The Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) is fully funded at $14.45 B."
"Risk cannot totally be eliminated; everyone shares responsibility for buying down risk through insurance, zoning and building codes, coastal protection and restoration, and complying with mandatory evacuations." My emphasis on this last statement from the pamphlet I reference. Everyone is responsible for working together to derisk.
Lets see what that money bought.
Also glad to see central NJ represented on HN!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-30/new-orlea...
Not to downplay the corruption problem, but if the gulf states prepared for every incoming storm, they'd be in a constant state of evacuation, and nobody would get anything done during hurricane season.
Oh, and evacuations kill people in themselves (Car accidents, the sick and infirm, etc, etc). Do too many false alarm evacuations, and you'll kill more people than the storms would have.
I can vouch for this. Deadlocked roads with cars with nowhere to go in the middle of summer heat for hours or even days on end. Limited gas, limited food and water, no proper medical care. Not a safe environment. Evacuations aren't in any way risk free.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270472303_Deaths_re...
There were 111 deaths related to Hurricane Rita in the state of Texas. The three direct deaths were from wind blown trees. A majority of the deaths (90/108 or 83.3%) were related to the mass evacuation process.
Private insurance rates should increase and drive out residents. Business losses should drive out both business and residents.
Without subsidies, I suspect the market would increase the COL such that it would lower the population.
They definitely have corrupt politicians though, no doubt about that.
And no amount of drainage can do much when you are on the east side of a powerful storm. You can have pipes from here to the moon but there's nowhere for that water to go. Storm surge is concerning to the people in the know for a reason.
All of that flows out through the Mississippi.
I'm not saying it's worse than the storm surge. But it's going to be affecting the city for much longer. (As well as multiple locatons upstream.)
General corruption/waste is another matter. Recycling in Chicago right now is notably inefficient, for example (something like a 9% clearance rate).
That's not really the question, though. The question is if you'd be surprised if they didn't.
I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that Chicago was unable to clear snow from a 100-year snow event because the funds were mismanaged or something similar. That sounds entirely within character.
I wasn't surprised when I heard about the ongoing problems with the Texas power grid, either. I was horrified by the deaths, of course, but did it surprise me that an for-profit utility market didn't result in a robust infrastructure? No. Infrastructure and utilities don't work well under those sort of economic pressures. I wasn't surprised it was fragile.
Former Mayor Michael Bilandic famously lost reelection in 1979 after botching snow removal following the large blizzard of that same year. Ever since, snow removal has been one of the city government's core competencies; even the quite intense Groundhog Day blizzard of 2011 was well-handled, though it managed to shut down LSD for a bit. There's plenty of mismanagement and corruption in city government to go around (the police department is famously corrupt and incompetent and shows no signs of turning that around), but snow removal is one thing that can generally be counted on here.
I guess if you’ve never lived near Chicago or visited in the winter, that might be reasonable. But they take snow extremely seriously. Like so seriously it’s funny. It truly is. The “mismanagement of funds” is true - they spend a lot of money on snow management.
They have over 200 snowplows, and every single garbage truck has a plow attachment so it can be put into plowing service, most of the city pickup truck fleet as well, etc.
[1] > Department of Streets & Sanitation (DSS) coordinates Chicago's snow and ice control efforts from Snow Command. This high tech command center allows us to access and view a network of cameras and pavement sensors to get a quick and accurate assessment of our pavement conditions citywide. We track incoming weather systems via Doppler radar and through constant communication with our meteorological consultants and the National Weather Service. And we combine all of these technologies along with the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) on all of our trucks to strategically deploy our snow personnel to up to over 280 snow routes.
People used to claim that the streets that alderman lived on got plowed first whenever it snowed, so the city put GPS on everything and built a plow tracking website, so you can see where everything is in realtime, any time it snows. [2]
[1] https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/streets/provdrs/street...
[2] https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/streets/supp_info/plow...
Late August / early September, by marked contrast, is peak hurricane season.
Which most people don't realize, because it also rains so much in the summer. But it's so hot in the summer, that evaporation out paces the rain.
The driest months are Sept-Oct, which is peak hurricane season.
(One of our major industries is tourism, though a lot of that money gets siphoned off to the pockets of the tourist board. Mardi Gras 2020 was the last gasp of that before covid. We normally have a shit-ton of festivals all year round that draw people in to spend money. They've all been cancelled.)
And the roads are always sinking, the city's built on swamp. There will never be a time where the roads (or something under them) do not need maintenance. I'm sure the money crunch ain't helping that get done in a sane timeframe either. Also "hurricane season" is like half the year normally, and the past several years have had it well underway in the preceding month.
No- voltage would be easy to change with a transformer.
It's that many pumps run on 25hz, not the 60hz of the power grid.
They have to change frequencies via mechanical methods (motor-gearing-generator) or generate their own power via on-site turbines.
It's because many of these pumps are literally older than the electricity grid.
Why?
Sounds like turbine failures?
Recall the student that built a detailed map of critical telco infra and was censured by the Gov because it contained "secret" infa info even though it was all from public record.
Infra is a joke in the US. Pay attention to whom the funds go from the infra bill...
Especially on the micro level: recall that MANY Congress officials wives created LLCs during the TARP 2008 "bailout" to receive funds with no consequence.
We are seeing the same.
We need a live update on budget appropriations
Senators wives were caught creating LLC "foundations" to funnel money from the bailouts to their fake orgs.
It happens, does happen and will continue to happen.
The reality is that, from the article...
>Other nearby stations are expected to have enough capacity to pick up the slack
At the individual pump level...
> 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.
The reality is there will always be rain/winds/damage from hurricanes, but how is a place supposed to be ready for another Katrina every couple years now?
It sounds like a constant state of disaster-rebuilding-disaster-rebuilding…
They are usually not working, so maintenance should be easy.
...which it is because 96 of the 99 pumps are currently operational.
This post seems like fearmongering. Out of 24 pumping station, one is out, two are at partial capacity, and the other 21 are working at full capacity.
At the individual pump level...
> 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.
"Sunday is the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina."
https://cwcgom.aoml.noaa.gov/cgom/OceanViewer/index_phod.htm...
edit: the sea surface temps are nuts
Can you imagine what these temps will look like if the Gulf Stream slows/shuts downs as predicted?
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...
Here's the "floater" that stays overhead of the storm as it comes ashore:
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/floater.php?stormid=AL...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/louisiana-covid-...
2,600 hospitalisations presently.
With catastrophic hurricanes, though, what I've noticed is that we have lots of refugees (and deaths, in the case of Katrina) compared to hospitalizations. New Orleans can also turn the large arena areas (e.g. Superdome, Zephyr Field) into mass casualty and refugee areas immediately following the storm, which should help with keeping the hospitals from getting overrun.
These tend to exacerbate any extant public health situations. Given general incompetence concerning Covid in the Southern US generally, I've certain concerns.
What was seen in 2020 was a winter wave which kicked off with Sturgis in South Dakota, then radiated outwards, toward the coasts and south, over the course of the winter, peaking around 10 Januare 2021. I've speculated that mass events, travel, return to school, and greater indoor activity (heating season in the north, as opposed to cooling season in the south) also contributed.
This year the US might se a dual hotspot originating in Sturgis and Louisiana, both radiating outward.
Something to keep tabs on.
Is there any actual evidence for this?
Contact tracing + whole genomic sequencing proves that these infections in Minnesota came from the Rally, despite those individuals never attending the rally.
Those individuals then passed COVID19 to others in Minnesota. Etc. etc.
> Following a 10-day motorcycle rally in South Dakota attended by approximately 460,000 persons, 51 confirmed primary event-associated cases, 21 secondary cases, and five tertiary cases were identified in Minnesota residents.
That's a drop in the bucket compared to the community spread in the US in 2020.
I'm not saying Sturgis was a great idea, but I am saying that the winter wave would have happened regardless.
What the study does show is that the Sturgis variant was epidemiologically detectable throughout Minnesota following the rally. Note that the total number of samples was drawn from identified interviewed patients only, though this appears to have covered all reported cases in MN during the period (August 1 -- August 31, 2021). My understanding is that the survey was as comprehensive as could be achieved, and not a limited sampling.
During the same period, the 7-day average new-daily-case rate in Minnesota was 699--795 (rising slightly over the course of the month, observed from Worldometers). The Sturgis-linked cases were 0.4% or less of total confirmed cases.
(I'm assuming the CDC tracing was comprehensive, the paper is less than clear on this, though that appears to be the case.)
We could make numerous arguments that the study was flawed, missed cases, was incomplete, etc. All of that would be an argumment from ignorance. And though I feel there's some case to be made for suggesting the CDC undercounted, that leaves us with a weak basis for any further conclusions. Sometimes, though, in epidemiology, that's the best that can be done, and the precautionary principle kicks in: what course of action would provide the maximum benefit and least harm.
Minnesota's Winter Wave really started spiking in October of 2020. It peaked on 20 November at 7,023 NDC (7-day average). Whether or not those cases are linked to Sturgis would require sequencing of a sample and drawing inferences.
That said ...
... other evidence comes from looking at the spread of Covid-19 hot-spots throughout the US from August -- January of 2020--2021. And that did show the radiating pattern I described. I'm not certain it's associated with Sturgis, but it very much walks like a duck.
Which means that the "spread" of COVID19 from Sturgis -> Minnesota cannot be denied.
-------
http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf
Page 60 (Appendix 5) shows a nice graph showing the "trendline" of COVID19 cases ("synthetic Meade county"), vs Actual Meade county.
We can see that COVID19 cases spiked pretty hard after the Sturgis rally. Now maybe there was some "other" superspreading event happening in that area at the same time... but Occam's Razor points to the giant 400,000+ person motorcycle rally without any mask precautions going on.
---------
> That's a drop in the bucket compared to the community spread in the US in 2020.
But you're right on this front. I think the poster earlier is overstating Sturgis's importance. Sturgis is just one event, there were plenty of others with far bigger spread (February 2020 Marti Gras New Orleans, especially because no one took any precautions during that event. It was "before COVID19" was well recognized by the public)
But without a doubt, Sturgis was a superspreading event. But there were _many_ superspreading events happening all over the place, so I personally don't want to put too much importance on Sturgis alone. The fact remains that many other events continued to take place, as that region didn't want to take precautions against COVID19 in general.
All confirmed cases among Minnesota residents were reported to MDH. MDH or local public health department staff members interviewed patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection to identify exposures and persons who might have been in contact with patients during their infectious period (2 days before through 10 days after symptom onset).* To assess exposures, interviews included questions about travel and being in specific settings, such as bars or restaurants, schools, health care facilities, or events or social gatherings in the 14 days before symptom onset. During August–September 2020, MDH and local health department staff members interviewed >80% of patients with a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection.
If the survey missed cases, it wasn't for lack of trying. That's not to say it didn't miss some.
(Keep in mind I'm the person who'd suggested the relationship above.)
And however good Orleans Parish has been, that efficacy is likely to get a whole lot worse come Sunday.
That said:
- There's a clear risk.
- Taking measures against the risk would be highly advisable.
- Monitoring the aftereffects, over several months at least, is going to be necessary to draw conclusions.
I'd also like to see a compilation of Covid (or other epidemics) and the interrelationship with other widespread disasters or disturbances. The situation in Afghanistan would be one such case, where there's a sudden breakdown of what limited order did previously exist. Wildfire evacuations in the Pacific Northwest of the US & Canada would be another. There's the long slow emergency of homelessness in California (about 100,000 individuals on any given day, not sure how many are long-term or not).
Click on "Next 10 Days" near the bottom.
Windy users know about this stuff way farther in advance.
That said, Windy is very good.
My local forecasts have predicted rain for multiple days in a row, and then those days arrive to sunny skies. The same day forecasts get updated to reflect the lack of rain, and then mid-to-late afternoon storms after zero prediction of them. This summer has been a bad luck streak for forecasters.
Landfall of the eye has shifted about 40km westward, been delayed by about 6+ hours relative to the forecast 18 hours ago, and increased in intensity.
The green circle here represents where the eyewall landfall was previously forecast to occur at about noon CST. Current forecast shows landfall at Jack Stout Bay, south of Morgan City, and tracking about 40km west of New Orleans proper.
The area of landfall has been hit by several storms in the past several years, is mostly smaller settlements, and there are probably numerous already-damaged or only partially-repaired structures.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2021/08/29/1700Z/wind/surface/...
A near-westward hit could be more damaging than a direct strike, largely based on storm surge and possibly wind speeds.
What the maximal high-damage offset distance is I don't know, though 20--40km seems sufficiently close to be bad. I'd suspect a little nearer would be worse.
And I do wonder just how many more storms Nawlins and the Old River Structure have in them.
I wonder if we'll see a Michael situation, where Ida just continues to intensify as it closes in on land.
https://ocean.weather.gov/Loops/SST_GMex_SST/image_202108270...
I'm sorry, you're saying the ocean surface is hotter than a heated pool right now? What is the baseline?
~26C mean ranging from 23C in February to 30C in August.
It was really eye-opening actually.
I Don think I can recall the surface temp being less than 80 often, based on the data from my depth sonar on the boat at random times during the ‘winter’.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/primary/waves/ov...
Note the cooler temps in Ida's wake. Hurricanes pump heat from the ocean to the atmosphere.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2021/08/25/1200Z/ocean/primary...
(Time-pinned to an hour ago.)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...
If you want to join, you can download the app and go to Settings->Sensors to enable.
Here's an animation I made of Hurricane Dorian a couple years ago as it approached the coast of Florida: https://www.allclearweather.com/hurricane-dorian
And of course, there are recent scientific papers showing that this kind of data (barometric pressure from phones) could be useful in general weather forecasting to improve accuracy:
Smartphone Pressure Collection and Bias Correction Using Machine Learning: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JTECH-D-17-009...
Impacts of Assimilating Smartphone Pressure Observations on Forecast Skill during Two Case Studies in the Pacific Northwest: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WAF-D-18-0085....
Also keep in mind that a majority of the East Coast is under threat from Hurricanes. If we just abandoned any area that has been severely damaged by a hurricane, there would effectively be an unpopulated coastline from Boston to the Mexican border.
It seems like something flood insurance and building codes should get increasingly stringent about, similar to how some California fire codes started requiring houses to be built to support sheltering in place during wildfires so you didn’t have so many people evacuating and needing to rebuild as many homes. It’d be nice if that started as guaranteed annual premium increases for unsafe properties with an assistance program for primary residences which phases out based on property value.
I'd say the major threats are fallen power lines, downed trees, and CO poisoning from generator misuse. We'll get routine summer monsoons that bring more damage than some category 1 hurricanes at times, so unless it's a direct hit from a major hurricane I try not to panic too much so long as we have supplies.
That’s how you can almost literally wipe a city off the face of the earth and see it rebuilt within a decade, think Germany after WW2or London/SF/Chicago after fire and earthquakes.
New Orleans is the least shitty place to put a port on the Mississippi. Or at least it's been that since its founding. Rising sea levels and "hundred-year storms" becoming "twenty-year storms" may change that.
And also... it's home. I grew up there, left for a while, came back right before Katrina, and leaving after that ripped a chunk of my heart out that I've only started growing back after returning a couple years ago. The place is fucking magical for the 347 days out of the year we're not staring down a hurricane that might be aimed right for us. Most of them see us staring and decide to go elsewhere.
My lay take here is that the flow of the Gulf Stream tends to bend the storms to the east as they approach the coast, so you get these curveball tracks that, unfortunately, disproportionately seem to smack Louisiana and Mississippi.
Harvey came ashore further south, and so the eastward movement caught us (though that's a gross oversimplification of Harvey's actual mechanics).
The map lies.
https://medium.com/matter/louisiana-loses-its-boot-b55b3bd52...
http://samuel-warde.com/2018/10/louisiana-maps-are-all-a-lie...
https://www.businessinsider.com/real-map-louisiana-should-sc...
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCDAT4+shtml/271449...
The forecast for the river in New Orleans suggest no flooding this week.
https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=lix&gage=...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL122005_Katrina.pdf [pdf]
There are multiple factors that come into play.
There's storm surge and tides. Tides around Morgan City are pretty modest (less than 1/2 foot / 15cm total range), and will be low as the storm arrives. Storm surge forcast is 7-11 ft per NOAA. Given the extreme low-lying land, that's significant. I don't have comparative numbers for Katrina offhand.
The total rainfall amount is one. The period of time over which it falls, and where the storm goes afterward are also critical. Ida looks to be slow-moving, and is presently slated to track pretty much directly up the Mississippi river, then over the Ohio River Valley.
That means there's going to be heavy river flow coming downstream possibly for several weeks after the storm itself passes. I'd predicted and observed a similar trend when Hurricane Florence hit Wilmington, NC, in 2018, and upstream-based water flows contributed to flooding, and issues such as hog farm sludge empoundments (basically: pig shit lakes) in the region. For Louisiana, the concern is probably more petroleum refining and chemical plants.
Note that Florence hung around for days. Ida looks as if it will stick around Southern Louisiana for about 18 hours, then start accelerating to the NNE, though remaining over the drainage baisin feeding into New Orleans.
The word is that the railroad embankment acted as a temporary levee and stored a large charge of water up, until it failed. Then this impromptu lake charged right through town. It's usual for that are to flood, this was just a lot more water all at one time than usual.
There were pictures of cars filled with gravel; and that rail berm blown completely out, tracks dangling.