The governor of Louisiana has declared a state of emergency. Good. Residents of New Orleans and the surrounding areas need to realize now just how serious the threat from Hurricane Katrina really is. Much of the media seems convinced that this is still exclusively a Florida issue, which is just not true. Drudge’s headline is “Katrina could be Cat. 4 at second Fla. strike,” which is ridiculous, considering the current expected landfall is along the Alabama/Mississippi border, and that’s on the eastern edge of the computer-model guidance. That’s not to say a Florida landfall isn’t still possible — it certainly is — but people need to be making preparations RIGHT NOW all along the northern Gulf coast, especially New Orleans.
UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! Scroll down for my complete coverage of Katrina. Also, click here to read about what the hurricane could do to New Orleans if she’s strong enough and makes a direct hit on the city. Bottom line: tens of thousands could die.
Here’s a look at the computer-model guidance right now:
Remember, the worst-case scenario is “a hurricane moving in from due south of the city.” And that’s what the computer models are forecasting right now. Check out the GFS.
My wild guess? Katrina will spare New Orleans — making landfall west of the city, over the central parishes (a la Andrew).
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Categories: Hurricane Katrina
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August 26th, 2005 at 11:27:56 pm
The Tropical cyclone heat potential map shows the worst zone just south of New Orleans. Its hot and deep. Cat 4 might be understating it. Andrew ran over such a hot spot right before it surged to Cat 5.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/cyclone/data/go.html
The maximum potential intensity maps also show the same story. A zone centered on New Orleans and extending a hundred miles out has the potential for 800MB central pressures. It basically says the same thing - its a lot of hot water.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/hurpot.html
Finally, the various real time models for location and wind speed of Katrina show a rapid acceleration in hurricane intensity which follows from the previous two graphs.
http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/storm.html
This latter plot shows a wide variation in model guidance with a large variation in between models and within the models themselves which suggests that the “normal” NHC skill in predicting where and how a storm will behave is not going to apply here.
Particularly disturbing is the ensemble forecast which has Katrina exploding in force as it accelerates towards land.
Examining the chatter on Katrina in the NWS discussions shows a spike in comments in the TX, LA, and OK weather centers. The experts are wide awake on this. Normally the local forecasters follow NHC guidance on this, but all are voicing concern.
http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/tx/discussion.html
Bottom line- If I were living on the Gulf Coast, I be getting ready NOW.
August 27th, 2005 at 12:42:21 am
That first link seems to answer my question above. Thanks!