I fear the storm surge might have washed some out to sea forever in Mississippi and along the coast..Missing persons verified as truly missing might have to be done to assess the real lost in the storm count..That will take time.
I am still amazed at the height and destruction of the surge.
There are many things we'll never know about the toll of this storm . . . I also wonder if we'll ever be able to get a breakdown as between actual storm deaths and those killed by post-storm criminal activity . . .
Anyone know if there is a reliable and updated death toll count being actively maintained somewhere on the Net? It's like pulling teeth finding accurate, current info on this.
Here's what I think happened.
Camille, the previous benchmark for surge along the Gulf Coast, was a compact storm. The high surge was in a limited area because the windfield was over a limited area.
Katrina was a huge storm AND a Cat 5. It had a large fetch - or stretch of ocean over which it could generate waves and storms. That is why N'oreasters generate such high waves disproportionate to their wind intensity - they are typically very large storms and have a long fetch.
And even though Katrina weakened slightly before landfall, the water had already been put in motion, and wasn't going to slow down in relation to the drop in wind speed.
We've never had a storm with this combination of strength and size hit the US in recent history. Andrew, Camille and the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane were all fairly compact systems. So forecasters really didn't have much in the way of history to model against.