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To: jeffers
Nice summary. Thanks for the additional details as well. Where did you get the information? I'd like to read more. Although I'm not that kind of engineer, I am an engineer, so such stuff is interesting by itself, just on a technical basis.

Before you run too far with this, if you are looking for culprits, give it a day or so. I have this feeling that some.....revelations....are inbound.

But you're such a tease too. :)

24 posted on 09/18/2005 8:57:17 AM PDT by El Gato
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To: El Gato

I'm not teasing ayone, scouts honor. After a storm like this, it takes several days for enough anecdotal evidence to build up to even begin asking the right questions. Then you start searching (meanwhile more data is coming in, so you have to keep up with that too), and the search process starts with viewing and discarding a great deal of chaff before you ever start getting to the meatier issues.

Then comes the point in time when you find the motherlode, a database, raw information, no spin included. It takes a little bit of time to spool up, to understand and organize what you've been given, and then begins the long process of hauling it in, plugging it into the big picture, and working your way around the...perimeter...of the problem.

At some point you have gained enough of the big picture to realize that you are on the downhill side of the slope, that more of the project has been completed than what remains. Then you can take a chance on predicting when you might be able to disseminate the collated data, and the conclusions drawn from it.

However, even once on the downhill slope, certain things have become obvious, and if, at that point in time, you see misconceptions being bandied around....well, you let it be known that this or that POV probably doesn't fit the data at hand, without jumping the gun and spreading false information based on a partial assessment yourself.

Given that...

The water in Lake Pontchartrain dropped very slowly. On Flood Monday, the Lake was around 5 feet above normal, which put it at 6 feet above sea level. By the time the water equalized, achieved the same levels inside the breaches as outside, the Lake had only dropped to 3 feet above normal, 4 feet above sea level.

Even though I pointedly haven't mentioned the Industrial Canal levels in this post, I will say that the description of why the water was flowing out of the 9th ward breach would greatly benefit from the inclusion of an additional body of data which hasn't really made the mainstream media yet.

For starters, take a look at post 40 from this thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1482715/posts?page=40#40

and then scan this one start to finish:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1484668/posts

The first link includes an anecdotal timeline, and the broad picture of the dynamics of the storm's hydraulics, what water moved from where to where, when. The second begins to ask the questions I'm working on answering definitively now. Since both will need to have been assimilated to utilize what is coming, and since you asked for more info, this kills two birds with one stone and gets you a jump on what is yet to come.


26 posted on 09/18/2005 9:27:13 AM PDT by jeffers
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