5-day TS wind prediction
Posted on 08/28/2005 8:02:59 AM PDT by Smogger
Katrina now a category 5, still in flux "KATRINA IS EXPECTED TO BE A DEVASTING CATEGORY FOUR OR FIVE HURRICANE AT LANDFALL."
That's the special statement from the National Hurricane Center this morning.
Here are some more facts from a story I wrote about New Orleans about six months after Tropical Storm Allison struck Houston:
It's been 36 years since Hurricane Betsy buried New Orleans 8 feet deep. Since then a deteriorating ecosystem and increased development have left the city in an ever more precarious position. Yet the problem went unaddressed for decades by a laissez-faire government, experts said.
"To some extent, I think we've been lulled to sleep," said Marc Levitan, director of Louisiana State University's hurricane center.
Allison dumped a mere 5 inches on New Orleans, nearly overwhelming the city's pump system. If an Allison-type storm were to strike New Orleans like it did Houston, or a Category 3 storm or greater with at least 111 mph winds, the results would be cataclysmic, New Orleans planners said.
"Any significant water that comes into this city is a dangerous threat," said Walter Maestri, Jefferson Parish emergency management director.
"Even though I have to plan for it, I don't even want to think about the loss of life a huge hurricane would cause."
The bottom of the bowl in New Orleans is 14 feet below sea level. Katrina's winds are now near 160 mph. Pray for the city and its people.
NOTE: I mentioned earlier that FEMA identified the three potentially worst catastrophes to hit the U.S. in 2000. One was a hurricane like this in New Orleans. A reader below asked for the other two. They were a massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.
They should rename Katrina to Camille II.
The potential for human carnage is so great here that I fear the war, politics, and all related subjects will be knocked out of the headlines for quite a while. Pray for the people down there.
This hurricane could be tough on the economy on a national level. Lumber and fuel prices are going to rise with the water.
This afternoon I plan to buy some bottled water to send down that way if it's needed.
I pray for all in harm's way to have the good sense to get out while they still can. But I cannot help but think how Bourbon Street will look and smell much better when all is said and done.
I've posted this warning on several other Katrina threads, but I want to keep saying it for the benefit of evacuees.
Do NOT evacuate up I-49 toward Alexandria/Pineville or Shreveport/Bossier City unless you have CONFIRMED hotel reservations. Alexandria hotels are sold out for the next several days and there are already reports of price gouging. Desk clerks have been redirecting guests toward Texas and Arkansas.
Central Louisiana coverage is available online at the regularly updated Alexandria Town Talk site at this link:
http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Even though we live over 200 miles northwest of New Orleans, our phone's been ringing all morning with calls from concerned friends and relatives up North. We should be OK here in Cenla, but prayers to everyone in Katrina's path!
000
WTNT62 KNHC 281117
TCUAT2
HURRICANE KATRINA TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
615 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
...KATRINA NOW A CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE WITH 160 MPH WINDS...
...AT ABOUT 605 AM CDT... 1105Z... AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE
AIRCRAFT REPORTED THAT MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS IN HURRICANE KATRINA
HAVE INCREASED TO NEAR 160 MPH. KATRINA IS NOW AN EXTREMELY
DANGEROUS CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE
SCALE.
FORECASTER KNABB
I lived in Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian, Mississippi for a short period of time. This was after Camille not during it. Words can't describe what happened there.
I regret to say that, the Bourbon Street Canal is most probably the future. If Katrina hits New Orleans at its present strength, the city may very well not ever be rebuilt! The loss of life will probably be in the thousands unless they are forcing residents at gun-point to board evacuation buses/trucks today!
I was born in Key West and have lived through numerous hurricanes during my 6+ decades. I always "rode them out" (once even on a 30' sailboat in Tampa Bay). I would kiss my home goodbye and evacuate for this one were I located in its path!!!
If you look at that on a normal barometer, you will notice that the needle has to go around backwards completely for the reading. In other words it goes off of the scale on the low part.
Storm aims for heart of U.S. oil industry
Gas prices may jump sharply
Sunday, August 28, 2005
By BEN RAINES
Staff Reporter
Oil traders closed business on Friday confident that Hurricane Katrina would hit too far to the east to affect the price of oil and natural gas.
That was before the National Hurricane Center shifted the storm's possible path to a more westerly track that slices through the nation's main oil artery and could result in record prices for a barrel of crude within a matter of days.
If Hurricane Katrina holds true to predictions and tracks north through the toe of Louisiana's boot, much of the nation's oil and natural gas infrastructure will be exposed to 140 mile per hour winds, 30- to 50-foot waves, and water current speeds of around 20 knots all the way from the surface to the sea floor.
"This storm is going to pass through the meat of the oil and gas fields. The whole country will feel it, because it's going to cripple us and the country's whole economy," said Capt. Buddy Cantrelle with Kevin Gros Offshore, which supplies rigs via a fleet of large crew vessels.
Nation's oil center
The equipment located in the storm's likely path includes the bulk of the nation's oil and gas production platforms, thousands of miles of pipelines and -- perhaps most importantly for national gasoline prices -- much of the country's refinery capacity. In addition, the south Louisiana coastline serves as the entry point for around a third of the nation's imported oil.
Last year's Hurricane Ivan, which came ashore along the Alabama-Florida line moving through an area mostly devoid of rigs, caused widespread destruction both above and below water in the fields off Alabama and eastern Louisiana. Floating rigs were found drifting hundreds of miles from the wells they had been plumbing, while some rigs with legs fixed to the bottom toppled into the sea. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pipelines were tangled and torn to pieces by sea currents and massive underwater mudslides.
The full extent of the damage wasn't known for days and the Gulf lost nearly 30 percent of production capacity for well over a month, which drove prices for oil up $12 a barrel within a few weeks. Prices for both oil and natural gas surged upward and stayed high for months.
Major threat
But that storm was just a baby tap on the Gulf's infrastructure compared with the blow some in the oil industry are predicting from Katrina.
"No matter where it hits at this point, it's going to hit a lot of rigs, and the whole country is going to notice," Cantrelle said. "And if this thing comes up through Port Fourchon like they're calling for right now, well, that's where 30 percent of the country's oil comes ashore. They are forecasting 40-foot seas for Fourchon."
Port Fourchon, located at the tail end of a barely there two-lane highway just a foot or two above sea level, sits exposed to the sea almost like an island lighthouse thanks to the loss of thousands of acres of marsh that once surrounded it. The port complex -- like that skinny strip of a highway now so low and close to the water that fishermen use parts of the shoulder as a miles-long boat ramp -- has been rendered ever more vulnerable by the massive erosion of Louisiana's coastal marshes.
"A storm of this magnitude, we're expecting some serious damage here," C.J. Cheramie with the Fourchon Port Police said Saturday afternoon. "They started evacuating the rigs once the storm got into the Gulf. We haven't seen any helicopter traffic in awhile, suggesting that everyone has made it in. We are evacuating inland. We'll try to reopen the port as quickly as we can. ... there's just no way to predict what will happen with a storm this size."
Cheramie said he hadn't heard about a helicopter crash reported earlier in the day. Cantrelle, with the crew boat company, told the Register that one of his boats picked up all three passangers unharmed after their copter was forced to ditch into the ocean on its way back to shore.
Thousands of the 5,000 rig platforms in the Gulf are located in the predicted path of the storm, and many of them are aging. In previous storms, it has been the older rigs that most often end up wrecked.
"Lot of these jack-up rigs, we've been towing them around for 25 or 30 years. These things are getting to be pretty old," said Bobby Autin, with Louisiana International Marine, a rig towing company. "The storm shifted so fast nobody really had a chance to do much but get the people off the rigs. We didn't move any. I sent all of my boats to Texas."
Lots of work ahead
Autin said that as soon as Katrina makes landfall he will scramble his boats back toward Fourchon because he expects there will be a lot of work.
"There are always going to be rigs in trouble after a storm like this. We may have to tow some, or some we will even hold in place if they've tipped over until they can get to them to work on," Autin said. "We were all stunned earlier this year by Cindy when it came through. It was just a tropical storm and it did a lot of damage offshore. They're saying this storm is on the same track. Imagine what it's going to be like if a category 5 comes rolling through these rigs."
Excellent find!
I and Mrs. Lurkin (weather channel junkie) thank you)
Been there and done that several times on a 36' sailboat. The most exciting one was in the Bay of Biscay riding out a Force 12. My windspeed indicator was pegged at 60 knots for eight hours but it was much worse than that. The waves averaged at about 3/4 the height of my 50 foot mast with some higher and breaking. At one point, when the wind was really blowing, the wave tops were blown off and the ocean almost went flat. We took three knock downs and rolls of 100 degrees or more. I learned the true meaning of fear and terror that day and night.
Thanks for the link!
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