Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part VIII

NOAA - NHC ^ | 29 August 2005 | NOAA - NHC

[NautiNurse]

Category 4 Hurricane Katrina is approaching landfall in Eastern Louisiana. At 4:00AM EDT the storm's center was about 90 miles south of New Orleans.

The following links are self-updating:

Public Advisory Currently published every 3 hours 5A, 8A, 11A, 2P, etc. ET
NHC Discussion Published every six hours 6A, 11A, 6P, 11P
Three Day Forecast Track
Five Day Forecast Track
Navy Storm Track
Katrina Track Forecast Archive Nice loop of each NHC forecast track for both three and five day
Forecast Models
Alternate Hurricane Models via Skeetobite
Bouy Data Louisiana/Mississippi
Buoy Data Florida

Lake Ponchartrain Real Time Water Level

Wind Speed Data

Images:

New Orleans/Baton Rouge Experimental Radar Subject to delays and outages - and well worth the wait

Mobile Long Range Radar Loop

New Orleans/Baton Rouge Radar

Ft. Polk, LA Long Range Radar Loop

Northwest Florida Long Range Radar

Storm Floater IR Loop
Storm Floater Still & Loop Options
Color Enhanced IR Loop

Other Resources:

Hurricane Wind Risk Very informative tables showing inland wind potential by hurricane strength and forward motion
Central Florida Hurricane Center
New Orleans Web Cams Loads of web cam sites here. The sites have been very slow due to high traffic
New Orleans Music Online Couldn't resist--love that jazz
Golden Triangle Weather Page Nice Beaumont weather site with lots of tracks and graphics
Hurricane City
Crown Weather Tropical Website Offers a variety of storm info, with some nice track graphics

Live streaming:

Cut and Paste:

http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=beloint_khou&props=livenoad

Fully-linked version of the live feeds (just in case a few people don't want to first open up WMP to cut-and-paste) -

WWL-TV/DT New Orleans (WMP) - mms://beloint.wm.llnwd.net/beloint_wwltv
WVTM-TV/DT Birmingham (WMP) - mms://a1256.l1289835255.c12898.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/

1256/12898/v0001/reflector:35255
WDSU-TV/DT New Orleans (WMP) - http://mfile.akamai.com/12912/live/reflector:38202.asx
Hurricane City (Real Player) - http://hurricanecity.com/live.ram
ABCNews Now (Real Player) - http://reallive.stream.aol.com/ramgen/redundant/abc/now_hi.rm
WKRG-TV/DT

Mobile (WMP) - mms://wmbcast.mgeneral.speedera.net/wmbcast

.mgeneral/wmbcast_mgeneral_aug262005_1435_95518 WDSU-TV/DT New Orleans via WESH-TV/DT Orlando - http://mfile.akamai.com/12912/live/reflector:38843.asx

Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part VII
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part VI
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part V
Hurricane Katrina, Live Thread, Part IV
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part III
Katrina Live Thread, Part II
Hurricane Katrina Live Thread, Part I
Tropical Storm 12

Category	Wind Speed	Barometric Pressure	Storm Surge	Damage Potential
Tropical Depression	< 39 mph < 34 kts			Minimal
Tropical Storm	39 - 73 mph 34 - 63 kts			Minimal
Hurricane 1 (Weak)	74 - 95 mph 64 - 82 kts	28.94" or more 980.02 mb or more	4.0' - 5.0' 1.2 m - 1.5 m	Minimal damage to vegetation
Hurricane 2 (Moderate)	96 - 110 mph 83 - 95 kts	28.50" - 28.93" 965.12 mb - 979.68 mb	6.0' - 8.0' 1.8 m - 2.4 m	Moderate damage to houses
Hurricane 3 (Strong)	111 - 130 mph 96 - 112 kts	27.91" - 28.49" 945.14 mb - 964.78 mb	9.0' - 12.0' 2.7 m - 3.7 m	Extensive damage to small buildings
Hurricane 4 (Very strong)	131 - 155 mph 113 - 135 kts	27.17" - 27.90" 920.08 mb - 944.80 mb	13.0' - 18.0' 3.9 m - 5.5 m	Extreme structural damage
Hurricane 5 (Devastating)	Greater than 155 mph Greater than 135 kts	Less than 27.17" Less than 920.08 mb	Greater than 18.0' Greater than 5.5m	Catastrophic building failures possible

[Amalie]

PING place holder

[SueRae]

Wow, my eyes just teared over. You must be so proud. Bless them all that are there to help.

I may be all the way in Pa. but I'm willing to put up a displaced person or two until they can get their feet back on the ground.

[cgk]

When I spoke to her last, early this morning she was under the bed with her Green Bay Packers helmet on.

LOL: See: The helmet is a GREAT idea! :)

[Dead Dog]

.Where do we get young men like these???

You raised them.

[jpsb]

The eye wall hit NO, the eye wall of the "Storm of a life time". Yea, one could imagine a 500 mph super huricane, stalling directly ove NO for a week or two, but in the real world NO just got hammered by the Big One, the levies held, thank God, man vrs huricane, man it appears won this battle, where will be others.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Yes, it could have been much worse. The strength diminished enough and it went far enough east that the 20' storm surge predicted from Lake Pontchartrain against NO when the winds shifted from the north ended up being under 15', and not overtopping those levees except for a few isolated instances(so far, there is still the danger of a breach from weakness.) However there was an overtopping into the SE city levee bowl (separate from the main one that most of the city sits in) from the Miss. River. A surge just a couple of feet higher could have filled the bowl, and many of those who refused to evac would have drowned.

[sonofatpatcher2]

Re: "Damn, my son, who is home on leave from Iraq, just called and checked in early from leave and volunteered to go to NO for relief duty. The USMC Duty officer said that he had a LOOOOOONG roster of Marines gearing up to go and help. Where do we get young men like these???? Semper Proud!"

God Bless your son and all who serve out nation!

[AnAmericanMother]

Good men like your son give us hope for the future!

[cgk]

Adding my sentiments to many others: from great parents like you. Wonderful.

[silentknight]

COE is checking on the levee breech. Flooding is severe along major roadways in N.O. - many homes flooded up to chest level and some up to the roof tops. Mayor says that many businesses are destroyed and leveled. Witnessing looting in a number of buildings that were destroyed. Anyone else hearing this...

[capt. obvious]

did anyone catch what caused the weakening of the storm? cause if it was that island, we could learn from that for next time

[numberonepal]

We're going to cancel our trip to the Gulf Coast next Monday. It's for the best.

Wish you wouldn't, but I'm sure you have your reasons.

[Broker]

The looters are out.

[dawn53]

Jose went into Mexico, cropped up in the Gulf and headed for Mexico

[Trident/Delta]

We may need to consider ramping up the Canteen for those that are going to be supporting the recovery efforts in the South. Just a thought. My son tells me that the FR canteen was heavily looked forward to in Iraq every Friday.

Semper Fi

[oldleft]

It was a joke about how the libs will blame this on Bush, I just forgot to turn my sarcasm off. Sorry about that.

[conservative in nyc]

Were the cities and towns such as Biloxi and Gulfport evacuated also?

I think there was an evacuation order for those areas, but I don't know whether it was mandatory or voluntary.

There's been less reporting about these areas because (1) the bulk of the MSM flocked to New Orleans when it looked like it would be taking a direct hit, and (2) Gulfport-Biloxi is a very small TV market in between 2 larger television markets (Mobile-Pensacola and New Orleans). Their 1 TV station with a working website, ABC affiliate WLOX reports:

WLOX has suffered roof damage due to the high winds of Hurricane Katrina. Some parts of the building are under a foot of water. Updates of storm coverage are being supplied from WLOX's sister stations.

Biloxi-Gulfport's Fox station, WXXV's website is down. And their WB station, WBH2, doesn't have a website, as far as I can tell.

WDAM (NBC) from Laurel and WHLT (CBS) from Hattiesberg (I can't find a website), are both north of Biloxi in the equally small Hattiesberg-Laurel market.

[dfwgator]

New Orleans did not dodge the bullet, but at least the bullet missed hitting the major arteries.

[cyborg]

Hopefully they'll get washed away.

[sonofatpatcher2]

Re: "In the 'old' days they delt with the floods which washed the silt through and kept everyone at the same land-level."

In the good old days of 1927, I believe it was, the Mississippi River flooded and covered about half of Louisiana and Mississippi... That's when the Corps of Engineers got started building levees to beat the band.

The Mighty Missip never just flushed all that silt just down it's channel...