Posted on 09/16/2005 4:36:22 PM PDT by Crackingham
For all the criticism of the Bush administration’s confused response to Hurricane Katrina, at least two federal agencies got it right: the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center. They forecast the path of the storm and the potential for devastation with remarkable accuracy. The performance by the two agencies calls into question claims by President Bush and others in his administration that Katrina was a catastrophe that no one envisioned.
For example, Bush told ABC on Sep. 1 that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” In its storm warnings, the hurricane center never used the word “breached.” But a day before Katrina came ashore Aug. 29, the agency warned in capital letters: “SOME LEVEES IN THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA COULD BE OVERTOPPED.”
National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield also gave daily pre-storm videoconference briefings to federal officials in Washington, warning them of a nightmare scenario of New Orleans’ levees not holding, winds smashing windows in high-rise buildings and flooding wiping out large swaths of the Gulf Coast.
A photo on the White House Web site shows Bush in Crawford, Texas, watching Mayfield give a briefing on Aug. 28, a day before Katrina smashed ashore with 145-mph winds.
The National Weather Service office in Slidell, La., which covers the New Orleans area, put out its own warnings that day, saying, “MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS ... PERHAPS LONGER” and predicting “HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.”
Mayfield and Paul Trotter, the meteorologist in charge of the Slidell office, both refused to criticize the federal response.
But Mayfield said: “The fact that we had a major hurricane forecast over or near New Orleans is reason for great concern. The local and state emergency management knew that as well as FEMA did.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
MSM Rules:
1. Never miss an opportunity to bash Bush.
2. If possible, bash in the first paragraph of the story.
3. return to 1.
My bad -- forgot to list Rule 3. LOL
Oh, this is such HOWLING crap! I know what he meant. He wasn't saying that nobody thought those levees were a vulnerable point. He was calling it like we experienced it.
The storm passed. It wasn't as bad as we all expected. People were drinking and whooping it up in the French Quarter. I wrote an email to a friend expressing relief that her house was probably okay. (I haven't heard back still, and I'm so embarrassed in hindsight).
THEN the levees were breached.
they forgot about repeating the "thousands of deaths" prediction
And Monday night every single MSM outlet used the phrase "dodged the bullet" repeatedly in connection with New Orleans.
"For all the criticism of the Bush administration’s confused response to Hurricane Katrina"
Is this now going to the be lead into every news story.
And BFD about predicting a hurricane. I can guess it as well as the National Weather service by looking at satellite maps on weather.com. Um, there is a big hurricane that is going to hit somewhere between Florida and Texas. Every hurricane is hyped! And 90% of the time is it not as bad as predicted...thanks to the media hype.
OK, I want to go on the record as saying a meteor with crash into the earth someday. Now when it happens I can say I predicted it. Out of 5 billion people on earth, I am sure there is always at least one who predicted some highly unlikely event. And when it hits, it will still be Bush's fault (at least according to the Dems and the media).
The bulletins that this article are referring to were the last ones issued before the storm made landfall. They were very accurate but gave residents about only 24 hours notice about the potential of the devastation that occurred. It was fairly obvious to anyone looking at the sat images when the storm became a cat 5 that everyone should have evacuated. That was about 24 to 48 hours before landfall.
"They forecast the path of the storm and the potential for devastation with remarkable accuracy."
Of course they did. They no doubt got the memo from the Bush hurricane drivers.
(George Noory and some of his guests on Coast To Coast AM HONESTLY believe the Chinese or the Russians drove the thing into the gulf region.)
Arm chair quarterbacking at its worst.
"Katrina was a catastrophe that no one envisioned"
The President was referring to Governor Blanco (Blank-O) and Mayor Nagin when he made this comment
Breaking news there is a cure for Bush Derangement syndrome, start by not watching the Main stream media
The 0500(EDT) fix Saturday was the first directly over New Orleans. After checking other met data, I emailed my brother-in-law to suggest it was time to get out of Dodge. That was 48 hours prior to landfall. It was sufficient for my mother, sister, b-i-l, their daughter and her sons to get to Lafayette. Tracks prior to that were close enough to watch closely.
Uh, Junior, no you can't. I spent a little time at the NWS Key West WFO recently and got a tour of their hurricane tracking software (the ones that inaccuweather.com and commercial-gimmee-them-pop-ups-weather.com use on their bloated sites are reflections of the NWS software) and I pretty much knew (based on the algorithms) what Ophelia was going to do five days hence while still parked off of Cape Canaveral. The guidance models, which are beyond the scope of this discussion - well, at least beyond most pinheads ability to comprehend them - are quite complex and require, um, a scientific background to understand.
Tell you what, why don't you leave the forecast models to the professional meteorologists, and you can play with your little web site.
" professional meteorologists"
a.k.a. 'future busboys'.
Give me a break. My granny and the 'feeling in her bones' can do a better job than those no talent weather geeks who couldn't make it in a real science. Thanks for the laugh!
One of our local weather forecasters said that one model still included the eastern Florida Panhandle in the potential impact zone.
The actual prediction of the landing point was probably the least accurate of the predictions, but that is always the case. The last damage prediction from the national weather services was absolutely accurate. It was that last damage assessment bulletin quoted above in this thread that should have sent shivers down everyones spine located in the potential impact zones. New Orleans got some wind damage and then of course the levee walls were slowly overwhelmed over a period of a couple of hours. Thats typically the way floods happen, unless you have a tsunami or hurricane surge which can happen in a few minutes. Mississippi got the quick surge or 'tsunami' flood.
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