Unfortunately a lot of people will die because they aren’t paying enough attention to the surge statements.
I don't get it. There is a mental block that gets stuck on wind speed, despite all of the supporting data--and now video--showing what this freak storm is going to produce in storm surge.
I can partially understand some folks who were done in by Katrina - forecasters had no idea how high the surge would be, and folks who thought they were high enough found out the hard way they were not. But forecasters now have learned that with surge, size does matter. Anyone failing to heed the surge forecast of 20+ feet is a fool at this point - the only way this was not going to be a historically bad surge event for Galveston Bay was for the eye to landfall east of the bay. It looks now that the odds of that happening are very remote. Basically, folks are betting their lives on a roughly 20 percent chance that the core forecast track is wrong less than 24 hour out. That's insane.
Galveston Island is going to be under water.
Period.
That and the waves are going to wipe away and float away most of the structures now in existence there.
The picture I posted in #360 shows only a 13foot surge. 15ft will every part of it underwater. The waves and tide will make it even worse.
This is going to be much worse than Katrina.