Hurricane Katrina--Looking Back to Look Ahead
I'm in New Orleans this week for the 88th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, the world's largest gathering of meteorologists. This year's meeting has a special focus on Hurricane Katrina. Yesterday's session: "Hurricane Katrina--Looking Back to Look Ahead" sought to review what happened during Katrina with an aim to improve our ability to prepare for the inevitable next "Big One". The keynote speaker was former National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield. He took the audience back through those painful days in late August 2005 as Katrina exploded into one of the most intense hurricanes ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico, forever altering the lives of those caught in its path.
Katrina could have been much worse
Max reviewed the forecasts issued by the NHC for Katrina, showing how these predictions gave a full 2 1/2 days for New Orleans and Mississippi to prepare for the onslaught of a major hurricane. "I don't want people to think we're going to be able to do that well all the time," he said. "One of these days, people will go to bed with a Category 1 hurricane expected to hit the next day, and wake up to a Katrina or an Andrew. That will be a catastrophe." Max stressed the importance of not focusing on the skinny black line showing the forecast track of a storm--pay attention instead to the cone of possible landfall locations. Better communication and education to the public on hurricane dangers are needed, and he encouraged all coastal residents to participate in National Hurricane Preparedness Week, May 25-31 of this year.
Figure 1. The exhibit hall from the 2008 meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans.
How do we change the outcome?
Max showed that while errors in hurricane track forecasts have improved a factor of two in the past 15 years, and are now down to 55 miles for a 24-hour forecast, forecasts of intensity have not improved at all. In fact, the intensity forecasts for 2007 were worse than those of 2005 and 2006. Part of the credit for the improvement in track forecasts goes to a $1 million/year research project called the Joint Hurricane Test-bed--a project former NHC director Bill Proenza called attention to when it received budget cuts. An increase in funding for this program, as well as other hurricane research efforts, are needed to help improve hurricane intensity forecasts, Max urged.
Another way to change the outcome would be through the adoption of improved building codes. Adoption of the tough South Florida building codes all along the coast would save lives and cut down on insurance pay-outs. Max brought up the analogy of a airplane crashing due to a defect in manufacture. When investigators find the cause of the defect, immediate steps are taken to ensure that no airplane is ever built again with that defect. Why, then, do we continue to build houses with known defects? He advocated the formation of a National Disaster Review Board to analyze and adopt new building codes for the coast. This board would consist of meteorologists, emergency managers, and representatives from the insurance and building industries.
Final thoughts on being in New Orleans
Max recounted his own sobering tour of the damaged neighborhoods still devastated more than two years after Katrina. My own experience here was also sobering, as this is my first visit since the hurricane. It felt eerie to stalk the halls of the Convention Center, the site of so much pain and suffering in the aftermath of the storm. I was very conscious of being in the bottom of a bowl everywhere I went within the city, and the damaged, shuttered buildings were a constant reminder that the Gulf of Mexico lay at our doorstep--and would someday send another "Big One" to challenge the city's defenses. Yet many of the people I met have adapted to the post-Katrina life with an admirable stoicism. "They don't call New Orleans the Big Easy for nothing", one cab driver told me. "Life is still good and laid-back here".
Jeff Masters
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Other finalists for the highly visible job include Richard Knabb, one of six senior hurricane specialists at the center, and Charles ''Chip'' Guard, a veteran government meteorologist and tropical weather specialist in Guam
Article
NEW ORLEANS - A United Nations official who has toured parts of Louisiana and Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina says the thousands of victims of the storm resemble poor people displaced by natural disasters in other parts of the world.
"Whether you're displaced in a rich country or a poor country, what remains the same is you need to get the help, the assistance of the authorities, of the communities, to be able to restart a normal life, and the people I have met are not there yet," said Walter Kalin, the UN secretary general's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Unmanned aircraft like those used by the U.S. military in Iraq will increasingly be used to monitor storms, a role currently performed by manned aircraft, weather officials said on Tuesday.
At an American Meteorological Society meeting in New Orleans, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists announced a three-year program initially funded with $3 million to study use of unmanned aircraft in hurricanes
That's not saying much, considering every hurricane season typically has something that could've made it worse.
My question is...If the polar ice caps are melting so rapidly, how will we be able to avoid even worse then we endured with Katrina???
If the process of ice cap melting continues at this rapid rate, we probably won't be able to avoid that, unfortunately. But if we would cut back on our abusing the environment and helping to speed up the warming, we might can avoid that. I will tell you like I tell everyone else: I think this global warming we're having is just a natural cycle, but man is speeding up the process. If it isn't a natural cycle that will eventually reset itself, we're in deep trouble.
It really amazed me that the last two years were so mild for the LA/MS Gulf Coast.
Me too, but 2006 was an El Niño year, so that shouldn't be that much of a surprise. 2007, eh I don't have an explanation there, but the steering currents in La Niña years do tend to cause storms to form further south and track further south (like Dean and Felix did). And if you really think about it, LA/MS never did get very many significant hurricanes (e.g. Georges, Katrina), at least not every year. IIRC, the last major hurricane to strike Mississippi before Katrina was Elena in 1985. That's a 20 year gap with no major hurricane landfalls. Not to say nothing significant came to MS within those 20 years before Katrina, but no Cat 3+ storms came.
I also have a bit of trouble figuring out all the droughts I keep hearing about...How can we have droughts with all the extra water from all the melting filling up everything? Just food for thoughts and questions...
My guess is that like El Niño and La Niña, global warming affects different parts of the world differently. I don't know as much about global warming as I do tropical cyclones (I know quite a bit in that area), so I'm probably wrong.
I'll give you my opinion on the matter. New Orleans will not approach it's state in early August 2005 for at least a decade.
My home is in the Florida panhandle, but I've worked in New Orleans on two contracts since Katrina. The first had us back in NOLA (in Bywater) in November, 2005 - the contract concluded in December 2006. The second had me working on Jeff Highway at Ochsner's main campus from August 2007 until two weeks ago.
To say that NOLA is back in business is mis-leading. NOLA is ready for tourists and that's about it.
NOLA East is still a wasteland for the most part. Bywater is getting better, but still has problems. The lower Ninth is not even 1/10th recovered. NOLA is nowhere near ready to support a resident population of 400k+ people year-round.
Every day, things get a little better, but there is still a very, very long way to go.
And that's assuming that another major hurricane doesn't come by that area. I seriously feel bad for the people in New Orleans, and I'm glad I don't live there.
The thing I do hope is that Katrina has taught enough people a lesson to where they will know what to do the next time a storm comes around. You can't be guaranteed your property, but you can be guaranteed your life if you know what you're doing.
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At 6:00 AM UTC, Area of Disturbed Weather 08R [1004 hPa] located near 13.5S 45.6E or 1320 kms northwest of the coast of Reunion had 10 minute sustained winds of 25 knots with gusts up to 35 knots. The disturbance is reported moving southwest at 6 knots.
Dvorak Intensity: T2.0
Forecast and Intensity
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24 HRS: 14.9S 44.2E - 30 knots (Depression Tropicale)
48 HRS: 15.4S 43.4E - 40 knots (Tempête Tropicale Moderée)
72 HRS: 15.9S 42.9E - 60 knots (Forte Tempête Tropicale)
Addition Information
--------------------
An important area of thunderstorm convective activity is organizing southeast of Mayotte. This borning system has a good potential for intensification. Last satellite imageries show a very recent and rapid organization of deep convection, with a well defined building curved band.
At this stage the system does not justify regular six hour advisories.
Forecasters Debate Hurricanes, Warming
Thursday January 24, 2008 9:46 AM
By CAIN BURDEAU
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A lively and sometimes scrappy debate on whether global warming is fueling bigger and nastier hurricanes like Katrina is adding an edge to a gathering of forecasters here.
The venue for the 88th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society could not have been more conducive to the discussion: The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is where thousands of people waited for days during the storm to be evacuated from a city drowning in water and misery.
Although weather experts generally agree that the planet is warming, they hardly express consensus on what that may mean for future hurricanes. Debate has simmered in hallway chats and panel discussions.
A study released Wednesday by government scientists was the latest point of contention.
The study by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Miami Lab and the University of Miami postulated that global warming may actually decrease the number of hurricanes that strike the United States. Warming waters may increase vertical wind speed, or wind shear, cutting into a hurricane's strength.
The study focused on observations rather than computer models, which often form the backbone of global warming studies, and on the records of hurricanes over the past century, researchers said.
``I think it was a seminal paper,'' Richard Spinrad, NOAA's assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, said Wednesday.
``There's a lot of uncertainty in the models,'' Spinrad said. ``There's a lot of uncertainty in what drives the development of tropical cyclones, or hurricanes. What the study says to us is that we need a higher resolution'' of data.
Greg Holland, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said the new paper was anything but seminal. He said ``the results of the study just don't hold together.''
Holland is among scientists who say there is a link between global warming and an upswing in catastrophic storms. He said other factors far outweigh the influence of wind shear on how a storm will behave.
``This is the problem with going in and focusing on one point, a really small change,'' Holland said.
He had a sharp exchange Monday with Christopher Landsea, a NOAA scientist, during the AMS meeting.
While Holland sees a connection between global warming and increased hurricanes, Landsea believes storms only seem to be getting bigger because people are paying closer attention. Big storms that would have gone unnoticed in past decades are now carefully tracked by satellites and airplanes, even if they pose no threat to land.
The exchange, captured by National Public Radio, illustrates how emotional the global warming debate has become for hurricane experts.
``Can you answer the question?'' Landsea demanded.
``I'm not going to answer the question because it's a stupid question,'' Holland shot back.
``OK, let's move on,'' a moderator intervened.
The passion was no surprise to the TV weather forecasters, academic climatologists, government oceanographers and tornado chasers attending the meeting.
``One thing I've learned about coming to this conference over the years is that very few people agree on anything,'' said Bill Massey, a former hurricane program manager at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
``There's a legitimate scientific debate going on and a healthy one, and scientists right now are trying to defuse the emotion and focus on the research,'' said Robert Henson, the author of ``The Rough Guide to Climate Change.''
Whether global warming is increasing the frequency of major storms or reducing it, Henson said, lives are at stake.
``Let's say you have a drunk driver once an hour going 100 miles an hour in the middle of the night on an interstate,'' Henson said. ``Say you're going to have an increase from once an hour to once every 30 minutes; that's scary and important. But you've got to worry about that drunk driver if it's even once an hour.''
Massey agreed. ``In 1992 we had one major storm. It was Hurricane Andrew. It was a very slow year. But one storm can ruin your day.''
What about Rita? There is still plenty of nasty reminders of her here in S.E. Texas also. I guess Beaumont/Port Arthur doesn't count tho......
(Mornin folks)
71. stormmaven 12:47 PM EST on January 24, 2008
Hey StormW - Expected to see you @the AMS meeting. What's up?
My account...on account I'm broke!
I guess your going to have to wait for the government's rebate check this spring
It would be nice to know what you, and others that you have talked to while here in the city, think about the city after this meeting is over.
Well, the French Quarter seems to have never gone away, but East New Orleans still looks like a bomb went off, as a drive on I-10 will reveal.
Coastal MS's main drags are nice and spiffy, but back in the neighborhoods it still looks kind of grim in many areas.
The area is making progress, but it's not fully back yet.
129 days until the beginning of Hurricane Season 08
... Snow Advisory in effect until 6 PM EST this afternoon...
The National Weather Service in Greenville-Spartanburg has issued
a Snow Advisory... which is in effect until 6 PM EST this
afternoon for Avery... Mitchell and Yancey counties in the northern
mountains of North Carolina.
Around one inch of snow can be expected this afternoon. The snow
swill begin to taper off by evening.
A Snow Advisory means that periods of snow will cause primarily
travel difficulties. Be prepared for snow covered roads and
limited visibilities... and use caution while driving.
07
Hey all, just stopping in briefly
129 days until the beginning of Hurricane Season 08
129 days until this blog comes back to life then. It's absolutely dead in here.
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