The eyewall replacement cycle that began at about 8am this morning has ended. The 8pm EDT Hurricane Hunter pressure reading was 942 mb, down 2mb from the pressure at 6:45pm. No inner eyewall was found, just an elliptical 30-40nm eyewall. We may be on the verge of a rapid deepening phase, since the shear and dry air on the northwest side of the hurricane appear to be lessening, and the hurricane is moving over a deep layer of warm water of almost 90F. The areal size of the hurricane continues to expand, and Katrina is growing from a medium sized hurricane to a large hurricane. Where the pressure will bottom out after this deepening phase is anyone's guess, and I believe something in the 915 - 925 mb range is most likely, which would make Katrina a strong Category 4 or weak Category 5 hurricane by tomorrow afternoon. The deepening phase may last longer than usual for a major hurricane, since Katrina is expanding in size and thus has more mass to spin up.
After this phase of deepening, another eyewall replacement cycle will occur, and the timing of that cycle will be worth billions of dollars and perhaps many lives. There is no way to predict when this eyewall replacement cycle will occur. Another factor will be the timing of the tides--if Katrina hits at high tide, there may be billions more in damage. Tidal range (difference between high and low tide) at Bay St. Louis near New Orleans is two feet. High tide will occur around 8am Monday, and low tide at 8pm. There is still the possibility, too, that the trough that is now steering Katrina to the north will also create enough shear to reduce her to a Category 3 storm at landfall. This is what happened to Hurricane Ivan last year.
New Orleans finally got serious and ordered an evacuation, but far too late. There is no way everyone will be able to get out of the city in time, and they may be forced to take shelter in the Superdome, which is above sea level. If Katrina makes a direct hit on New Orleans as a Category 4 hurricane, the levees protecting the city will be breached, and New Orleans, which is 6 - 10 feet below sea level, will fill with water. On top of this 6 feet of water will come a 15 foot storm surge, and on top of that will be 20 foot waves, so the potential for high loss of life is great. Given the current track and intensity forecast, I'd put the odds of this at about 20%.
What's behind Katrina?
A very large tropical wave way out in the Atlantic, 1300 miles east of the Leeward Islands, has a low level circulation, a large and increasing amount of deep convection, and an improving upper level outflow. Shear over the system is light, waters under it are warm, and I expect a tropical depression to form tomorrow from this system. If this happens, the depression will move west-northwest towards the northernmost Leeward Islands, and possibly affect them by Thursday.
Dr. Jeff Masters
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BATON ROUGE IS NOT SAFE AT ALL U NEED TO HEAD NORTH AS FAR AS U CAN GO. DON'T WORRY BOUT WHERE U ARE GOING. JUST GO.
What's happening is almost too much to think about. And all we can do is watch.
I think I need to go outside for a while.
I use http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/index.html for tracking previous storms, but it's hard at times to see the Category at impact.
I've always been one to stay but if this was anywhere near me I'd run
What part of town do you live in? Just curious..I'm out towards the Semmes area.
My Mom (as well as everyone else) references storms to Frederic. When Frederic hit we lived down in the midtown area (near Bel-Air Blvd and Cottage Hill intersection). She always tells me about how we were without power for three weeks and about how bad the conditions were.
Are you boarding up the house? Hubby doesn't think we should but he has to work (up in Saraland) and I'd rather him do it before he goes to work and leaves us here then us wish he had.
Tara
Ditto!!!!
u ned to treat this like a tornado. u need to get to the lowest level u can barringflooding in a room with no windows. maybe the bathroom. u need to take the matress off the bed and bring it to ur safe room. the bath room and the tub would be the best. when it gets bad u need to go to the safe room and get under the matress. things will be breaking u will lose ur roof but u need to stay under ur matress to protect urself. if u have kids with you godforbid u do, pleas place your body between them and the danger. u must save ur kids. this is seriouse
do any of you see this happenening?
I have a friend in that area, so I know exactly where you're speaking of.
Well, I think I'm going to go ahead and get him out there to board up...just go ahead and be on the safe side, ya know? His brother is living with us right now and he'll be here to help me and the kids out (if, God Forbid, it gets really bad here). Plus, I think my Mom and Dad may come over here if he leaves (they don't like me being alone during storms). I can just see me telling my bro-in-law and Dad to run out in the storm and board up windows! LOL Guess I'll call Mom and see what she thinks. She never took her boards down from Dennis...Now I wish I hadn't. Our house is off the ground (brick) and it's a pain in the rear for him to have to put the boards up. Oh well...at least he'll have help with his brother here.
Tara
Luckily, hubby works at an oil processing plant. They have fuel there and, if they want him there, they will have to give us gas if we have major outages! LOL
I didn't hear that. I have my TV turned down though because hubby and daughter are asleep right by me. I've kinda thought that might happen though (just thoughts though...no science behind that). As much as I hate to see it hit MS or AL, I hate even worse for it to destroy New Orleans.
Tara
If you can...freeze all or as much of your water as you can. You can't imagine how much you will wish for cold water when the power is off. I didn't have a generator when I was without of power all those weeks after Frances, but I did have an inverter that I used in my car to run my laptop. If you can find one...get it. Get several small jars of mayo...you can open one to make tuna, egg salad, whatever and just chalk the rest up to waste. The packets are fine too, but you will have to open up a million to get enough. Get eggs and boil them...keep them in the fridge, they will stay good for a while (remember easter eggs!)in just cool temps. Get more water than you think you need...it's hot and your body will need more than usual. Get instant coffee if you are a coffee fiend like me...It's better hot, but better room temp than not. Get an old fashioned perolator if you can find one and have a bbq grill to heat it up on.
Get lots of disposable stuff like plastic ware, paper plates and bowls, those aluminum tins that they sell for baking. You can use them to heat on the grill and then throw away. Large garbage bags come in very handy...there will be more crap in the yard than you can imagine and garbage pickup will be non existent for a while after the storm...you probably don't have even garbage cans to hold it all until then.
I don't know where you are, but my God, I feel for you. I left Florida when Floyd was coming and I also bugged out when Frances and Jeanne came last year. I know I came home to what looked like a war zone after Frances...no traffic lights, trees down everywhere, no food in the grocery stores, no gas at the stations. I was at least smart enough to bring stuff home with me from Georgia, like gas (40 gallons of it) and all the ice I could get. It helped.
Frances was nothing like Katrina was going to be, and I cannot imagine it. In less than 24 hours, life as the people who are impacted know it will cease to exist for a long, long time. God bless each and everyone and keep you safe.
P.S. I say that the folks in New Orleans, as soon as they can, should get that STUPID mayor of their's OUT OF OFFICE. CNN reported that he was waiting for a conference call this morning before mandatory evacs?????????!!!! OMFG!!! I hope no one was following this moron's lead.
On coffee: after Ivan, I bought my mom a graniteware camping percolator. There's lots of pots around, but the percolator's the thing. I ordered it over the net and it took forever, but I think you can score them at Wal-Mart or Academy sometimes.
But I have good news: the rest of my housemates *finally* left in the wee hours this morning. But I'm praying for people who are not as fortunate to leave.
Until roughly a month
ago I worked for an
engineering firm that
does impact studies and
evacuation routing,
etc... Nearly 2 years
ago we stated that use
of the Superdome in this
type of situation would
do nothing but create a
single place to find the
bodies and to make a
mass gravesite much
easier to deal with
since all that would be
left to do is to have
the bulldozers push dirt
in to the top of the
structure.
Remember the Olympic
stadium in Bosnia???
Same situation here
unfortunately...
EDIT: We were *not* the
only ones to point this
out btw... There just
isn't anyplace else for
people to go in the city
in this situation. In
such conditions, the
only thing that works is
case hardened structures
100 ft. above sea level
and then the structure
should be small or made
of smaller internal
structures to sustain
the damage that is
coming.
NEAR LATITUDE 30.2 NORTH... LONGITUDE 89.6 WEST. THIS POSITION IS
NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE PEARL RIVER...ABOUT 35 MILES EAST-NORTHEAST
OF NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA AND ABOUT 45 MILES WEST-SOUTHWEST OF
BILOXI MISSISSIPPI.
KATRINA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTH NEAR 16 MPH...AND THIS GENERAL
MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE TODAY AND TONIGHT. ON THIS TRACK
THE CENTER WILL MOVE OVER SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI TODAY AND INTO
CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI THIS EVENING.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 125 MPH...WITH HIGHER GUSTS.
KATRINA IS NOW A CATEGORY THREE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON
SCALE. WINDS AFFECTING THE UPPER FLOORS OF HIGH RISE BUILDINGS
WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY STRONGER THAN THOSE NEAR GROUND LEVEL.
WEAKENING IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS AS THE CENTER MOVES
OVER LAND. HOWEVER...HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO SPREAD
AS FAR AS 150 MILES INLAND ALONG THE PATH OF KATRINA. SEE INLAND
HURRICANE AND TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS FROM NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
FORECAST OFFICES.
HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 125 MILES FROM THE
CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP
TO 230 MILES.
THE MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE ESTIMATED FROM AIR FORCE HURRICANE
HUNTER AIRCRAFT IS 927 MB...27.37 INCHES.
COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 15 TO 20 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE
LEVELS...ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES...CAN BE
EXPECTED NEAR AND TO THE EAST OF THE CENTER. STORM SURGE FLOODING
OF 10 TO 15 FEET...NEAR THE TOPS OF THE LEVEES...IS STILL POSSIBLE
IN THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA. SIGNIFICANT STORM SURGE FLOODING
IS OCCURRING ELSEWHERE ALONG THE CENTRAL AND NORTHEASTERN GULF OF
MEXICO COAST.
RAINFALL TOTALS OF 5 TO 10 INCHES...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF
15 INCHES...ARE POSSIBLE ALONG THE PATH OF KATRINA ACROSS THE GULF
COAST AND THE TENNESSEE VALLEY. RAINFALL TOTALS OF 4 TO 8 INCHES
ARE POSSIBLE ACROSS THE OHIO VALLEY INTO THE EASTERN GREAT LAKES
REGION TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY.
A FEW TORNADOES ARE POSSIBLE OVER PORTIONS OF SOUTHERN AND EASTERN
MISSISSIPPI...SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL ALABAMA...AND THE WESTERN
FLORIDA PANHANDLE TODAY.
REPEATING THE 10 AM CDT POSITION...30.2 N... 89.6 W. MOVEMENT
TOWARD...NORTH NEAR 16 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...125 MPH.
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE... 927 MB.
INTERMEDIATE ADVISORIES WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE
CENTER AT NOON CDT AND 2 PM CDT FOLLOWED BY THE NEXT COMPLETE
ADVISORY AT 4 PM CDT.
FORECASTER PASCH
$$
Source: National Weather Service
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