Beyond Katrina

Some Thoughts on Katrina's Second Anniversary

Guest Blog by Margie Kieper

I'm seeing the word recovery a lot.  And this brings many things to mind, many conflicting things, and of course still a lot of different emotions.  Yes you do move on, if you can find a way, and yes, there has been some recovery, but it is very uneven.  Still, you can't forget the ways that life has changed along the coast where the surge wiped away civilization two years ago.  Today, everything is more expensive: food, gas, rent or homeowner's insurance.  But there is virtually no rental housing available on the coast, two years later.  High insurance and building costs have prevented construction of rental units. 

I would have to say the single largest failure that has crippled recovery is the failure of the insurance industry -- first, the failure to pay on existing insurance policies, and then, raising policy rates to insanely high levels, leading to huge profits in 2006, and preventing rebuilding from commencing.  Two years later, the coastal highway in Mississippi, Hwy 90, has the look of a ghost town along most of its length, because businesses, churches, and residences cannot be rebuilt.  Industries can't find enough workers, because there aren't any places for people to live, because homes and apartments can't be built.  I think there has to be a fundamental change in home ownership that completely jettisons the insurance industry, as insurance is basically no longer worth anything, and this will probably mean finding ways to build homes without bank financing.   

Things are tough, but coastal communities are toughing it out and surviving.  Communities have been in these locations for at least 300 years, and they will still be there, even if another 500-year storm hits fifty years from now -- or next month.

There are a couple of things that still I wish, two years later, would get more attention.  First is the lack of awareness of how large a section of coastline in LA, MS, and AL received record storm surge.  This time last year, I was in the middle of writing about this:

http://www.wunderground.com/education/Katrinas_surge_contents.asp

I do receive comments from people every so often that have read it for the first time, and usually they express surprise and were generally unaware of the extent of the surge, or they experienced it and they have some interesting information about the surge to share.  I'd like to post an example.  This one is from a Captain in the US Coast Guard:

Hello.  I just came across your survey of storm surge on the Mississippi Coast from Katrina.  I was very gratified and interested.  I used to live on Waveland Ave.  The steel framed house with the pointy top was right around the corner from my house.  I thought it was a very telling gauge of water height, too.  I'm in the Coast Guard and was able to get back there rather quickly after the storm.  I went through Camille about a block from the Sound on Sycamore Street.  I went back to find that house after Katrina and it was completely gone.  That told me a lot.  The devastation was amazing.  I was particularly taken by the damage to trees.  A friend of mine work for Bell South.  He was on the I-10 bridge at 603, which is about 10 miles inland.  The water was up to the overpass.  He said after the storm passed and the wind changed, it looked like a white water river going South.  He said when you looked South from there, all you could see was water and the tops of pine trees.

My father went through Camile in Long Beach and lost everything.  He returned and built a steel reinforced concrete house.  You probably saw it.  It had a scalloped roofline.  I was right next to where the Wal Mart used to be.  It was the only thing standing.  I wish he were still alive to know it worked.

Anyway, thank so much for your documentation.  It means a lot that you did this.  You are right about the coast being invisible.  We were not as tragic as New Orleans.

By the way, in Mobile, I had fifteen feet at my Base.  I should send you a picture.

Regarding, "when you looked South from there, all you could see was water and the tops of pine trees," this is referring to the entire southern portion of Hancock County south of I-10, including the cities of Bay St. Louis, Waveland, Lakeshore, and others, and, on the other side of the bay, in Harrison County, Pass Christian, all being completely underwater.  To drive to the beach from this exit on I-10 takes about twenty to twenty-five minutes.

A resident of Plaquemines Parish emailed me a link to this wonderful website that has been documenting Katrina's effects, and ongoing recovery:

http://www.angelfire.com/la/dwalker/katrina.html

The second thing that I wish would become commonplace knowledge among coastal residents is how vulnerable their home is to storm surge.  Know what category of hurricane can flood your home.  If you live right on the coast, it is likely a Cat 1 or Cat 2. 

If you live in Florida, then FloridaDisaster.Org provides storm surge maps for coastal counties, here.  These maps are difficult to find from the main public web page, and the link I provided has moved to the bottom of the page.

If you are in Mississippi, you have an even better resource for storm surge, the USACE Hurricane Evacuation Study maps.  For instance, this map shows how quite a bit of my hometown, Pascagoula, will flood in a direct hit from a Cat 2 hurricane.  These very detailed maps are the result of a 2001 HES study that used over 3000 SLOSH runs to get a worst case scenario for the entire Mississippi coast.

Amazingly, these maps were not used or known about by emergency personnel or local media during Katrina.  And even today they are not on the MS EMA web site (but then, there is practically nothing of use on that web site).  There was a very good correlation between the actual surge that occurred from Katrina, and these worst-case surge maps.  I would like to see these maps printed out and posted on the walls of shopping malls, city hall, auditoriums -- and mailed to every resident, posted on every media website, and shown on the news regularly.  Everyone should know under what conditions their home will flood, and whether their escape routes will flood -- and that can happen before your home is at risk.

Finally, today, I thought about my own personal experience two years ago, and how Katrina changed my life.  And I suspect that many, many people have been thinking those same kind of thoughts today.

Katrina 2nd Anniversary, US State Dept. Foreign Press Center Media Tour (August 19-22, 2007)

(Andrew Strike, Dept. of Defense Press Liaison and Beyond Katrina Blogger, Margaret Saizan)

I'm just back from New Orleans -  helped the  US State Department organize a media tour for the Foreign Press in conjunction with the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  The tour was phenomenal for all involved and it was quite an experience to get to trail twenty foreign correspondents around New Orleans for several days. And aside from  being the boots-on-the-ground liasion for the tour, I found I couldn't completely shed my own persona as a journo. I decided my own story angle during the tour wasn't to be focused exclusively on covering New Orleans two years post-Katrina - as I always have access to what's happening in NOLA -  rather it was  to cover the foreign correspondents covering New Orleans two years post-Katrina. :)  (I love to turn the tables on journalists!)  I took lots of photographs from my Cingular 8525 and Paul Richards, the photog assigned to this tour, has promised to share a few with me as well. I'll be posting  these along with more about the tour over the next few days - and as I get wind of the feature stories generated as a result of the places we went, and people we talked to, I"ll be sure and post links to them here.   The photo above of US State Department Press Liasion, Andy Strike and me was shot through the windshield of our car by Brazilian correspondent Jose Passos. 

Update 8/30/07 - To see some pix from the tour click here.

 

US State Dept. Foreign Press Center Media Tour (August 19-22, 2007)

Environmental Protection Agency EPA - Gulf of Mexico Program - (Trip to Plaquemines Parish)

 

Driving tour along the Mississippi River from Belle Chase to Port Sulphur. EPA representatives provide introduction and overview of environmental conditions of the Louisiana coastal area.

St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Port Sulphur, La.  (below)

 

 

Boat Interview, Plaquemines Parish

Ferry From Plaquemines Parish to St. Bernard Parish

A tired journo...

Survivor Interviews at St. David's Catholic Church in the Lower Ninth Ward

Lakeview Tour

 

Harrison Avenue Fire House Interviews in Lakeview

Tour of Lakeview Homes and Interviews with Survivors:

 

 

Trip to City Hall - Q & A with Council Woman Shelley Midura

U.S. State Department Folks - Andrew Strike & Garrett Wilkerson

Midura fields questions from foreign correspondents

 

Hurricane Katrina 2nd Anniversary

CSX Turnbridge - the point where Katrina made its *final* landfall (around 9am on 8/29/05)---(copyright Matthew White)

 

Dean Update

Unfortunately things were a bit too hectic for me to track Dean while I was in New Orleans.  I'm therefore grateful to guest blogger, Margie Kieper for doing the honors. I love Margie's perspective on hurricane tracking to boot.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Dean is now weakening over the high mountains of Mexico.  For a good overview of Dean's impact over the past few days, I refer you to today's post by Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground.

Dean Has Reached Cat 5

Update:  Dean made landfall as an intensifying Cat 5 in Mexico this morning.  The NHC discussion from this morning describes the strength at landfall:

DEAN MADE LANDFALL ON THE EAST COAST OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA NEAR
THE CRUISE SHIP PORT OF COSTA MAYA AROUND 0830 UTC...AND THE EYE IS
NOW JUST INLAND.  OBSERVATIONS FROM AN AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER
PLANE INDICATE THAT THE HURRICANE WAS INTENSIFYING RIGHT UP TO
LANDFALL.  A PEAK FLIGHT-LEVEL WIND OF 165 KT WAS MEASURED JUST
NORTH OF THE EYE.  MAXIMUM SURFACE WINDS FROM THE SFMR WERE 124
KT...BUT IT IS HIGHLY LIKELY THAT THE MAXIMUM SURFACE WIND SPEED
WAS NOT REPORTED BY THE SFMR INSTRUMENT.  A GPS DROPSONDE IN THE
NORTHERN EYEWALL MEASURED A WIND SPEED OF 178 KT AVERAGED OVER THE
LOWEST 150 METERS OF THE SOUNDING.  BASED ON THE DROPSONDE AND THE
FLIGHT-LEVEL WINDS...THE INTENSITY IS SET AT 145 KT.  A DROPSONDE
IN THE EYE MEASURED A CENTRAL PRESSURE OF 906 MB JUST PRIOR TO
LANDFALL.

SOME HISTORIC NOTES ARE IN ORDER HERE.  THE 906 MB
CENTRAL PRESSURE IS THE NINTH LOWEST ON RECORD FOR AN ATLANTIC
BASIN HURRICANE...AND THE THIRD LOWEST AT LANDFALL BEHIND THE 1935
LABOR DAY HURRICANE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS AND HURRICANE GILBERT OF
1988 IN CANCUN MEXICO.  DEAN IS ALSO THE FIRST CATEGORY FIVE
HURRICANE TO MAKE LANDFALL IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN SINCE ANDREW OF
1992.

* * * * * * *

Throughout the day, Dean's eyewall intensity has been inching upward, and pressure has dropped another 10mb, to 914mbar.  Surface winds have now reached a sustained windspeed of 160mph, and NHC noted this on a special update statement just now:  "DATA FROM THE AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT CURRENTLY INVESTIGATING HURRICANE DEAN INDICATE THAT MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE INCREASED TO 160 MPH...MAKING DEAN A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE."

All day, microwave imagery has shown a second eyewall forming (see below), but, as James Franklin noted in the afternoon advisory, "THIS WILL PROBABLY NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO INDUCE ANY WEAKENING BEFORE LANDFALL"

NHC has been forecasting Category 5 intensity in this area for days, but now that it has occurred, in this huge hurricane bearing down on Mexico and Belize, it's a very uncomfortable feeling.  The type of damage that a large Cat 5 can do is just simply unimaginable.  A year and a half ago, halfway around the world, Severe Tropical Cyclone Monica's powerful winds defoliated and uprooted an entire forest at the coastline.

Recon vortex messages showed pressure dropping steadily every hour, with the most recent reading at 914mb, the temperature differential between the eye and the eyewall increased to 12 degrees C, and flight level winds reaching 162 kt in the strong NW quadrant.

Below is a satellite image of Dean tonight.

--Margie Kieper

Dean Approaching Cat 5 Intensity

Just a quick update on what's happening with Hurricane Dean in the northwestern Caribbean.

Dean completed the eyewall replacement cycle (ERC) very quickly.  This was confirmed by early morning microwave imagery, and by this morning the last vestiges of the smaller eye were disappearing, and the new larger eyewall became visible, and cleared out.  Also overnight, the area of convection increased and the size of the hurricane increased dramatically from the small core that passed south of Jamaica yesterday evening.

Dean is very close to Category 5 intensity, and this will be confirmed shortly as the USAF Hurricane Hunter aircraft arrive and take measurements in repeated passes through the core of the hurricane.  Cloud tops have cooled significantly the in the last couple hours and the eye has continued to warm. 

Microwave imagery shows that the outer rainbands are already forming a pattern that could lead to another ERC tonight.  Depending on the timing, this could be a help by reducing intensity prior to landfall.  Remember, though, that Dean maintained Cat 4 status through the two ERCs that occurred in the last two days.

The recent visual satellite image of Dean below shows the distinct hallmarks of a powerful hurricane.  The second microwave image shows the well-formed core of the new, larger eyewall, and the surrounding rainbands which are already forming a circular pattern outside the core convection.

Update:  Recon obs show that Dean continues steady state since yesterday, a high-end Cat 4.

A morning ABC news report on Kingston reports that the capital was flooded and littered with broken trees and roofs.  This image by Reuters photographer Carlos Barria shows the effects of surge and rain in Kingston.

There is no word on 17 people who refused to evacuate off of a tiny island, Pedro Cays, south of Jamaica, which was directly in the path of the eye of Cat 4 Dean.  Below is an image of the Coast Guard Station there, before the storm.

--Margie Kieper

Dean Passing Jamaica

Below a Cuban radar image of Dean's northern eyewall over the communities along the southern coast of Jamaica.  That was the only direct contact with the eyewall, which has contracted to 16 nm.  A vortex message just indicated pressure was down to 926 mbar, and max flight level winds in the NE eyewall were still an impressive 125 kt, regardless of the impact from encountering land.  Another almost immediate pass through the NW eyewall found 138 kt, so the 125 kt surface windspeed is still supported by obs.  This reading was followed by 143 kt (in all, there were a total of nine consecutive readings over 130 kt in the NW eyewall!).  This could support surface windspeed of 130 kt in the coming advisory.  The vortex message for this pass noted, "STARS VISIBLE ABOVE IN CENTER," and the temperature differential between the eye and the surrounding convection is a very healthy 11 degrees.

Update:  the 11pm advisory kept the 125 kt intensity and continued shifting the track further south, and so neither the Caymans nor Cozumel will be receiving a direct hit from the eyewall, although both will feel the effects of the hurricane, which is forecast to reach Cat 5 strength before landfalling along the Yucatan coastline.

Late evening update -- the last vortex message noted. "DOUBLE EYEWALL STRUCTURE OUTBOUND N QUAD," so, not surprisingly, another ERC has begun.  This one will probably complete a little faster than the last one, by tomorrow afternoon.  I'll update with some images Monday evening.

--Margie Kieper

Jamaica in Dean's Crosshairs -- guest author Margie Kieper

Unfortunately for Jamaica, while Dean's forecast track has been nudged slightly south, at the same time that the eyewall replacement cycle (ERC) is completing, the new outer eyewall, which is 32 nm wide in the most recent recon vortex message, is in line to strafe the southern coastline.  This will be the stronger northern portion of the storm.  The eye is clearing out rapidly, and the vestiges of the inner eyewall, now 16 nm in size, will dissipate over the coming hours. 

Dean did not weaken appreciably during the ERC, and has been steady-state in terms of intensity.  Remarkably, for most of the ERC, the eye remained open.

The NHC overnight forecast discussion noted, "ANY CHANGES FROM THE PREVIOUS OFFICIAL TRACK FORECAST DURING THE FIRST 48 HOURS OR SO SHOULD BE CONSIDERED COSMETIC...IT IS IMPERATIVE NOT TO FOCUS ON THE EXACT FORECAST TRACK.  CONSIDERING THE MARGIN OF ERROR OF NHC PREDICTIONS...THE CORE OF THIS LARGE HURRICANE COULD EASILY BE 30-50 N MI ON EITHER SIDE OF THE FORECAST TRACK DURING THE NEXT 12 HOURS OR SO."

And from this morning's discussion, "THE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT REPORTED A PEAK FLIGHT-LEVEL WIND OF 142 KT IN THE NORTHWEST QUADRANT...WHICH WOULD SUPPORT THE CURRENT ESTIMATED INTENSITY OF 125 KT."

These observations have not prevented wild speculation that Dean had weakened to a Cat 3, or that it would essentially miss Jamaica, when exactly the opposite is true.  The structure of the tropical cyclone is recovering quickly.  Cloud tops have started to cool already, and outflow is cranking again, indicating that an intensity upswing is underway.  There are only a few hours left to prepare, as Dean approaches the Jamaican shoreline, and if you are in Jamaica right now, this is no time to let your guard down.  This large Cat 4 is too close for comfort.

--Margie

Hurricane Dean Update from Margie Kieper

This just in from Margie Kieper:

Margaret I provided a couple of satellite images that should answer some of your questions.  In early afternoon, Dean began an eyewall replacement cycle (ERC), which was noted in the recon observations. I have provided a microwave image from the NRL website, that shows the two concentric eyewalls, from earlier today. 

This afternoon and early evening, the inner eyewall has not only remained distinct and well-defined on VIS and IR imagery, the eye clearly warmed on water vapor (WV) imagery -- and most recent vortex message reports another large drop in pressure -- from 930 mbar to 920 mbar -- between lunchtime and early evening (17Z to 23Z). And two hours after that, pressure dropped again, to 918 mbar. Evening recon observations showed three wind maximums in the consolidated convection surrounding the core, reflecting the continuing ERC but, subsequent obs showed tow wind maximums, at the inner and outer walls.  In a very recent WINDSAT image, based on the convective banding surrounding the center, it appears the diameter of the new eyewall will be on the order of 20-25 nmi wide.  And on the most recent IR imagery, the "moat" between the inner and outer eyewall is starting to become visible.

The 18Z model runs showed tighter agreement on the track, supporting the NHC forecast, all the way to the landfall south of the Tex-Mex border.  Dean's forecast path will take it close to or over Jamaica, Cayman Islands, and just south of Cozumel and Cancun.  It appears all these areas will take a hit from the strong northern side of the tropical cyclone, starting with Kingston, Jamaica.

I'm out of my depth in discussing the track forecast, but hopefully I can provide a simplified explanation that is not too incorrect!  Some of the features that are contributing to the track forecast are shown in two additional NOAA satellite images that I have provided: a combination of VIS and IR imagery, RGB, that I've marked up, and a WV image where these features can easily be seen.  Ridging and a high pressure cell, north of Dean, are traveling in tandem with Dean, to the west.  The clockwise flow around this area of high pressure is providing the westerly flow that is steering Dean.  This ridging has been moving in between two TUTT lows.  The one over the eastern GOM will move west ahead of Dean, across the GOM, and then NW into Texas.  The ridging will build in behind it, and continue to remain in place over Dean. The other TUTT low will get pulled northward towards the trough coming off the East Coast, which can be seen at the top of the image.