As many of you may know, I produce a variety of weather imagery maps for web and broadcast in SD and HD. Since there is a lot of interest in the path of hurricane Gustav, I thought I’d post a near-live image, which will update every 30 minutes.
Click image for full size or animate this image: Click for loop>>> 
What is interesting to note, is that as of this writing, Gustav seems to be losing organization. The eye, which was well defined just before making landfall on Cuba, seems very nebulous. Watch and wait.
Update: 3:30PM PST, while there was some weakening earlier, it now looks like signs of increased angular momentum are showing up in the satellite imagery. A defined eye may appear again.
a novice watching this force from afar. great web site
Fascinating! I was just looking at Gustav using my Storm Predator software, and told my wife that it may be all downhill for Gustav because the “eye” had dissappeared. And then you post this… saying essentially the same thing.
By the way, how often is the image updated on the SP?
REPLY: Same interval, 30 minutes for satellite. Local Radar is about every 5-6 minutes. Angular momentum seems to be spinning up again. The eye may return.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
They said the wind reached 210 mph
statePoet, I don’t know how true it is…I recall hearing that high wind speed was measured from one of the two ships that washed ashore. How’s your memory?
An aside: I was taking flying lessons the summer Camile hit. My instructor took a charter to deliver some WDSU film of the damage to the Lakefront Airport and had me ride along. Only a few days after the storm hit, it was a sight to see.
Joe S,
210 mph was what I heard soon after the storm on the radio. I also heard it destroyed the wind sensors. My memory is not good but the MS Gulf coast was a mess for several years afterward. Katrina did even worse damage to my town.
Tom in Florida (15:26:28) :
From what I’ve seen the goal seems to be to put the cameraman (the sensible one) somewhere out of the heaviest wind and the TV met (the ratings booster and weather nut) beyond the edge of the building where the wind is funneled. I saw one spot, perhaps on a weather blooper reel, showing exactly that. I saw another spot on some broadcast source where the person in the wind was dodging pieces of sheet metal that were blowing of the building next door. If there are safety regulations I doubt they are seriously enforced until someone gets injured. Frankly, I was rooting for the sheet metal in that spot.
It’s not quite the same, but a rite of passage at the Mt. Washington Weather Observatory (home of the world’s worst weather (well, that you can drive to)) is to cross a patio when the sustained winds are over 100 mph. It’s at 6300′, so air pressure is only about 24″ of Hg, but the people are wearing winter parkas and that increases the cross section substantially. Most of the people can make it, the lighter weight ones get blown down and have to crawl back to the door.
Wind resistance is proportional to the square of the velocity, so if you settle on just 71 mph, that drag is only half of what 100 mph offers.
Anthony, do you know of anybody in a news crew getting whacked or knocked down on camera during a storm?
REPLY: There have been a few, though having been out of the TV news business for about 5 years I can’t put my hands on references at present. There have also been several TV News vans that have been struck by lighting during live shots (30′ mast in the air for microwave dish). All TV news crews are told not to operate around thunderstorms, yet they do it anyway…hoping to get away with it. The pressure is huge.
I was once electrocuted (obviously not fatally) while doing a live shot at the local fair (something I always despised – weather and carnies don’t mix). this was due to a faulty GFI and a hot chassis TV monitor. My Shure handheld microphone had a metal case, grounded, which I was holding. The operator handed me my earpiece, which was connected to the TV monitor audio jack. The TV monitor had a “hot” ground. Basically I took 120VAC from the left hand through my chest, to my right hand.
I threw all the gear down on the ground and went into a case of the shakes. I managed to get out “I’ve been shocked”. The crew onsite and at the studio didn’t know what happened and we were in a commercial break. All they saw was me throw down the gear and start shaking.
About 30 seconds later I regained enough composure to explain what happened. The first question back from the studio was not “are you OK?” but rather “can you still make the live shot”? A minute and a half later, I did the show, live, sans earpiece. That’s how much pressure you are under when you are on a live remote. And, you don’t hear about stories like mine very often unless someone is seriously injured or killed.
I risked my life to report the $#@**!&^ carnie weather from the fair. I hated fairs then, I hate them now.
Yeah, fun times, that live remote TV reporting. For some perspective, see this entry from my friend Brian Sussman, formally of KPIX in SFO.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/brian-sussman-global-whining-vs-the-truth/
statePoet1775,
I’m in Biloxi and still haven’t been further west than Gulfport since the storm. Too depressing. There’s nothing to see but devistation.
My cousin took some post-storm aerials of Pass Christian and Henderson Point. That was pretty much all I needed to see.
http://www.pbase.com/smms/ms_coast_aerial
This shot was the most telling for me as to what’s down your way. Looks like west Long Beach along Hwy 90…
http://www.pbase.com/smms/image/53419161/original
Joe S,
Good photos. I walked in Henderson point. It is kinda of depressing to have where you lived most of your childhood destroyed twice. Camille left Pass High standing but Katrina leveled it.
Our house had 6″ in Camille and 11 feet in Katrina. My brother rode it out in the attic. It was a religious experience for him.
Taking a shot across your chest is not good.
My father was an FAA Radar Technician/Engineer and I worked around high voltage electronics early in my career, so I was taught a healthy respect for high voltage, and I’ve still nailed myself a couple of times.
I often wondered if the TV crews were crazy (or pressured) enough to have those microwave masts erected during weather.
Thanks for the story.
I like to check the movie of the water vapor images (WV loop). Dry air seems to be the best thing for knocking a hurricane for a loop that takes a while for it to recover from. If wind shear blows off the top of the storm, there’s still convection that can rebuild the top when the shear eases.
Dry air entrainment can be handled at sea level with all the spray and stuff that gets kicked up, but when it enters a lot of the vertical column, convection is disrupted, rain weakens or stops, and convection may have to rebuild from the surface back up to the top again.
I saw the dry air this AM, but thought it was too far away to cause trouble. At the time Gustav looked like it was cranking up – the eye was clearing out and becoming symmetric, a feeder band was forming just south of LA, etc. The current loop at http://www.goes.noaa.gov/HURRLOOPS/huwvloop.html shows dry air wrapped nearly all the way around. It may have trouble shaking its impact before landfall.
REPLY: Julie when commenting here, please don’t fall into the juvenile trap of name calling. McCain is the name.
Oops. Sorry about that. I’ve been reading TPM too much, I guess.
::blush::
First of all, IANAM (I Am Not A Meteorologist), but if the current (Gustav 7PM and Hannah 8PM, 2008/08/31) predicted tracks from NHC are correct, we’re looking at *MAJOR* flooding throughout most of Florida (from Hannah) and eastern Texas and adjacent states (from Gustav). The website at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ (click on the 5-day tracks for each system) shows Hannah hanging around the Bahamas *UNTIL NOON THURSDAY*!!! Similarly, Gustav is projected to enter eastern Texas and stall, *DUMPING RAIN UNTIL AT LEAST FRIDAY AFTERNOON*!!!
Florida got dumped on by a weakened Fay for a few days, and flooding resulted. Hannah is going to be sitting off the cosat of Florida, sending precip with its counterclockwise winds. Similarly Gustav will bw doing its thing in eaterns Texas and adjacent areas. The Gulf and Florida coasts are prepared to handle fast-moving strong hurricanes passing through. Are they prepared to handle storms that sit over them and dump inch after inch of rain? The experience of Fay indicates the answer is “NO”.
Anthony, are there any maps indicating what weather features are blocking/slowing both systems?
Is anyone scared?
This storm is bugging me.
I am in Colorado and I think it is the north cold air moving southward that is breaking up this storm.
Ric Werme:”Wind resistance is proportional to the square of the velocity, so if you settle on just 71 mph, that drag is only half of what 100 mph offers.”
Excellent point Ric. I didn’t know the technical reason but I did know that the wind force is a whole lot more from 70 to 100 than just adding another 30 mph.
I was in hurricane Alicia and the eye of the storm passed over Downtown Houston. She was a category 3.
I never recoverd from the fear of the wind and tornodos in the storm.
I cannot imagine riding out a storm of such nature again.
Once was enough for me. I would never stay in the path of a hurricane.
It is so hard on the people who had to leave their homes because these storms are so unpredictable. Its like crying wolf. Then when the real big one hits, nobody leaves.
Maybe the true answer is to strengthen the levees so that the fear of them failing goes away. Most things survive the wind and rain. But a lot of people drowned in Katrina because the levees gave way from the pressure.
Walter Dnes (18:58:07) nailed it. If the levees hold, New Orleans may come out with less damage than from Katrina, but it looks like places like Dallas/Ft. Worth or Waco will be dealing with a stalled out Tropical Depression Gustav for a number of days. In about twelve to eighteen hours we should see how New Orleans comes out of this one.
This year’s hurricanes seem to be dealing with blocking Highs and weak steering currents. I remember, in previous years, seeing hurricanes exhibit such behaviour out in the Atlantic, doing some strange looping movements. This year they’re playing out such games on land.
Way up north in Canada, but am watching and praying for all those affected, or about to be. Appreciate the posts, helps me to understand a bit more, and thanks for all the work to show hurricane on your site…
The Eye has started to show on radar as of 0400GMT http://tinyurl.com/5aquqt and it looks to me as if it is aiming for landfall at the same point Katrina. Current forecasts have it at Cat 3, the same as Katrina. Hopefully we don’t have a re-run. If so, it raises the question how many times do we rebuild before we decide that enough is enough. Looking at history over the centuries, in repeat disasters, unless it is impossible to rebuild, the city will be rebuilt no matter how many times it gets wiped out.
One more comment and I will let it rest.
It takes a lot of money to evacuate all the millions of people. The tax payers should not have to pay for this. We cannot afford to spend this kind of money on every hurricane that comes into the gulf of mexio.
With the millions of dollars that it has cost to evacuate 2 plus million people, that money would have paid for stronger levees.
If they want New Orleans and other coastal city’s to remain functional places to live, then they need to build stronger levees. These storms are not going away. The come every year.
It is only a matter of time.
[…] it on Watt’s Up with That? […]
New Orleans has major systemic problems. Read http://pesn.com/2005/09/23/9600175_Rebuild_Energy_Systems_Not_NewOrleans/ for an idea of the scale. The city is sinking just as surely as the Titanic, only more slowly. Plus it’s sliding away from the coast, plus the Mississippi is slowly moving westward to empty via the Atchafalaya River.
At what point do you give up? Eventually, New Orleans will be a 50-foot crater on the Gulf of Mexico, with levees ringing it. At that point, it’ll only take one nutcase (leftwing/rightwing; a bin Laden or McVeigh, doesn’t matter) to blow a hole in the retaining wall, and New Orleans will be New Atlantis. For that matter, given the permeability of earthen levees, knocking out power to the pumps for a couple of days would be disastrous.
And I disagree with Yaakoba; no bleeping way do you leave people in the path of a category 3 or 4 hurricane. It may be technically possible to build a home that won’t blow away, but 90% of the population won’t be able to afford it. Also, a well-built home is useless if the power goes, out, the streets are blocked with palm-trees blowing around,, and it ends up under 20 feet of water.
I heard on the news today that and estimated 1.9 million evacuated Louisiana south of Interstate 10. Unprecedented, is what they’re saying about it. From Mississippi, I don’t know how many left. Some did, I’m sure.
The vast majority of folks pay all their own expenses in leaving. Living on the gulf coast all my life, I’ve never had government or anybody offer me free transportation or pay my expenses to evacuate. We pay our own way down here.*
By the way, in my 58 years on the gulf coast, I’ve never evacuated for a storm, never stayed in a shelter and currently live two blocks from the beach. Fortunately, I live at enough elevation that I stayed above Katrina’s surge by about 6′. That’s cutting it close. But, it worked out one more time.
In New Orleans, where much of the city is below sea level, it’s a different situation. There are those that don’t have personal transportation and/or are poor and don’t have the cash it takes for getting out on the road and paying all those costs…food, lodging, etc. We’ve gotta take care of those folks. Those are the ones for which the busses, trains and aircraft were provided. Not millions of people.
Just like those that live where there are regular wildfires, earthquakes, spring floods and winter blizards, I don’t mind needed security being brought in. I don’t mind emergency supplies being brought in. I pay taxes for that kind of thing, though I’ve never stood in line for any of it. Haven’t had to. I have gotten a couple of sandwiches and a Coke from a Red Cross truck, once. Didn’t ask for it. They pulled up and offered it to a group of us and we thanked them kindly. Then went back to work unloading a DC-3 (by hand) with emergency supplies…trying to do our part in some hard times.
*After Katrina damned near everybody whacked by the storm got a check from Uncle Sam. That’s the first time I know of that ever happening. $1,700 was in my mail box about a month after the storm. Hail, ya!!
A few comments @ur momisugly 1:55am
Anthony – thank god it is was AC – if it was DC current, then you would not be able to let go even if you tried your hardest.
I was very young, but my parents took me on vacation two straight spring breaks to Gulf Shores, Alabama in 1969 and 1970. I witnessed how much the beaches changed after Camille hit that area and the destruction was catastrophic. Gulf Shores had virtually no development except for a few houses on stilts and some motels (like a motel 6) in 1969. About two thirds of these were gone the next year. The beaches had severe erosion and were not as nice.
Gustav seems to keep pulsing up and down like an afternoon Tstorm. I would be shocked if it makes Cat4 before hitting land. What I am scared of is the easterly fetch that would pile up the water into Lake Pontchartrain. I have not heard one news or weather person even mention this. Anyone else know if this is an issue?
What has changed? Hurricanes have been hitting US shores since before man even got there. Now [from the safety of the UK] I read panic/hysterical quotes like “Storm of the Century” and that from a Mayor who failed miserably to maintain the levees [and strengthen them] when Katrina ‘struck’ in ’95. Wasn’t it the weakened levees crumbling that caused the damage? Will the Greenie Michael Moore projected Force 5 Gustav actually do its worst or will it fade away having done an average [not for those who get clobbered I know!] hurricane wreckage trail and will the Global Alarmists still claim CO2 ‘poisoning’ has caused all the trouble?
Decades ago my Mother blamed bad weather on “The Atom”.
Centuries ago women who boiled their washing just before an unpredicted disaster were often drowned/burnt as witches for causing the event! True!
Medieval Catholics paid large sums of money [indulgences] to the church to ensure their eventual heavenly resting place. Isn’t that what the Gore Greenies are doing with Carbon Offset trading?