Don’t Underestimate a Cat. 1
State College, Pa. — 29 August 2012 — AccuWeather.com reports before pummeling Florida and the Gulf Coast of the U.S. with flooding rain, Isaac first became organized more than a thousand miles east of the Leeward Islands over the Atlantic.
Here’s the interesting stats:
Distance Traveled
From forming into the ninth tropical depression of the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012, to churning over southern Louisiana Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012, Isaac has traveled about 2,695 miles.
High Wind Gusts Recorded
Louisiana
Belle Chasse Ferry Dock in Plaquemines Parish: 113 mph
Miss Canyon Oil Rig: 102 mph
Boothville: 84 mph
New Orleans (NAS/Alvin Callendar Airport): 79 mph
Mississippi
Gulfport: 70 mph
Biloxi: 55 mph
Excessive Rainfall Amounts
Florida
Royal Palm Beach: 15.86 inches
Boynton Beach: 13.74 inches
Greenacres: 13.10 inches
Wellington: 12.55 inches
Louisiana
New Orleans: 9.57 inches
Boothville, La.: 6.65 inches
South Lafourche Airport: 4.89 inches
Slidell, La.: 3.60 inches
Mississippi
Pascagoula: 5.35 inches
Gulfport: 4.14 inches
Hattiesburg: 3.32 inches
Biloxi: 2.16 inches
Storm Surge Heights
Louisiana
Shell Beach: Between 9 and 11 feet
Lake Pontchartrain at New Orleans: Around 6 feet
Grand Isle: Around 5 feet
Mississippi
Pascagoula: Around 4 feet
Alabama
Mobile Bay: Around 3-5 feet
Severe Weather Spawned by Isaac
Lyman, Miss.
At 12:13 p.m. CDT Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012, trained spotters reported a tornado 9 miles southwest of Lyman, Miss., near Long Beach.
Tampa, Fla.
A waterspout moved onshore on Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, damaging six homes 2 miles east-southeast of Tampa, Fla. Fences, trees and roofs were damaged on the properties.
Vero Beach, Fla.
An EF-0 tornado touched down on Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, impacting Vero Palm Estates, Countryside Mobile Home Park and Paraside Park Lifting about 5 miles west of Vero Beach. The tornado produced a discontinuous damage path, including minor damage to 62 structures and major damage to 31 structures.
By Meghan Evans, Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com
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Maybe too late for our farmers this season, but it does alleviate the drought.
Looks like an almost stationary system now. Those rain totals for LA should meet and even exceed those in FL by tomorrow. Looks like it might be trying to go W instead of N. Probably wobbling. Bad news for an area that can’t handle the high rain totals too well.
That would be Tropical Storm Isaac now…
Climate satire?
Anthony, do you think that the Isaac did not intensify as much as Katrina did with roughly the same track in part due to the decreased raft of fresh water floating around the Mississippi delta as a result of the Midwest drought?
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
August 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Hurricanes gain intensity over fresh water as reported here last week. So you could well be right.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/14/texas-am-says-freshwater-hurricanes-grow-stronger/
Come to Kansas City, Isaac, we need you. Leave poor New Orleans alone.
Many, many years, long before Katrinia, John McPhee wrote a book, The Control of Nature, with a chapter about the Army Corps of Engineers silliness about diverting the Mississippi River, saving New Orleans.
Sadly, New Orleans — my most favorite city in the US — is dead. Before silliness, after Katrinia, now…? I wish New Orleans could be saved, but it is human arrogance to think so.
….Lady in Red
I don’t like the movement on this storm! It looks almost like it is trying to drift back southwest to go back into the Gulf. I hope that is just a temporary pause in its forward momentum or my eyes following the eye wrong. I really hate it when these storms get all wobbly near the coast, they sometimes decide to get back to an area where they can strengthen again. I can’t imagine it cooled the water too much as fast as it went through the first time. I remember a couple of storms back in the 80’s where we evacuated three different times because the storm kept changing its mind (guiding winds died in the northern Gulf and it just sort of circled around for a few days – luckily as I recall it kept going back over water it had already cooled so didn’t strengthen much.)
UnfrozenCavemanMD
August 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
###
If you do a bit of research, I think you will find that Issac kept sucking up dry air which disrupted its ability to organize. Kind like me in the morning before warm humid coffee.
Lady in Red:
More coherence, please.
Lady in Red, thank you for that reminder. That book, McPhee’s ‘Control of Nature’, is a remarkable book about geology and engineering. It also has an eye opening section on the Los Angeles basin, and the mudslides that afflict that area cyclically. How the catch basins were built after flooding, then sat dormant for decades, then overflowed again and were rebuilt larger… left to fill with rocks and mud and not cleaned up. Politically, who spends money on catch basins that might not be needed for years? Then another thirty or so years later, they fill and overflow again, and the houses have been built even farther up the mountain sides, the devastation is even worse, etc. Growing up there, it brought home a sharp reminder of what happens when those thirty year floods happen. Going to go and read it again!
Reportedly, a short spin up tornado got a building over in Milton Florida. My phone went nuts with the alert and looking at the Doppler, it traveled roughly up the Escambia river and crossed North of Molino Florida. Dunno if it was on the ground or if the reported damage in Milton was as reported.
Thank you, Joanie.
New Orleans *is* my favorite US city, but like parents, we can do no more than cry, when the grandparents die…..
Human are too damn arrogant about what they can change, control. New Orleans is global climate change writ small: one small sad dead city…. if not today, by the Mississippi, tomorrow.
….Lady in Red
Here are my latest thoughts regarding Isaac from here on out: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/08/last-forecast-update-on-ts-isaac.html
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
August 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Anthony, do you think that the Isaac did not intensify as much as Katrina did with roughly the same track in part due to the decreased raft of fresh water floating around the Mississippi delta as a result of the Midwest drought?
Katrina reached Cat 5 a long way out then began to peter out.
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/hur_dir/2005/atl_12_katrina05_pos
National weather service data do not show anywhere near those wind gust speeds on land.
The only sustained hurricane speeds were off-shore.
Highest sustained wind speed of 58 mph at South Lafourche Airport late on the 28th with gust speeds of 77 mph. Nowhere near hurricane.
http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KGAO.html
I’ve seen no sustained land speeds over 58 mph, if you can find any let me know.
The gators in the swamp are happy! The so-called “red wolves” were removed from the swamps along the Louisiana Texas coastal region in the 1970’s to North Carolina to be stocked along the eastern Atlantic states most likely to protect them from the rapid increase in gators as a result of protection under the Endangered Species Act. Now the eastern states are over run with these “coyote-grey wolf ” hybrids but are called “coyotes” where they are a serious problem. Millions of dollars are still being spent on this program even today even though DNA analysis proves there is no unique genetic make-up. There was originally was about 400 captured along the Louisiana and Texas coast to begin this program and continues today. Your tax dollars at work. Grant seekers? You better believe it.
But the gators are happy. No one else is.
I think the NWS is continuing to fudge the hurricane numbers. When they downgraded it to a TS, the reason was that the gusts had dipped below 75mph. The problem is that hurricanes are defined by their sustained wind speeds, and not the gusts. Am I missing something here?
Can anyone here define objectively a drought for me, please? I asked my local retired meteorologist and he said “an extended period of abnormally low rainfall.”
He and I occasionally discuss building a non-weighing lysimeter or an evaporation pan. I’m interested in the lysimeter to indicate Ixodes tick dessication. I’m interested in the pan evaporator for the reported decline in pan evaporation rates.
Index map to tidal gauges in S. Miss: Pascagoula River and Gulf Drainage Basins
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lmrfc/?n=pascagoulariverandgulfdrainagebasins
Major Flood Stage: Jourdan River at KILN
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=lix&gage=klnm6
Snapshot at 120829.14:55 CDT http://i47.tinypic.com/10p6ba1.png
The TV just told me about New Orleans:
Behind the multi-billion dollar new levee system with the massive pumps: Safe.
In the rural areas behind the old earthen levees: Flooded.
Now we know what all that federal money saved: The Tourism Trade.
BW is on to something. The weather station results for Slidell, and Gulfprot/Biloxi show winds nowhere close to 75 mph sustained in the recent 3 days. On what data / observations is Nat Hurricane Svc announcements made?
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-28/us/us_tropical-storm-isaac_1_tropical-storm-conditions-national-hurricane-center-hurricane-isaac
As of 4pm wednesday – aug 29 NHC
BULLETIN
TROPICAL STORM ISAAC ADVISORY NUMBER 35
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092012
400 PM CDT WED AUG 29 2012
SUMMARY OF 400 PM CDT…2100 UTC…INFORMATION
———————————————-
LOCATION…30.0N 91.1W
ABOUT 35 MI…60 KM S OF BATON ROUGE LOUISIANA
ABOUT 60 MI…95 KM W OF NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS…70 MPH…110 KM/H
Morgan City, LA, 30 miles south of Baton Rouge, as noted in the NHC update, notes gusts up to 54 MPH…
http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KPTN.html
The definition of a hurricane does not depend upon the fastest gust to be found at 20,000 feet. I cannot find the specifications for measuring sustained winds to rate hurricanes and tropical storms.
What’s Isaac trying to do, crawl along the coast and sneak into Texas? Still seems to be tracking more W by N though most everyone keeps saying it will soon hook to the north, and to the north it is bound to take even if it waits until the Gulf’s corner.
bw says:
August 29, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I’ve monitored the NDBC observation stations and only saw 2 with sustained wind speed above hurricane force, but those were at 97.5m (LOPL1, Louisiana Offshore Oil Port Oil Platform) & ~130m (KMDJ, MIssissippi Canyon 311A (Apache Corp) Oil Platform).
NOAA adjusts those raw values to a 10m height. “NDBC adjusts wind speeds to conform to the universally accepted reference standard of 10 meters.”- NOAA
The raw LOPL1 high value of 72.1 knots adjusts down to 56.1 knots or 64.5 mph.
The raw KMDJ high value of 75 knots adjusts down to 56.6 knots or 65.0 mph.
As you said, all of the land stations showed values less than the offshore stations. So I’ve seen no documented hurricane force winds (at the ref std 10m) from Isaac from the NDBC coastal stations that were designed to measure winds that hit the coast.