Devastation From IDA Seems to Surprise Many. Why? It was a Strong Cat 4 Borderline 5 Hurricane Moving Slowly Destructively Across the Landscape of Louisiana. Models Form Another Storm in the SW Carib Models Put Into the GOM Soon. Learn and Stay Prepared!
The sun is not up where I am and it will be a while before it's up in New Orleans and the surrounding towns, cities and hamlets where everyone lives who was dealt a hard blow by a strong Category 4 Hurricane yesterday. Ida was almost a Category 5 and the damage was foretold of in graphic forecasts from the National Weather Service and every reporter or meteorologists covering the intense deadly hurricane. Yet, everyone seems surprised that New Orleans lost power.
Water is out, especially in places where electrical pumps are used to pump water, and there has been flooding across a wide area. Did I mention that this almost Cat 5 Hurricane was large and moving slowly after landfall. Strong lines of storms trained over Alabama and the Florida Panhandle far to the East of the center of Ida in Louisiana. That's why we learn in Hurricane Country when a hurricane is headed our way to fill the bathtub with water so that if the power and water goes out we can use that water to flush the toilets.
Everyone seems shocked about the scope of the damage and destruction. With the morning light the extent of the destruction will be more apparent and more painful as the death toll now is only at one person confirmed dead but that will most likely rise. Add in the regular "Post Storm" deaths with people trying to get into flooded areas or hurt taking away debris or taking down shutters.
What surprises me is why everyone is so surprised.
In Miami the whole power grid went down for weeks after a borderline Category 2 hurricane hit Miami after Hurricane Katrina hit it weeks earlier; we had three hurricanes in 2005 and the electrical grid was knocked on it's back side and could not get up. New Orleans did not have a Cat 5 landfall but it had a slow moving, strong Major hurricane and missed the eye by about ten miles. This is the reality of the damage of a hurricane, especially a large strong hurricane moving tediously slowly. This type of scenario is literally a wrecking ball movign slowly across the countryside and when metropolitan areas are in it's way they get crushed in more complex ways as the infrastructure goes down.
Lousiana was pounded last year by several storms and it took months for many places outside large meteropolitan areas to get things put back together and still blue tarps and empty homes litter the back roads everywhere from last year.
Link to the article from the headline shown above.
Why is everyone surprised?
This is the horrific damage of a strong Cat 4 almost a Cat 5 Hurricane. Will we ever know how strong it really was early Sunday morning because as it was bombing out doing Rapid Intensificaiton the recon plane sent into it had to turn back and was unable to gather the data that it was actually a 5 not a 4. As many online said this was a Category 4.75 Hurricane and the damage we are seeing is supportive of that. We use phrases like "bombing out" because it is indeed like a small nuclear bomb exploding.
Let this be a wake up call to everyone on the East Coast, including Florida that feels especially teflon at the moment, Texas and the Carolinas of the damage another hurricane similar to this one later this year will deal to another place be it as well known and famous as New Orleans or some small town that feels as if they have been temporarily wiped off the map that no one knows where they are but feels bad for them and then life goes on for the people far from the destructive path of the distant hurricne.
Picture a child's LEGO village built beautiful, meticulously and suddenly some sardonic, older brother takes their strong, heavy bowling ball and rolls it across the little LEGO village and tears it to pieces. That is the power of a hurricane that can tear apart the fabric and structure of our lives. We know much about them and how to predict them and sniff them out from satellite imagery and yet we have not nailed down the timing of the Rapid Intensfication or where a hurricane slows exactly and then suddenly turns NORTH vs the forecast continued Northwest track and yes that happened Sunday in real time. But, before it formed it was forecast to develop and that it could be a Major Hurricane that would hit the Gulf Coast in a short amount of time. All in all that's pretty amazing, but I suppose in 2021 we expect total perfection?
I'm a little shocked that everyone seems shocked.
When the sun comes up and the first responders, families and friends work their way across the landscape I can predict more people will be shocked.
Please take this as your wake up call becasue we have not yet even begun the month of September and that's the month to remember how horrific a hurricane can be in September and all the way through October when the big, monster hurricanes usually form down in the Caribbean or out by Africa and move en masse like one gigantic bowling ball looking for a town to crush.
The NHC needs more money both for research for hurricanes and recon planes to go into the hurricanes to get the best data to perfect the best track.
That's it.
I'll update with breaking news at some point later today.
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram.
posted by BobbiStorm @ 3:49 AM
2 Comments:
I’m not surprised at all , living in Puerto Rico I’ve lived through Hurricane Hugo in 89 , T.S Hortense 96 , Hurricane George 98 (eye wall crossed our town ) Hurricane Jeanne2004 , nothing prepared me for what Hurricane Maria the same as Ida 150 mph winds and gust of 185
The winds , the destruction was on imaginable it was as if an atomic bomb had gone off , 36 inches of rain fell in my town , Cat 4 and 5 are horrendous, So be prepared. , when National Weather Service uses the word Catastrophic Damage , image the worst and then some . Be prepared , Manuel
It's an interesting thought to ponder, why it is that so many of us are surprised. I think it's mostly a human shortcoming of not truly taking things seriously unless we've directly experienced it ourselves. Take global warming for example. Despite all the studies, not much changes in our policies towards it because it's not real enough for most people. It's all theoretical ideas in their heads that don't seem relevant. Until it hits them hard someday. I think there's a lot of this same element -though not the only one- with how people perceive the pandemic.
In the year 2000 I moved to Mt. Pleasant, SC. My husband's family are all locals, with many relatives and friends in (or used to be in) Awendaw and McClellanville. One thing I noticed shortly after moving here was the clear demarcation in time: Everything was spoken of in terms of "Before Hugo" and "After Hugo." Over the years this has faded though. The population exploded, and locals are a small, dwindling demographic. The majority of people living here now aren't originally from hurricane country.
I remember my jaw dropping the first time I watched the home video my husband, then 18, recorded on his parents' camcorder of Hugo. There was the day before Hugo, as they secured their home and yard, and then the day after, when you literally could not find their street from all the downed trees and power lines. It looked like a bomb went off, splintering all the pine trees. My husband hasn't forgotten, and gets nervous when a Cat 1 looks our way. A Cat 2 and he'll be packing us up and leaving.
You would think that better tropical weather coverage would lead to better preparation, but I think sometimes it does the opposite. Maybe there's an oversaturation of tropical news and headlines, and after awhile some people start tuning it out. Then added to that, the messages of preparation and evacuation, and the storms go elsewhere or end up being less intense, so they don't take it seriously after awhile. Most of the people living here now didn't experience Hugo, and so the memories fade. Until the time comes when another big storm will come along.
I've been reading your blog for a few years now and always mean to comment. I enjoy both your tropical content and general life stories and musings. You're one of the best tropical analyzers I've followed. Keep doing what you're doing, there are people out there listening.
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