The only reason New Orleans had so much damage is because of the levee system failing. Not because of the actual storm.
Oh, and New Orleans floods all the time, and the people have always delt with it pretty darn good. If the levee systems hold up, New Orleans is no different than Houston when it floods.
Right, but the rain and surge from the storm aided the water. That's why I was saying that the category of a given hurricane doesn't necessarily mean that much in terms of the ultimate impact on New Orleans. People act like Katrina was a direct Cat 4 or 5 hit, and that's just not the case at all.
but the storm surge alone would not have been a big deal, the city would have just pumped the flooding back into the Gulf, the way they always do with flooding. But, yeah with the storm surge, and levee system failing... it was too much for the city to handle. If the levee's fail again, the government better make it priority #1 to fix them... it will be their fault this time around for the system failing.
Two things: 1. New Orleans may have been hit by the "clean" side of Katrina, but being to the west of the eye forced the water to push from Lake Ponchatrain into the city instead of away from the city into the North Shore like Gustav when it was on the "dirty" side. 2. Katrina may have been a Cat 3 when making landfall, but it had the storm surge of a major Cat 5 hurricane. Cat 3 hurricanes generally don't have storm surges of over 25 feet like Katrina did.
Does no one remember the storm surge damage Mississippi took from Katrina? City blocks were devastated along the shore line. Anyone?
I'm sorry guys. I haven't been around here too much for that last couple of weeks. Wunderground's blog has me hooked.
The NHC didn't have these models at their 5pm update. The 11 EDT update should factor in these new models.
South Texas storm due to the front headed our way? To push it that much more west they must be expecting it to be a pretty weak hurricane. Just logged on so I haven't been to WU yet to read the updates.
They actually updated the track at 8pm. They've been doing intermediate track updates this year, which is cool. Keep in mind that a lot of the tracks for Gustav shifted west repeatedly, but struggled with figuring out just where the turn would be and overestimated a westerly shift. The low pressure area going across the center of the country is going to turn Ike at some point...just when is the question. I don't think they'll get a good handle on this until Monday, but the NHC did a phenomenal job of not overcompensating for track shifts with Gustav. They were dead on 5 days out. We still don't have a model estimating landfall in 5 days - we're looking at day 6 or 7. That will give us a clearer picture.
Tough one for Cuba, but hopefully that Cuba track will do enough damage to Ike that it can't fully recover.
