No record of a Category 4 hurricane hitting the Panhandle or Alabama.

[trumad]

ever.... Last seasons Ivan was a Cat. 3 and it devastated the Panhandle. Reports are that it will take 5 years for the Panhandle to recover from Ivan.

Here's a snip for the Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale detailing the diff between a Cat 3 and a Cat 4.

"``Category 4 is not just a little bit worse -- it's much worse,'' said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. ``Damage increases exponentially as the wind speed increases. And no matter where it makes actual landfall, it's going to have a tremendous impact well away from the center.''


http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-dennis,0,6393081.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

[Not_Giving_Up]

1. The Weather Channel said last night that

No Category 4 has ever hit in the US in the month of July before (since they started tracking these things). This will be a first.

[Pachamama]

7. Bush Co: Global Climate Change? What Global Climate Change?

:eyes:

[Poppyseedman]

2. Fortunately, if that's the correct word, the center winds are not

very big across. It's only a Cat 4 about 50 miles from the center. Outside of the center, it's tropical winds extending out 250 miles. According to NOAA

As a member of Hurricane Andrew club, I know what these people will be going though. I pray they got out.

[LizW]

3. I don't think the AL gulf coast will ever be the same

People I know who have had family vacation homes down there for generations are finding it impossible to keep them. If Ivan didn't destroy them, Dennis probably will.

Same for the small businesses there. They just can't afford the yearly loss these storms deal them, even if their business makes it through intact.

The result is that the gulf coast will end up being a long sprawl of high rise condos and chain restaurants. :(

[whistle]

4. Let us see how Jeb Bush handles this one, will he once again.....

....cut the insurance industry major financial slack, denying tens of thousands of possible victims financial emergency funds while letting the insurance industry off on billions of dollars in new claims? This will be a good scenario to watch. Unfortunately over 40,000 Florida homeowners and business owners in the damaged areas of the Florida Panhandle who were ravaged by Ivan last year, have still not been able to collect insurance or relief funds to repair their damaged property due to the blocks put in motion by Governor Bush ten months ago. The insurance industry actually got away with sticking property owners with over 50% of actual costs of damage, over $30 billion from the four hurricanes which hit Florida last year, but has provided no backup through FEMA with disaster grants or other forms of government backed low interest credit.

[iwillalwayswonderwhy]

5. Hurricane Camille - August 16, 1969

Hurricane Camille is said to be the worst storm ever to hit mainland United States. With winds in excess of 200 mph and tides over 20 feet, Hurricane Camille smashed into the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Sunday night, the 17th of August and continued its devastating path until the early hours of Monday, the 18th.

[tsuki]

9. It took a decade to recover from that one. Mississippi was devastated.

I predict that we will lose old 98 in Miramar and all the houses built in the primaries. Okaloosa Island will be totally flattened. Until Opal, the Gulf was not visible from OK Island. (So much for the US decision to sell it to developers for condos.) The beaches will be gone, and into gulf front homes.

When I was a child, long time ago, the boat captains in Destin told us not to buy on Holiday Isle. It wasn't supposed to be there, and someday it wouldn't. The "Blow of '28" opened the East Pass making another entrance into the Gulf. The Army Corp of Engineers have been dredging, keeping it open since then. Holiday Isle was built through attrition. A direct hit might prove the old captains correct.

The Gulf is warmer, the sandbars are gone (hence the shark attacks), the beach erosion continues. Building is non-stop. Some of our bluff are 15 feet high with a million dollar house atop them. With surge of 20 feet, you can guess what will happen.

It will not be pretty. Plus, this is only the fourth of a prediction of fifteen named storms. If you don't believe in global climate change, spend some time down here.

[Pithy Cherub]

13. Camille (1969) followed by Andrew (1992) now Dennis (2005).

I was living in Italy for Andrew. I went to bed hearing from CNN International that there were no reports of injuries or damage yet during Andrew. The next morning (Italian AM) Homestead was basically a memory and surrounding areas were just pancaked. They were shell shocked at how bad it was and the reports were that until the helicopters got in the air they were unable to determine the scope of the damage. What I remember most was how clear and sunny it was during those pictures and it covered miles.

Dennis is a direct hit on the Gulf Coast, which will not only shatter the existing landscape but alter the economics of the area for years (at least a decade) as well. Mississipi built a thriving gambling area and the Gulf tourists are critical to sustaining the tax base there.

The aftermath of this is going to be really a huge strain, as there will need to be congressional support to rebuild where appropriate, which will be a fight in and of itself.

[tsuki]

14. Opal, 1995, was also bad. The beaches were severely eroded in

the Panhandle. Bay County applied for an erosion control line. They got it. But the Feds will not pay for private beaches, so our county nixed the idea on "enviromental" reasons. There will be a lot of damage this time. There was damage with the tropical storm this year.

[HeeBGBz]

11. Camille is legendary

The local pix from that time are shocking. Nothing has ever been that bad since.

[Feron]

16. Here is a link with Camille pictures...

http://www.geocities.com/hurricanene/hurricanecamille.htm

[skids]

6. speed cubed.

The amount of energy in wind goes up by the third power of wind speed. An increase from 140mph winds to 180mph winds means the destructive potential in the affected area has doubled.

FWIW.

[karlrschneider]

8. Nope...squared. Formula for wind force is

Cd * q * S

q : dynamic pressure, = rho * v^2 / 2


Cd- drag coefficient, about 1.8 for flat surfaces
rho- density of the fluid
S - surface area
v - velocity

[skids]

10. You might want to google that.

Sources pretty much agree on velocity cubed. The reason is you have the kinetic energy of wind at velocity squared, and then velocity is factored in again because the mass of the encountered air is proportional to the velocity.

[karlrschneider]

15. Well, I'm an aeronautical engineer (Tulsa U 1965) but maybe I've forgotten

more than I ought to have. So Googling now....

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/drageq.html

[skids]

22. OK, we were both right/wrong. Sortof.

I should have said power, not energy. It's obvious that the energy in the storm itself is speed squared. That's pretty basic physics. What follows the cube rule is the available power, or in other words the rate at which that energy can be ideally transferred. However, as you point out, the force applied follows a square rule, probably due to the buildup of an air cushion which shunts the flow -- though I think it is pretty bizarre that an effect like that would remove a power term.

Anyway the true impact on the "danger level" is likely someplace inbetween, with tons of coefficients and other variables to boot.

And by now we are officially geeking out bigtime for a political forum :-)

[Imagine My Surprise]

12. We can expect BOTH Bushes to show up in flip flops...

in an enfeebled effort to raise the flagging polls. Of course, the "suicide" bombers in London, may have already -- by co-incidence, of course -- raised the numbers somewhat.

[SoCalDem]

18. Numbers don't matter now.. They are not running for anything now

an election is not months/weeks away.. They will hunker down, and *² will start packing for his annual August Armadillo & Stick Round-Up.

[sleipnir]

17. They've only been keeping records for 150 years.

In a geologic scale, that's just a blip. We don't know if this is a cyclical thing or if it's a product of man altering the environment.

I think that 150 years is a bit too short to go around claiming that the sky is falling.

[Jacobin]

19. This is true

We act like the last 100 years or so is some great historical record. Its not a pimple on an elephant's ass in even recent geological time

[expatriate]

20. There have been many Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes

that have hit the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Camille in fairly recent memory, was a Category 5 hurricane. The hurricane that struck Galveston Island in 1900 was a Category 5. Here are some others:

Hurricane Carla, 1931, Texas, winds 140mph, category four.
Hurricane Frederick, 1979, Alabama, winds 130 mph, category four.

Hurricanes Betsy and Hilda both hit Louisiana in 1964 and 1965, and were borderling Category 4 hurricanes. I lived through those - the destruction was massive.

Hurricane Audrey hit Louisiana in 1957, and was probably a Category 4.

I distinctly remember the impact of Hurricane Camille. My family travelled by car from Louisiana to Florida each summer, and we drove along Highway 90 before Interstate 10 was completed. One of the few highlights of that long trek was seeing the beautiful old houses across from the beach in Mississippi and Alabama. These houses were over 100 years old, had beautiful old gardens, and were characterized by long flights of concrete steps leading from the ground to the wide front verandahs. There were beautiful great oaks, some of them hundreds of years old.

When we returned two weeks later, after Hurricane Camille had gone through, every house was gone. There was nothing left but one set of sweeping concrete steps after another - leading nowhere. Not a stick. The houses, trees, gardens - gone as if they had never been.

[amazona]

21. well it was probably a Cat 3 -- damage much less than expected

At least that's what they're saying on msn.com


Biggest problem appears to be power outages. They're saying around 220,000 without power? Heck, we had that many without power because of Cindy in New Orleans area!

[Massacure]

23. The last reading on the NHC website before landfall said 140 mph.