Do you think another hurricane will hit New Orleans again this season?

[kentuck]

I pray not, but a little voice in the back of my mind says they should have those levees fixed already. There may be another hurricane that will take the same path as Katrina and hit New Orleans head on? Those that are twiddling their fingers on getting those levees fixed are taking a gamble that it will not happen again - at least, not so soon. That's a real gamble, in my opinion.

[0007]

1. God forbid! I hope not

[madeline_con]

2. No. A big one will take out D.C.

[tatertop]

3. Going to be another very bad year

seems unavoidable

[Jacobin]

4. The last bad one to hit N.O. before Katrina was Betsy

In 1965.

They are random, which means they could just as easily do it again as not.

I sure hope N.O. gets a break for a few decades so it can rebuild. Who know? No one.

[Cobalt Violet]

5. Yes.

We are in unchartered territory with our weather.

[hatrack]

6. They can't fix the levees in time - no one could

For the system - which totals literally thousands of miles of levees, sea walls, ditches, canals, diversion structures, rip-rap structures and all the rest - would take at least five years to get back to the shape it was in before Katrina. It would probably take a decade or more to bring it up to standards allowing it to withstand a hit by a Cat 4 or 5. There was a long and fascinating and disturbing piece on NPR on this a few weeks back.

People can move back to New Orleans, and who can blame them? It's home. I hope to God those who do don't get hit this season, but those who do should know that there's no way that local, state or federal governments are going to be able to protect them from another Katrina in 2006. With hurricane season 47 days away, no way in hell.

[roguevalley]

7. i heard a scientist say not a cat 5 but a buncha big ones anyway.

it makes my gut turn over.

[bdamomma]

8. the storms are getting worse

every year, they do not want to listen about global warming it's happening. It depends how hurricane track goes, but the gulf states need no more destruction. What an incompetent bunch of people Levees not even fixed. This is shameful.

[justice1]

9. highly likely ,temps averaging 10 degrees above average

[pitohui]

10. i think no

gray says the bermuda high is back in place, so while we will still have an extremely active hurricane season, which is projected to be as destructive as 2005, it will likely hit to the east

florida again is the most likely hit

even the northern atlantic coast is a possible, meaning d.c. boston, even manhattan, new jersey, or long island, the cost of which would quickly put the new orleans event in the shade

if i had to put money on it, my bet would be atlantic coast florida

[Dr.Phool]

11. Yeah, but remember Gray was off by 100% plus last year

And, he's forcast more storms than he did last year.

[pitohui]

15. gray was off because he is sane

you cannot be an ethical mathematician and straight-faced predict that oh by the way storms will be 275 percent above ever

prediction is based on likelihood

no one really knows, we're just being asked for what is most likely to happen

in the long run, what is more likely to happen happens more often than what is less likely to happen

275 percent above normal don't keep happening

[zulchzulu]

12. No, but another Katrina-like storm will hit the East Coast

That's the predicted paths of the very busy hurricane season this year. New York City could get slammed by a Nor'easter...or Boston even...

Ya think Homeland Security is prepared?

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

13. No, they'll all go to Florida this time. It's their turn. n/t

[kentuck]

16. Maybe Charleston again...

Was Hugo the one that hit there last time?

[lpbk2713]

18. Hey I got slammed by three of em in '04.

It shouldn't be my turn for another forty years or so.

[Strelnikov_]

14. We Got Lucky With Katrina And Rita

If Katrina had tracked 40 mi. further west, and maintained strength to landfall, we probably would not be talking about rebuilding New Orleans, in addition to losing critical petroleum and natural gas staging and offloading facilities.

If Rita had tracked 50 mi. further south, the Houston petrochemical industry, which includes 15% of the nations refining capacity, would have been taken out.

Combine the above two, and we could have the beginning of Petrocollapse.

So, considering the upcoming season, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky?

Most of New Orleans flooding was due to discrete levee failures, somewhat limiting the rate of rise. Under the following hurricane scenarios, the entire City is swamped under storm surge, overtopping the levees simultaneously. Katrina was not the big one. Not even close.

In the 1990s, Suhayda began modeling category 4 and 5 storms hitting New Orleans from a variety of directions. His results were frightening enough that he shared them with emergency preparedness officials throughout Louisiana. If such a severe storm were to hit the city from the southwest, for instance, Suhayda’s data indicate that the water level of Lake Pontchartrain would rise by as much as 12 ft (3.7 m). As the storm’s counterclockwise winds battered the levees on the northern shore of the city, the water would easily top the embankments and fill the streets to a depth of 25 ft (7.6 m) or more.

Suhayda’s model is not the only one that describes such a catastrophe. A model called SLOSH (Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes), which is used by the National Weather Service and local agencies concerned with emergency preparedness, portrays an equally grim outcome should a storm of category 5 hit New Orleans. The SLOSH model does not contain nearly as many computational nodes as does AdCirc, it does not use a finite-element grid to increase the resolution of the nodes on shore, and its boundary is much smaller. Even so, its results are disheartening.

“Suppose it’s wrong,” says Combe, the Corps modeler. “Suppose twenty-five feet is only fifteen feet. Fifteen feet still floods the whole city up to the height of the levees.”

Experts say a flood of this magnitude would probably shut down the city’s power plants and water and sewage treatment plants and might even take out its drainage system. The workhorse pumps would be clogged with debris, and the levees would suddenly be working to keep water in the city. Survivors of the storm—humans and animals alike—would be sharing space on the crests of levees until the Corps could dynamite holes in the structures to drain the area. In such a scenario, the American Red Cross estimates that between 25,000 and 100,000 people would die.

- Civil Engineering Magazine, June 2003

[pitohui]

17. yes but new orleans is a very small city

they've been predicting this at least since the 70s, the reason it has never happened is that new orleans is a tiny city as far as cities go and presents a tiny profile

the dirty little secret is that BEFORE katrina, fbi was threatening to drop new orleans from their list of major cities, yes, our murder rate per capita pre-K in 2005 was off the charts but our population was not actually quite large enough to be in the same ranking as such cities as detroit, houston, philadelphia, atlanta, you are comparing cites w. populations of millions to, well, a city with a population w. less than 500,000 that they tried to boldly exaggerate so it wouldn't look so bad what happened w. the collapse of the oil industry in the 80s

before the dead-on cat 5 hits new orleans i think d.c. or another major city will be taken out actually, we have a poor location but we have a much smaller target

i mean god forbid of course, but many cities present a much larger profile to the coast than new orleans

go to new jersey sometime, they have million dollar condos stacked up right on the beach, it's scary! some town in new jersey we never heard of in the south will wipe out more financial value than all of the louisiana coast, where no one lives on any coast barrier island except grand isle and they're all blue collar guys w. inexpensive throaway cottages

[Strelnikov_]

19. You Make An Excellent Point. The Probability Of A Cat 4/5

approaching at just the right direction to maximize storm surge as the modelers predicted is very low.

A Cat. 5 tearing into Miami or Tampa is probably a higher risk.

The biggest risk in the near term in the gulf is probably all of the offshore oil/gas infrastructure which represents a 25% (and growing) percentage of our domestic production.

[greenman3610]

20. what about tornadoes?

It looks like Middle America could be shaping
up to take a hit as well.
Isn't this season already one of the worst?

[pitohui]

22. what about em?

tornadoes are tragic but they are not a pimple on the butt of something the size of katrina, they are not even an andrew

[greenman3610]

23. Well, a big one hitting a large city or

Chemical plant would be a very bad day in the neighborhood.

[pitohui]

21. yeah but they would profit off that

after katrina we could not buy gas and a major part of going anywhere was trying to obtain gasoline -- it's the law of supply and demand -- because of the shortages in the aftermath of katrina exxon mobil booked the biggest profit of any industry in any quarter in all of human history

replacing the oil platforms and drilling infrastructure will be a pimple on the butt of the resulting windfall profit

just think of how the war in iraq, by keeping iraqi oil off the market, has benefited the oil industry by shooting oil prices sky high

believe me, oil cos. are not stupid, they know abt hurricanes and war, it is already figured into the cost -- and yet because consumers are naive they can actually boost the price again in the aftermath of such events

another example would be the sugar crop, because the usda underwrites the sugar crop and there was a fear that federal guarantees would be invoked to pay off the farmers of the crops destroyed by katrina and rita, sugar refineries were FIRST on the list to get trailers for their employees, to get additional employees, and to get online refining sugar (and splenda in cases where the cane was too damaged to make into regular sugar), it was dizzying how fast they got back into business

where there is motivation, a temporary and predictable problem such as tropical storms/ hurricanes is not an issue, business & gov't can deal

i don't believe the oil industry infrastructure has less going for it than agriculture!

even if another huge storm like katrina destroyed every rig in the gulf you are going to be shocked how quickly the drilling resumes -- if there is a will and a limit to the price gouging allowed

[Lisa]

24. Gray predicts 47% chance of Gulf Coast landfall (as of April)

(still 17% higher than normal probability)

http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2006/april2006/

PROBABILITIES FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE LANDFALL ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING COASTAL AREAS:


1) Entire U.S. coastline - 81% (average for last century is 52%)


2) U.S. East Coast Including Peninsula Florida - 64% (average for last century is 31%)


3) Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville - 47% (average for last century is 30%)


4) Above-average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean

[Pachamama]

25. Will Bush tell any more lies?

The answer is YES....

I pray for New Orleans to recover from Katrina and emerge from its devastation stronger and more vibrant than ever....However, I fear that before that will happen, there will be some awful, awful hurricanes coming to the entire Gulf Coast this summer/hurricane season.

And speaking of Bush, his lies etc. - I just pray we (the world) can survive those and his criminal cabal....