The Wall Street Journal has some great pictures of Gustav.
Also, at a joint news conference with Governor Jindal and Homeland Security Director Chertoff live right now, there is a report that Lake Pontchartrain water levels are rising due to surge from the back side of the storm. For the first time during Gustav, they’ve had to close one of the gates. But the engineers think they’ll be able to contain things.
Meanwhile, Alan Sullivan writes about Hanna:
Most models still go for a landfall somewhere in the Savannah to Charleston stretch of coast. This would be a near perpendicular onset at some speed, so it could be quite nasty. Some models bring Hanna obliquely ashore in Florida near Cape Canaveral. One model still runs Hanna right over Fort Lauderdale. We shall see. Official movement is now SSW at 4 mph — practically a standstill. Every hour that passes without Hanna gaining miles to the west decreases the threat to Florida and increases the threat further north. A landfall in North Carolina could carry the weakening but accelerating storm right up to coast to New York. There is very little chance that Hanna will recurve sharply enough to stay at sea. It will hit something. The question is what?
New York? Hopefully not. That’s another one of those nightmare scenarios. [UPDATE: Or not. Sullivan corrects me in comments.]
Beyond Hanna, we now have Tropical Storm Ike, and Sullivan — blogging from South Florida — writes: “It’s a long way out, but the future Ike has a very simple environment, unlike Fay, Gustav, and Hanna. It should just come straight across. Straight at South Florida.”
Further beyond, it seems quite likely that “Invest 99L” — just off the coast of Africa, labeled #1 on the map below — will soon be Tropical Storm Josephine.
It promises to be a busy couple of weeks.
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16 Comments
1. Hal:WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge is reporting that the northern part of the eye wall did skirt across the western side of East Baton Rouge Parish. I spoke with a loved one who lives there at about 5:30 p.m. who said that trees (the most gorgeous thing about Baton Rouge) are down in droves. For Baton Rouge, this is clearly the most damaging storm since Hurricane Betsy in 1965 when the eye of it crossed right over the town. Interesting photos and video at http://www.2theadvocate.com, the Baton Rouge newspaper’s website.
Also, thank you Brendan for your outstanding coverage of the storm.
Sep 1, 2008 - 4:42 pm 2. Easycure:It Global Warmening!
Sep 1, 2008 - 5:30 pm 3. Alan Sullivan:Nightmare scenario? Nah. New York City has been hit by coast-huggers many times. I remember several from the Fifties when I was a kid there.
The nightmare is a hurricane from open ocean, making New Jersey landfall on an anomalous NW course. That would aim surge into the NY harbor mouth. But that is an extremely improbable event, and Hanna poses no threat of it.
Sep 1, 2008 - 5:35 pm 4. Fat Man:I think that the names after Ike should be:
John
Sep 1, 2008 - 5:51 pm 5. Brendan Loy:Kennedy
Lyndon
Milhous
Nixon
…Obama?
Sep 1, 2008 - 5:52 pm 6. Brendan Loy:…Palin?
Sep 1, 2008 - 5:52 pm 7. roux:I’m in Baton Rouge…. Probably as bad a Betsy ‘65. I was just a kid then but I remember lots of trees down and Gustav certainly did that.
I had to work through the storm and we lost power about 11:30am CDT. It’s been a long day of trying to keep equipment cool and dry. I’d say 90% of the BR has no power. I know for sure that almost every hospital is on emergency generators. I don’t expect them to get power to sometime Tuesday.
Good thing about evacuations this time is that they didn’t let most evacuees come to Baton Rouge like Katrina. We could not have helped them at all this time.
Curfew started at 8pm and will last until 6am. I think the cops are pretty serious about it too.
Sep 1, 2008 - 6:45 pm 8. Alan Sullivan:Heh. Very good with the names.
If Ike comes at Florida, later on, it will have to move through a cool wake churned by Hanna. That could reduce intensity a little.
Sep 1, 2008 - 6:49 pm 9. Chad:Hopefully Alan. We don’t want it to be major and get people to stop liking Ike.
Sep 1, 2008 - 7:20 pm 10. LenS:The fourth picture on the WSJ site is powerful. Seeing the Industrial Canal filled to the top of the walls demonstrates the sheer vulnerability of so much of New Orleans.
Sep 1, 2008 - 7:22 pm 11. KG2V:I’ve been through a few NYC coast huggers too, but not as many as Alan (as I was born in the early 1960s)
A cat 1-2 hit won’t be too bad, when you get into the cat 3 storms is where NYC would get “fun”. The real problem from a logistics standpoint is if they have to evacuate Far Rockaway and the parts of Coney Island that are further from the shore. There are a STACK of nursing homes there that would cause problems, but most of them are actually designed to lose the basement and first floor and keep going (generators on the roof etc)
NYC has online maps of when you evacuate – they call them “level 1 2 and 3″. So long as it stays at level one, it would be “easy”, level III would be a nightmare
Sep 1, 2008 - 8:30 pm 12. JL:I’m with Sullivan. I grew up in the North East & New England in the 50s. WE had hurricanes. I remember going out in the quiet part of one hurricane that passed directly over our place on Cape Cod. I could see blue sky in the eye.
We were there for Carol and Hazel and mmmm Diane? I’m a bit foggy on the names — my 91 year old mother can help me out later. (The folks got married right before the big one hit in September 1938.) I remember heading back home to NY after one of the big ones (boats pushed up on the hill at Onset, MA, the pier gone etc.).
There was a bridge out on the Wilbur Cross / Merritt Parkway … I think the big one over the river by the Sikorsky plant maybe? The traffic was diverted and ended up going through Norwalk. The mayor was on the radio bemoaning all the “sightseers….” It took us 14 hours to get home — bumper to bumper some of the way and then going the backroads to do what was a 5 hour trip.
Sep 1, 2008 - 8:59 pm 13. sanssoucy:Busy couple of weeks! Wheeeeee!
Week after week of weather alarmism! Post after post of scaring anyone who’ll read!
Gawrsh. What fun. Beats working for a living, eh?
Sep 1, 2008 - 9:45 pm 14. David Thomson:Who are we kidding? This intense weather coverage is a bunch of nonsense. 65-75 per mile winds are not that big of a deal. I suspect that if the Democrats were convening—the MSM would ignore these relatively moderate storms. The MSM dares the GOP to object. If it does, the Republicans will be charged with being cold and unfeeling.
Sep 1, 2008 - 11:43 pm 15. Ubu Roi:Northeast hurricanes are faster moving and weaker than their southern brethren. Down here, we like to take our time, even with natural disasters.
Sep 2, 2008 - 4:22 am 16. V the K:Hurricane Gustav was all set to hit New Orleans as a Cat 5, but when it found out Sarah Palin was waiting for it with her moose rifle, it dropped to a Cat 2 and turned the other way.
Sep 2, 2008 - 6:22 am