(no subject)

[which_chick]

For those of you who live in caves or totally ignore the news, there's an interesting development in the Gulf of Mexico (south of the United States, the part of the ocean tucked between Mexico and Florida). It's named Katrina and it's a category 5 hurricane at the moment. Hurricanes only go up to category 5, so this is a fairly impressive one. Last reports I saw were barometric pressure of 902 mb (lower is worse) and winds running around 165 mph (higher is worse). The available computer models and climate measurements show absolutely no reason for Katrina to weaken between now and when it hits land. There's low wind shear and warm water all the way to coast, both things that will sustain (if not strengthen) Katrina as she heads to the coast. In short, there's this big, huge storm in the Gulf of Mexico and it's heading towards the Louisiana/Mississippi coastline with approximately zero chance of running out of steam, falling apart, or even weakening slightly before it hits.



Now, where the Mississippi hits the Gulf of Mexico, there's this town, maybe you've heard of it, called New Orleans. It's kind of a neat place. I've been there. New Orleans has jazz, beignets (which are a kind of fried dough thing one eats for breakfast), several nice lapdance joints, red beans and rice, Mardi Gras, oyster bars galore, lots of wrought-iron balconies, a very relaxed attitude about open containers on the streets, and an average elevation that's about six feet below sea level. Usually, that last isn't much of a problem because there are large levees and big, impressive pumps around the city to keep the water out. However, in the event that a fairly good-sized hurricane hits New Orleans, the storm surge water will flow up over the levees, kill the pumping stations, and make New Orleans into a great big swimming pool filled with dead bodies.

The thing is, Katrina isn't a fairly good-sized hurricane. Katrina is (currently) the fourth-strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic basin and she's expected to make landfall, according to current data, without weakening much, if at all.

I bet you didn't know that disaster and emergency management people get paid to think up really dreadful, worst-case scenario disasters that result in huge losses of life and property. They do. Thinking up such scenarios and devising plans to combat them is part of what people at FEMA and the Red Cross and so forth do for a living. The absolute worst-case scenario for a natural disaster happening to the United States is what they call "filling the bowl" -- the swimming pool o' corpses for New Orleans that I outlined above.

By all reports, we should be able to see the absolute worst-case scenario for New Orleans play out in less than twenty-four hours, barring unexpected and unlikely deviation from the six or so tightly-agreeing computer models used to predict the path of the storm. You might want to pay some attention to this -- if it unfolds as the models predict, it's going to be big and it's not going to be easy.

Sources for coverage:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/SteveGregory/
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/
http://eotstorm.blogspot.com/
http://www.brendanloy.com/
http://flhurricane.com/news.php

Comments

Worst Disasters then Fill a Bowl

[valleyhi.livejournal.com]

Remember what Yellow Stone National Park is resting on..Picture sixty feet of ashes and dust covering a quarter of the United States.. and ten feet or more covering two fifths. This along with huge fires, earthquakes and tidal waves would way overshadow a little water in a hole.
Still, the slowly unfolding nature of the impending disaster will provide amusement as new sources attempt to reach the maximum use of superlatives per minute to describe the possible death of thousands.
The first poll question is..how many news casters/camera crews will perish in the storm event while attempting to provide "live, local, and late breaking" hurricane coverage?

Re: Worst Disasters then Fill a Bowl

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

The difference being that the Yellowstone caldera erupts about every 600,000 years or so. The chance that it will blow in our lifetime(s?) is so small as to be effectively zero. Hurricanes, however, are a yearly occurence.

Re: Worst Disasters then Fill a Bowl

[valleyhi.livejournal.com]

Yes those time frames are pretty close for the disasters mentioned. I don't believe that New Orleans has been hit by a class five this century but perhaps that will change. As for YS, I like to keep all my possible disasters open.

Re: Worst Disasters then Fill a Bowl

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

If you're really the type to worry about things like that, you should just go all out and bite your nails over a massive bolide strike. We know that at least one of the Big Five mass extinctions was caused by a bolide impact, and we know that it'll happen again eventually. Bad times!

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

The NOAA alert for Katrina's landfall basically says, "Everything in this area that isn't quite strong is going to be destroyed. For the love of Cthulhu, get out get out get out!" Those folks who attempt to shelter in place in their homes are either going to die or are going to wind up costing the rest of us a fortune to rescue after the storm goes past.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

A belated thanks for this entry. I knew about the bowl-filling scenario, of course, and that the Cat 5 heading straight for it I heard about on the morning news Sunday was it... but ever since you posted this I've been glued, to the detriment of timely breakfasts, to brendanloy.com. And if I can believe what I read there, I'm not missing much by not having cable.

By not having DSL, now, that's an entirely different matter :)