What Scares a Field Meteorologist?
The meteorologists on the Weather Channel are freaking out. With every storm, of course, they warn people to stay indoors or evacuate high risk areas. They list the previous hurricanes that the current storm is like (Camille is being mentioned a lot), they show you the churning waves on the beach, they encourage you to not do exactly what they are doing (stand in the storm), and so on. But with Katrina's winds at 160 mph, the field meteorologists have gone beyond the usual words of discouragement. Stephanie Abrahms is twitching nervously, incredibly eager to leave her pearch on the coast and move inland. A local news crew in Biloxi asked Jim Cantori if he was going to ride out the storm at the beach because they were thinking of doing so. "What are you, crazy?" he replied. I'm waiting for them to turn to the people walking on the beach behind them and scream, "WHAT are you people DOING here? Run! Flee! Category 5! 160 mph! 40 foot storm surge! Total devastation! Do you understand? This stormly isn't just dectructive, it's DEADLY! GO!" Then pick up their gear, sprint to their van, and burn rubber speeding out of there.
The one saving grace here may be that the storm will probably hit at low tide, thus reducing the amount of damage the storm surge could do. We can also hope that it will be in the middle of an eyewall replacement cycle when it finally reaches land, which will weaken it (though probably only to cat 4). However, at the moment, it is still getting stronger. And it's moving into warmer waters.
As of the 11 o'clock update:
Central pressure: 907 mb
Maximum sustained winds: 175 mph
Wind gusts up to 215 mph
The one saving grace here may be that the storm will probably hit at low tide, thus reducing the amount of damage the storm surge could do. We can also hope that it will be in the middle of an eyewall replacement cycle when it finally reaches land, which will weaken it (though probably only to cat 4). However, at the moment, it is still getting stronger. And it's moving into warmer waters.
As of the 11 o'clock update:
Central pressure: 907 mb
Maximum sustained winds: 175 mph
Wind gusts up to 215 mph
posted by SpakKadi at 10:23 AM
2 Comments:
I think the footage that best shows the seriousness of the situation is the last clip that we saw on the weather channel. Instead of the meteorologist standing in the wind and rain, there was nobody. It was obvious there was no camera guy either. It truely looked like they were using footage off a security camera on the side of a building that you could kind of see the ocean from.
Did you realize that there are 4 or 5 major oil refineries within about 15 miles of New Orleans? You may want to go fill up your tank before the price of gas jumps up.
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