Hurricane Ida It looks like an even more terrifying sequel to the dangers of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the worst storm in American history. But there are some twists and turns that have yet to come that may make Ada more annoying in some aspects, but not so terrible in others.
“The main story of Hurricane Katrina is the damage caused by the storm surge, and the scope is very wide. The main story of Ada will be the combination of wind, storm surge and freshwater flooding damage,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters , He performed hurricane missions for the government and founded Weather Underground.
Ida is expected to make landfall on the same calendar date on August 29, just like Hurricane Katrina did 16 years ago, after rapidly strengthening through similar deep-temperature waters, hitting the same area of Louisiana at roughly the same wind speed This will exacerbate the hurricane.
What may be different is crucial: direction, size, and strength.
Brian McNaughty, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, said: “Ida will definitely be stronger than Hurricane Katrina, and the magnitude is quite large.” “Moreover, the worst of the storm will pass through New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Carter The weaker side of Hurricane Rina will pass.”
Ada is already a powerful Category 4 storm with a wind speed of 241 km/h, which is expected to reach 155 mph before making landfall. “It is far from becoming the fifth Category 5 landing site in the continental United States,” McNaughty Say. This may be the first Category 5 storm to hit Louisiana, or the strongest storm to hit the state.
Hurricane Katrina weakened a lot before making landfall, listing Louisiana as a Category 3 storm with a wind speed of 204 kilometers per hour.
Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana from due south, while Ida hit the same area of the state from the southeast. McNaughty said that on Sunday, the hurricane intensity of Ida extended about 60 kilometers from the center, while the hurricane intensity of Hurricane Katrina extended 158 kilometers from the center when it made landfall.
McNoldy said: “This may be more like a natural disaster, and the big problem of Hurricane Katrina is more of a man-made problem” because of the failure of the dam. The failure of the dyke pushed the death toll from Hurricane Katrina to 1,833. The total loss is approximately US$176 billion at current prices. Experts don’t expect Ada to approach these totals.
Different directions
Ada is coming to the same place from a slightly different direction. Several hurricane experts worry that compared with Katrina, a different angle may put New Orleans in a more dangerous storm quadrant (front right of the hurricane), when the city was more damaged by the embankment than by the storm surge. The northeast quadrant of Hurricane Katrina promoted a storm surge of 8.5 meters in Mississippi instead of New Orleans.
Ada’s “angle could be worse,” McNaughty said. Because it’s smaller, “it’s not that easy to generate huge storm surges…but the angle it comes in, I think it’s more conducive to pushing water into the lake (Ponchartrain).”
Masters said that Ida’s northwest path not only made New Orleans more attention than Hurricane Katrina, but it also targeted Baton Rouge and key industrial areas more. He said that Ada is expected to travel through “the worst hurricane.”
“It is expected to track the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which is one of the critical infrastructure areas of the United States and is vital to the economy,” Masters said. “You may have to close the Mississippi River to allow barges to pass for several weeks.”
Steve Bowen, a meteorologist and head of global disaster insights at risk and consulting firm Aon, said the impact will also be felt outside the coastal areas.
“Of course we are looking at potential losses of billions of dollars,” Bowen said.
The United States evacuated thousands of people from the Gulf Coast during the “extremely dangerous” Hurricane Ida
Size matters
The difference is that the size is not only physically huge, but also important for damage. Because of the wider thrust of the water, storms with larger widths have larger storm surges.
Ada “will not produce a huge storm surge like Katrina, it will produce a more concentrated storm surge like Camille (in 1969),” Masters said.
But Bowen said that larger storms tend to be weaker. There is a trade-off between strong damage in a smaller area and damage in a smaller area, but it is still bad in a larger area. Bowen and Princeton University’s Gabriel Vecchi said they don’t know which situation will be worse in this case.
Rapid intensification
Ida enjoyed the so-called circulation vortex on Saturday night and early Sunday, rising from a wind speed of 169 km/h to a wind speed of 241 km/h in just 8 hours. The loop current is a deep slice of this incredibly warm water. It takes warm water from the Yucatan Peninsula, forms a loop in the Gulf of Mexico, and then spins upwards along the eastern edge of Florida into the Gulf Stream. Water above 26C is hurricane fuel.
Usually, when a storm intensifies or stops, it will absorb all the warm water in the area, and then encounter colder water, thereby starting to weaken the storm or at least prevent it from intensifying further. But these warm waters continue to intensify storms. Hurricane Katrina supplied power in this way, and so did Ida, getting electricity in an area with hurricane fuel more than 150 meters deep, “just a hot tub,” McNaughty said.
“Running these loop currents (eddy currents) is a very important thing. It’s really dangerous,” said Kosin, climate and hurricane scientist at Climate Services.
Kossin and Vecchi said that in the past 40 years, more hurricanes have increased rapidly with increasing frequency, and climate change seems to be at least partly responsible. The hurricane style lace has increased rapidly this year, and Hannah, Laura, Sally, Teddy, Gamma and Delta have all increased rapidly last year.
“It has human fingerprints on it,” said Kosin, who participated in a 2019 study on recent rapid intensification with Vecchi.
Biden issued a Louisiana emergency statement because the “very dangerous” Hurricane Ida is approaching
New eye wall
Kossin said that after the hurricane intensified rapidly, it became so strong, and its wind eye was so small that it usually could not maintain this state forever, so it formed an outer wind eye wall, and an inner eye wall It collapsed. This is the so-called eye wall replacement.
Kosin said that when a new wind eye wall is formed, the size of the storm will usually become larger, but it will become weaker. Therefore, the key to Ida is when and whether this will happen. This happened to Hurricane Katrina, which weakened steadily in the 12 hours before landing.
Ida has already begun to replace the eye wall, but McNoldy said he doesn’t think it is important.
“There is no time to do anything that will make a difference.”
history
Meteorologists have improved their forecasts, and they hope that Louisiana is better prepared than it was in 2005 and has a stronger dike system.
However, Bowen said that Ida arrived a year after Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana in 2020 at a wind speed of 150 miles per hour.
“Since 1851, no U.S. state has made landfalls with hurricanes above 150 miles per hour for many years,” Bowen said. “After Laura landed in 2020, Louisiana is about to make an unfortunate history.”
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