Hurricane Ida: Live Stream And Open Thread
Being described as a “worse case scenario” the frighteningly powerful Hurricane Ida bears down on Louisiana, New Orleans, Mississippi, and the larger Gulf Coast.
Hurricane Ida has strengthened into a Category 4 as it heads toward landfall on the northern Gulf Coast today, where it will bring life-threatening storm surge, dangerous rainfall flooding and potentially catastrophic winds.
Ida had winds of 150 mph as of 6 a.m. CDT on Sunday, making it a strong Category 4 hurricane. Maximum sustained winds in Ida increased by 70 mph in 24 hours, which easily meets the criteria for the rapid intensification of a tropical cyclone.
Bands of heavy rain containing gusty winds are beginning to spread into the northern Gulf Coast ahead of Ida’s landfall.
An elevated weather station in Southwest Pass, Louisiana, clocked a wind gust to 107 mph early Sunday. Storm surge has pushed water levels about 3 feet above normal at Shell Beach, Louisiana.
Ida is centered about 75 miles south of the southeastern tip of Louisiana and is moving to the northwest at 15 mph. Landfall in southeast Louisiana should occur this afternoon.
Weakening of Ida to a tropical storm and then a tropical depression is expected as it tracks inland through the lower Mississippi and Tennessee valleys early this week.
Our first tornado warning went off at 0622 CDT. It’s raining in bands at 0717. Nothing really hard yet. We are in that part that has waffled between being on the edge of hurricane zone and not for days.
If traffic flowing north and east out of New Orleans yesterday was an indication, most folks took this seriously and fled.
I’ll do my best to keep the Mississippi coastal updates going but I expect we will loose power and cell service at some point today. With a house that’s above 30 feet I worry about wind but not storm surge. But we are well stocked, tied down and ready.Report
You and yours stay safe todayReport
Thanks.
Radar is here:
https://radar.weather.gov/?settings=v1_eyJhZ2VuZGEiOnsiaWQiOiJsb2NhbCIsImNlbnRlciI6Wy04OS44MjUsMzAuMzM3XSwiem9vbSI6NywiZmlsdGVyIjoiV1NSLTg4RCIsImxheWVyIjoiYnJlZl9yYXciLCJzdGF0aW9uIjoiS0xJWCIsInRyYW5zcGFyZW50Ijp0cnVlLCJhbGVydHNPdmVybGF5Ijp0cnVlLCJzdGF0aW9uSWNvbnNPdmVybGF5Ijp0cnVlfSwiYmFzZSI6InN0YW5kYXJkIiwiY291bnR5IjpmYWxzZSwiY3dhIjpmYWxzZSwic3RhdGUiOmZhbHNlLCJtZW51Ijp0cnVlLCJzaG9ydEZ1c2VkT25seSI6dHJ1ZX0%3D#/Report
Noon Ida Update –
Wind is picking up as is the rain. NWS reports expected landfall will be at or near Grand Isle, La. as a strong Cat 4 (winds at 150-155 mph). The beach road (US90) will flood fully soon if it hasn’t already. Numerous low lying areas around us are already under several feet of storm surge.
We remain high, dry and with power and internet. We expect our weather will deteriorate as she comes ashore and moves further north.Report
As expected the wind and rain in the coast are getting stronger as the storm moves further inland. The eyes is almost centered over Houma, La. Ida still has winds at or near 130mph. She may have started turning north already which would make our overnight wind field more intense then expected.
So ar power and internet are holding.Report
For anyone wanting video – this is Thibodeaux La.
https://fb.watch/7HTnxrmhH3/Report
Metro New Orleans is reported without power as is much of Baton Rouge. Storm appears to have turned north and will likely pass between Baton Rouge and Hammond over the next several hours.Report
10PM update –
Still getting strong winds and heavy rains. We have had three tornado warnings in The last 45 minutes but all seemed to be moving away from us. We expect it to be like this most of the night.
Ida is 30 ish miles ESE of Baton Rouge and moving north north west at 9mph. All of New Orleans and much of Baton Rouge are without power though my parents are still up and running as well.
We are all deeply grateful for your thoughts and prayers. I’ll check back in tomorrow once we get going. But now it’s time to get the kids to bed.Report
Monday morning – still raining and windy but less windy.
Multiple tornado warnings overnight.
Flooding is now the major worry.
New Orleans and points south are still dark, and reports came in overnight of localized flash flooding stranding those who stayed. As day breaks the footage will no doubt start to come out, but I’ll leave it to you to decide what to watch and where.
It’s going to be a long haul recovering down there. Hard questions will have to be answered. Many people will be emotionally and financially devastated for a long time. But bayou people are resourceful and resilient. So there will be a comeback.
We still have power and internet so while we wait to have our local curfew lifted I can get back to overwrought angst about politics and foreign affairs.Report
Perhaps I am uninformed, but from my POV, the gulf coast states don’t seem to take storm resilience as seriously as the west coast takes earthquake resilience. I mean, I know a lot of the infrastructure is hardened, but how many homes will be severely damaged or utterly destroyed by wind and surge?Report
Depends on where you are. Mississippi hardened up and elevated after Katrina down here on the coast, so while we loose power and tree limbs, more and more houses hold in stronger storms. Granted, you still have stick built houses up in the air on stilts, but the engineers claim they are stronger then they were pre-Katrina.
Louisiana has also tried to up its building codes, and with some success close in to cities. But a lot of the area Ida tore up yesterday is rural marshy southern Parishes, and those have always been dicey for building. Fourchon has some stout infrastructure because the oi patch works there and builds it, but the single highway running down there still floods routinely. Building code enforcement is tough down there – few code officers and lots of wink, nudge sort of stuff. Plus a healthy dose of Cajun and Vietnamese leave us alone ‘chere we got dis.”
Where we haven’t made big improvements or investments is power and internet. The farther south you go the more its on lines on poles. Utilities down here claim its too expensive to bury, and with a water table measured in inches it is tough to keep dry. So they don’t bother, but that is becoming an increasingly untennable situation.
Oh, and to make life even more fun, Louisiana’s Napoleonic Laws Code means lands that were once uplands, and privately owned, remain privately owned once they sink and become permanently submerged. This is how you get fish camps – and people’s permanent homes – on stilts in what look like bays.
There are many questions that need to be asked after this storm. But we are months away from that conversation.Report
Uplands that sink in the space of a human lifespan? This is why you don’t try to build a city in a massive river delta…Report
between sea level rise, coastal subsidence, and the tendency of marsh grass to get peeled back in huge layers, laid on other marsh grass, and then sinks by decomposition . . . yeah, it happens. the old “100 yards a day” problem.
Fun fact – that legal situation led to the federal government having an army of real estate lawyers in Louisiana during the Deep Water Horizon spill who spent all day every day obtaining temporary easements to allow response teams to enter bays to check for oil.Report
The Netherlands is a country built in a massive river delta. Cities are frequently built where rivers meet the sea because of the advantages of water transportation and trade.
Since New Orleans was built, the Mississippi River basin has been damned into a series of lakes. 400M tons of sediment used to reach New Orleans each year, now its only 80M. The Chicago River was reversed, adding its sewage to all of the other upriver cities that kill off protective wetlands. Louisiana gave out permits like parade candy to carve up wetlands with canals to have straight lines for boats to access oil fields. A lot of things have changed in the last 100 years.Report
“Perhaps I am uninformed, but from my POV, the gulf coast states don’t seem to take storm resilience as seriously as the west coast takes earthquake resilience.”
They do. Part of it is, well, the problem with working out the older buildings (generally by watching them collapse).
Just take my tiny little town in Texas — we’re about 20 or 30 miles inland, so we’re less worried about storm surge than wind and rain. (It’d take, oh, about 30 feet of storm surge right up the ship channel proper to even threaten my area). We’re in the last evacuation zone — any more inland, and it’s “shelter in place” no matter how bad the storm is.
Over the last, oh, 20 years my little town has put a hundred million+ into flood control (overhauling 50+ year old infrastructure, including a 100% inspection and repair of the ENTIRE drainage system, expansion of said drainage system, and even mid-storm drain cleanings to clear litter and allow streets to drain — they use garbage trucks and some sort of weird hose. They’ll go into three feet of water and suck drains clear of debris). As a result, Harvey did far less damage than Allison despite dropping more water.
They also improved building codes — I had to replace my roof in the last 5 years, and the code went from 110mph roofs to 140mph roofs, which wasn’t the only building code change. It takes 20 years or so for a roofing code change to actually apply to everyone (roofs last 20 years if you’re lucky down here).
There’s also been some work on building what they call the “Ike Dike” as well as a coastal park project (designed to flood and soak up storm surge and winds) to heavily mitigate future storms, but those are still being debated cost wise. (My preference is the park project, as it’s both cheaper AND more effective long-term, but requires a lot more land seizure than a more expensive, giant storm break)Report
I’ll always remember the pics of Galveston a few years back, with houses on the coast just blasted to splinters, and I’m thinking, “Who the heck let them build those kinds of houses that close to the coast?”Report
County councils, hungry for property tax dollars because they lack other revenue sources.Report
These are the same folks who hide the flood plain maps in a dark basement with signs warning people about jaguars roaming about, right?Report
Yep. They build them back stronger, but…..hurricanes are getting worse and worse.
And the folks in Galveston are simply unwilling to admit Galveston is getting unviable.
The new builds will handle tougher storms and last longer, of course, than the old stuff.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the beachfront stuff is basically disposable, with the cost of wholesale replacement every few decades factored into the cost.Report
Are hurricanes getting worse? They’re causing more damage but as far as I can tell only because there is more property value. They don’t appear to be increasing in frequency.Report
The last 20+ years has seen significantly more named storms in the Atlantic than the historical average, significantly more hurricanes, and significantly more major hurricanes. There are more, there are more big ones, and there are indications it’s only just started getting worse.Report
http://www.stormfax.com/huryear.htm
Assuming this data is accurate, there’s been a roughly 60-year cycle, and we’re at comparable levels to 1880 and 1950. 1920 and 1980 were at the low ends. So your 20+ year span does show an increase, but only due to cherry-picking.Report
From what I’ve read, the science is mixed on frequency and intensity.
But as with any discussion of man made environmental damage, its the cumulative effect of many disparate factors that matter, not just One Big Thing.
For instance, we are building more in dangerous areas;
Natural barriers like barrier islands are being destroyed, leaving the coast exposed;
The waters are more polluted so storm surges leave not just water, but toxic residue;
As the ocean rises, storm surges have more harmful effect;
And this holds true for just about every environmental effect- wildfires, rainstorms, heat waves, freezes, etc.
The lines of causality are tangled, but almost all of them lead back to human actions.Report
The science is mixed on the role of climate change on frequency and intensity; it is not mixed on the increase in frequency and intensity, or the way the direction of storms is moving or the fact that tropical storms are starting earlier (so much so that the official start of the season may be moved to earlier in the year).Report
Many of our colleagues are getting more and more confirmed that intensity increases are human influenced:
https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/Report
We’ve gone from “global warming isn’t real” to “global warming is real but not man made” to “global warming is real but you can’t PROVE it’s man made” to “global warming IS real AND hurricane intensity and frequency is up AND hurricanes keep showing up early, but you can’t prove it’s linked to global warming”.
They might as well put wheels on their goalposts.
Just straight up denialism.
I live in Houston — i can’t afford to stick my head in the sand. The next Ike will blow it away.Report
So how do you explain the data I linked to?Report
Well for starters your data leaves out 2018-2020. so its cherry picked as a set as well. That aside the numbers over the most recent 20 years appear to have troughed in 2014 and are climbing again. And a best fit trend line for number of Named Storms goes up across your whole data set. The trend line for the numbers of Hurricanes and Major Hurricanes also goes up in your full data set. So Chris is actually right, based on your data.
But i haven’t go time to go run fancy ANOVA analysis to see what the function really looks like.Report
I used the first data source to come up on Google.
For 2018 forward, the number of hurricanes and major hurricanes are as follows:
2018 8 2
2019 6 3
2020 14 7
That does put 2020 higher than any previous year. I’ll look around for a fuller statistical analysis.Report
I’m surprised more people don’t do air form homes, since they don’t have those handy corners and crevices that the wind likes to grab and use to rip off roofs.Report
I have no idea what that is, but I can say that building codes are highly conservative.
They favor small, incremental changes to proven designs rather than big leaps.Report
https://www.deltechomes.com/Report
Take a really big balloon and inflate it. Build a rebar cage around it* and spray layers of lightweight foam and cement on it to build up the walls. Let it cure. Cut out door and windows.
Because of the balloon shape, it’s a bit more aerodynamic than typical construction.
*Obviously you build up the cage before you inflate the balloon, but the balloon fits just inside the cage.Report
I love alternative building projects and have attempted to get one or two started on my property… in general they seem to go like this:
Step One: Get a really big balloon.
Step Two: there is no step two because, um, balloon.
But I’m with you in spirit.Report
Is it in the model code? Serious question, not snark.Report
I’d have to look. I’ve seen them built, but I have no idea what codes apply to them.Report
Form follows finance.
Inflated buildings are very possible and have some advantages, but don’t scale easily since they require a lot of expensive labor to construct and don’t lend themselves to the sort of appearance people like.
Back in the 90s I was with a firm that built military family housing on Guam and the Corps of Engineers spec required it to withstand 150 MPH winds.
So the walls and roof were all made of concrete, but with conventional sloped roofs and overhangs to look like wood frame.Report
This is the primary reason I think air form, or round, or dome housing remains niche – people want the conventional look.Report
Thanks for the stream of updates, Philip.Report
You’re welcome.Report
not to pick nits but what news black out are you talking about? Even Fox has reporters on the ground in the area, though a lot of them are having the same devilish time rescuers are having moving around. Its all over the news, should you care to look.Report
i hate trolls . . .Report