hurricane Ivan

[eclectica]

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/graphics/animehurr.gif

I was in New Orleans last year and I walked from the Mississippi river to what they call Lake Pontchartrain, which is actually an inlet connected to the sea. It was a pretty long walk and I thought it looked close on the map because it was only a few inches distance. When I got to Lake Pontchartrain I got to see the big wall separating the water from the rest of New Orleans. A lot of the city is below sea level and they require pumping stations (http://www.swbnola.org/drain_info.htm) and levees to keep the water out. The effect of the levees is that they work in both directions and also could prevent water from draining out of the city as well. When it rains heavily then pumps become overwhelmed because they can only pump so much out per minute. New York city had a problem like that recently on September 8th in which the rain fell at something like a rate of 1.5 inches per hour, causing the subways to flood. A bigger worry for New Orleans is that also during strong storms there is something called a "storm surge". That is when the wind pushes the water against the shore and raises its elevation. Lake Pontchartrain in the north of the city could spill over the levees from southward winds creating a storm surge pushing the water over the levee and flooding the city. You can read about that scenario here (http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf?/washingaway/thebigone_1.html).

Hurricane Ivan is a relatively strong hurricane that occurs once in a decade, but the center is projected to pass 100 miles to the east of New Orleans and hit Alabama early tomorrow morning. You can track it at this site:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_astorm9+shtml/151453.shtml

[nanook]

We were just talking about that at work last night, (or this morning).
I didn't realize how bad of a hurricane this actually was. Someone was saying that we are also on the verge of an el nino, next year.?
That the ocean is extremely warm, and that is what causes hurricanes.
So I guess putting all that together with our global warming and damn.
Is it true that Grenada was devastated at almost 93% of the whole country?
That is insane. We already have flyers at work asking for donations for the relief of that country, although I'm sure that most of those islands down there were devastated.
Anyone here, live in its' path? Hope all is well.

*edit. Thanks for that link to tracking the hurricane. That's insane. It took a turn I didn't expect. Didn't even hit Florida, although I'm sure they felt the effects, as will a lot other states, with high winds and rain.

[eclectica]

Even in modern times there is helplessness that people can't stop the hurricane or alter its course, which shows how powerful it is. It reminds me of a big asteroid heading towards an object and not being able to stop it. Actually the earlier an asteroid is intercepted, the less force is needed to alter its trajectory to have it miss its target. It is harder to predict the target of the hurricane than the trajectory of an asteroid because the atmosphere is turbulent. Weather predictions have gotten better though. In the future perhaps they may get so good at weather predicition that they will know the path of a hurricane 1 month in advance within the accuracy of fifty miles. So knowing that they may also be able to even alter the trajectory of hurricanes with man-made force. The way they could do it is by constantly flying several large jumbo jets through or near the young storm so as to alter its trajectory or even weaken it with cross winds from the wakes and turbulence of the jets. You may think that sounds like a pipe dream but when people get smart enough to get those weather forecasts so accurate, they will then have the power to alter the trajectories of storms. They could have several airplanes working on it and though it sounds like a lot of money it may be cheaper to do that if it successfully steers a storm away from vulnerable areas. I'll bet the insurance companies would be interested in that type of tinkering with Nature.

[nicobie]

Like I always said... It don take a rocket scientist to run a forum.

Exactly just what in the fuck was that long ramble about anyway? We need to have planes in the middle ?

I guess it must have important to you.

[slx]

We need to have planes in the middle?as a matter of fact, yes, we do....the usaf has man'd jets that track storms....actually flying from one turbulent side...into the eye of the storm where all is calm then on thru and out the other turbulent side




who was ramblin nic....did i miss something dude?

[Criminal_Sniper]

the states and the ruskis have been working on weather control for years

[tim]

this hurricane made it really cloudly all day here today in NC. The weather person on the local news said it has the potential to be as damaging as Hurricane Hugo which did extensive damage to my area in 1990 or was that 92? don't remember exactly..just know we didn't have power for a week...lots of trees were down in the yard..but that was about it.

I'm supposedly in the path of this one...really hope it loses some of its ferocity by the time in skirts the western edges of NC..feel badly for the folks down in Louisiana and Florida.

Tom Alday..you okay?

[Criminal_Sniper]

u think u guys got it bad
poor haiti
The story at shortnews.com (http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=43060&rubrik1=Current%20Events&rubrik2=Natural%20Disasters&rubrik3=All&sort=1&sparte=4)

[eclectica]

The scenario of doom as predicted for New Orleans did not occur in a dramatic way. The hurricane had already passed it on Monday and the levees on lake Pontchartrain had not been breached. People thought the city was spared and cleanup could begin on Tuesday.

There is a site rivergages.com (http://www.rivergages.com) which lists water elevation levels of waters connected or near to the Missippi river. Looking up the listing for New Orleans District - Lake Pontchartrain - 85625 - Lake Pontchartrain at West End, LA here (http://www2.mvr.usace.army.mil/WaterControl/shefgraph-wotem2.cfm?sid=85625&dt=S&d=7) one sees that the water level in the salt water inlet reached a peak of a little over five feet during the height of the storm. But the last reading is from 2005-08-29 05:00, so I don't know if that represents the greatest height of the water that was reached there.

In any case there was on early Tuesday morning, after the storm had passed, a break in the levee on a drainage canal leading to lake Pontarchtrain known as the 17th Street canal. They did not want to fix it by closing off the canal, because one of the 22 pumping stations that the city has uses that canal for drainage. They can not reach that levee breach by boat because of a low bridge blocking the canal. So they have to drop anything to plug the hole in the levee by way of helicopter, which limits them in their abilities to fix it in their planned dropping of heavy sandbags or shipping containers. From what I read the conditions of the breach are worsening, with newer reports showing a 500 foot gap in the levee. So it looks like New Orleans will be flooded until it reaches sea level.

Here (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3332317) is a news article explaining the levee breach. According to that article the water was 10 feet above sea level when it breached the levee.

I suppose the people in New Orleans should be grateful if the city only floods to sea level rather than to Mississippi river level, which is even higher.
:rolleyes:

[eclectica]

A moment like this for people who have suffered, leads to people looking to their leader for guidance and leadership. For the people of New Orleans, that could be the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, or the president of the United States. When such big events happen then it usually falls to the president of the United States to be the one that speaks for the people and provides leadership. The last time an event of such magnitude occured in the United States was on 2001-09-11.

So people turn to president Bush as a leader in such moments, because that is his job position. Unfortunately he is not qualified for the job though many people still turn to him as a leader because of his technical position of power. After 9/11 I felt comforted by the leadership of New York city mayor Rudolf Giuliani, but I felt little guidance or connection to president Bush. I've never connected to Bush and have always felt that whatever he expresses is not coming from his heart, but rather is a speech that was written by his speech writer.

In times of such importance we as Americans should pull together to help our fellow Americans in need. It is a big country with much wealth and the 300 million Americans should be able to help half a million displaced residents from New Orleans and surrounding areas. I have found the actions of governor Perry of Texas to be commendable in his substantive and welcoming offer of assistance to those refugees who seek shelter in his state.

And those who have in the past uttered such slogans or endorsed such philosophies as "not in my backyard" or "the era of big government is over", will now lie low for a while. Under such conditions, the wretched and ungenerous nature of their personalities, their antisocial, selfish, poor sense of civic responsibility, would be put to shame and be understood as merely shallow excuses for their moral depravity. They will come out of the woodwork later, when things are good again and the fickle memories of people lead them to believe that cutting taxes is a good thing, that big government is a bad thing, and that every person should fend for himself.

President Bush believes that a two-front war is capable of being carried out by the United States. But seeing how American troops are doing in Iraq now, it appears that even a one-front war is not possible. Now there are plans to deploy 30,000 National Guard troops in the areas affected by hurricane Katrina. I wonder where they are going to come up with that many troops. The Department of Defense says that the war in Iraq won't adversely affect the ability of troops to be deployed to a domestic situation such as what exists in the New Orleans area. They are wrong. There is a finite number of troops and resources. It is well known that National Guard units are already strained because of their unusual lengthy deployment in a shitty war that president Bush has waged. Now to think that the U. S. military can come up with 30,000 extra troops easily would be naive. There will be more strain because the military reserves have already been tapped and depleted due to the War On Terror™ in Iraq.

There is a saying "a stich in time saves nine". Well if the millions of dollars of money requested in budgets had been put into reinforcing the levees of New Orleans it would have saved the billions of dollars in subsequent disaster that occurred when the levees failed on 2005-08-30. Downsizing the budget and contracting out everything until we are owned by corporations and become a franchise of government.com (http://www.3-3-3.org/forum/showthread.php?t=642) is the thing which has led to the impotence from the government in dealing with catastrophies. You can see that you can't count on the government to help you under such circumstances, though you ought to be able to if it really cared about you and had some foresight. Sorry, but that Big Government has been outsourced or eliminated in order to save costs. And that military you thought would come and protect you, is soon to become nothing more than 5,000 video game geeks with no war experience who operate unmanned Predator drones armed with powerful bombs, controlled by joysticks from their offices thousands of miles away from the actual battlefield, and who have no regard to collateral damage and civilian casualties. Though Rumsfeld's Army is capable of killing millions of civilians abroad using the best of American technology, it is incapable of defending you or rescuing you when you need it at home.

But New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen considering its elevation below water levels and its close proximity to water, separated by way of 350 miles of levees. I was thinking that a radical rebuilding of New Orleans would turn it into an American version of Venice in Italy and having at least some parts of it, especially the deep parts, continue to be flooded rather than fixing the levees in those parts, so that gondalas may flow through the streets in those sections. That may be a better approach than trying to restore it to how it was prior to the storm, which was a disaster waiting to happen. It is radical, but it seems to me like a good idea because that would add to the charm of New Orleans and would also make it safer by integrating the flood into the routine design of the city so that if it floods it will be business as usual rather than a disabling catastrophe.

Here are three songs that I have posted as mp3 files available to be downloaded. The original song is from 1929, which Led Zeppelin did a variation of. I also have another variation by A Perfect Circle which is only the same as the original 1929 song in regards to the lyrics.
Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe Mccoy - When The Levee Breaks (1929).mp3 (http://www.p2pjihad.org/eclectica/Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe Mccoy - When The Levee Breaks (1929).mp3) 2.9 MB
Led Zeppelin - When the Levee Breaks.mp3 (http://www.p2pjihad.org/eclectica/Led Zeppelin - When the Levee Breaks.mp3) 8.2 MB
A Perfect Circle - When The Levee Breaks (Memphis Minnie cover).mp3 (http://www.p2pjihad.org/eclectica/A Perfect Circle - When The Levee Breaks (Memphis Minnie cover).mp3) 8.6 MB

[nicobie]

so sad,

u think so.



I think the bureaucrats have a lock on stupidity.

[slx]

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

[eclectica]

"I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag." Michael Moore is a funny guy.

Bush had that pouting serious face on which I think was because his vacation was cut short. I think we all should give him a standing ovation for his heroism in cutting his vacation short.

I was actually worried that this would be an opportunity for Bush to play hero again as he did after 9/11, but I am glad to see that many people are instead angry at him because of his budget cuts of levee reinforcement projects and of the slow response of FEMA. And people keep thinking that having troops in Iraq have adversely affected the ability of the Government to respond to this disaster, and Bush's lackeys have continued to outright lie by denying that.

I usually don't watch T.V. but I did so on Tuesday evening. My wife called me at work on Tuesday and told me that the levees broke in New Orleans and the water level was rising, as I had told her in the past was a disastrous possibility. So I jumped up thinking it was very serious and big news story but found that most news places on Tuesday August 30th were not giving it much concern afterwards, which made me wonder if it was a small thing and my concerns were unfounded. Also the storm had already passed and I expected that the levees would have been breached on Monday when the storm hit New Orleans. The journalists were reluctant to rewrite their news stories and alter their opinions, in which they initially said that the storm had spared New Orleans. I think a lot of politicians or leaders tune to CNN and that's how they track the news, so to them there was no concern about the breached levees being reported there, and they weren't concerned either. Another problem is the American cultural tendency of officials to display overconfidence when they solve problems. They immediately answer any problem by saying that they've got it under control and by trying to reassure the public. Initially they were confident that they would fix the levee breach by dropping the sandbags onto it from helicopters. Thus occurred the delayed reaction by leaders who lacked imagination and foresight and the ability to be indepent thinkers.

slx, that storm passed close to you, like fifty miles east of you. I was wondering how that worked out for you. I read that the windiest or most damaging part of those cyclones are in the northeast-of-center part. So it was windier on the east side than on the west side, where you were.

[slx]

slx, that storm passed close to you, like fifty miles east of you. I was wondering how that worked out for you. I read that the windiest or most damaging part of those cyclones are in the northeast-of-center part. So it was windier on the east side than on the west side, where you were.
look @ memphis on the map and we're across the street....as far north & west in the state as we can get.....

we didn't have any severe weather, not much more than our typical summer, rain storm with some wind....what i found strange about it was the winds and rain were from the north

all's great in slx&kel land...everybody here doing ok......?

[eclectica]

Look at the picture of the spin of the cyclone in the first post of this thread and you will see why the winds were coming from the north. It is because the center of the storm passed to the east of you and the cyclone rotates counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere cyclones rotate clockwise.

Things are good here and we finally are getting some cool weather, though I always dread the Winter. Leilani is seven months old and is starting to be able to sit up without falling over. She is tall for babies her age: she weighs 18 pounds and is 28 inches in height.

[slx]

A National Geographic article foretold the flood that devastated New Orleans.


It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level more than eight feet below in places so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

Origins: In the wake of any large-scale disaster, there is a desire to search for signs that could have foretold the calamity's coming, for warnings that had been missed or not heeded. We saw that immediately following the September 11 attacks on America — one of the first whispers to storm the country asserted a particular quatrain from Nostradamus predicted the fall of the Twin Towers. While that rumor proved false (the writings of the French seer contained no such prognostication), the same cannot be said of auguries of the devastation of New Orleans by a hurricane. Warnings about what a Category 3 or greater hurricane could do to the Big Easy have been with us for quite a while and have appeared in the mainstream press numerous times.

The text quoted above, which has been circulated widely in e-mail, is an accurate copy of the opening paragraphs of an October 2004 National Geographic article. In "Gone With the Water," those prophetic paragraphs began a lengthy piece about Louisiana's vanishing wetlands.

The complete article can be viewed on National Geographic's web site.

Barbara "knew orleans" Mikkelson

[eclectica]

Anyone want to take a guess at the final death toll of hurricane Katrina? Here is my guess:

total from just New Orleans: 1,700
total from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi: 2,100

I remember in the immediate days after 9/11, how people were projecting that as many 7,000 died. And not until a couple of weeks afterwards did they get the numbers right at around 3,000. After the tsunami in the Indian Ocean 2004-12-26, the initial estimates of maybe a few thousand dead kept getting higher as more became known until it was more than 100,000.

[nicobie]

Anywone want to guess how many would be dead if the gov'ment didn't have coontrol?

[eclectica]

There is a hurricane tracker site which plots the course of hurricanes and shows its progress as a shockwave file. You can also look at other hurricanes from the past at the site.
http://images.ibsys.com/sh/hurricanetracker/hurtracker.swf