Hurricane Ida
- Thread starter cstrunk
- Start date
Lived in NOLA for 4 years and evacuated many times but 2 days before Katrina in 2005. Problem is NOLA is a soup bowl with levees attempting to keep the water out. Also, There are only two major ways to get out of NOLA, a third goes east but is a 2 laner. Lastly, poverty is rampant so those that can afford to leave do, while others can't. Tough situation for everyone there.
Still strengthening...150 mph winds...6 mph from Cat 5, which is possible prior to landfall later this morning. Good news is that the core of strongest winds should just miss New Orleans, although the heaviest rains will certainly compound their problems...hope the pumps work. Baton Rouge is in for a tough too also...positive thoughts to all in the area.
They are predicting some places could be without power for 2-3 weeks.
Derecho-esque.
Pumping stations are in better condition to handle this than back when Katrina hit but that's going to be a LOT of storm rain to pump (assuming all of the levees/walls hold).
Extra interest to me, being a retired Corps guy that worked a little on the rebuild/recovery.
I feel for the residents of that area. I can't imagine going through this crap on a yearly basis.
Same here. Not a corp guy, but my employer built a lot of work for the CoE down there. I wish they could get a video if the pump stations in action. Be nice to see how they actually function in the storm.
Also be interesting to see water piled up against the wall.
Went to NO in 2007 to help recover from Katrina, and it was a depressing sight even then. I had heard stories that to this day there were parts of NO that still hadn't recovered. With NO, the thing is while the wind is bad, it's the flooding that's so much worse - at least that was the case in the ward in which I was working. The building we were trying to reclaim had been flooded up to its ceiling joists, and it was no short building.
Hell, last year for the St Charles area it seemed to be on a monthly basis.
I spent 5 yrs in NOLA and 2.5 years in Houston. The NHC forecast used to be on the first sites I checked every morning from June-November. What's crazy is it's so much hurry up and wait. You see the forecast 4-5 days out and then you're checking every 6 or 12 hours when the updates come out (or at least I was).
Good friend of mine had a brother in Gulfport. He wanted to move back to Iowa for a long time but was too deep in debt to do anything. Owned a trailer there. He evacuated up here to NC Iowa before Katrina. He drove back to access damage afterwards. He had about the only livable structure in a large area somehow. A company approached him and offered him more than he could imagine (and enough to get out of debt). He went inside and grabbed personal items, came out, tossed them the keys and they haven’t been back.
I didn’t think it was possible to become a TMZ for weather, but by god the Weather Channel pulled it off.
They love finding the wind tunnels and then "report" from there.