Ike looks like being a major damaging storm on the refining infrastructure in Texas. Looking at 27 foot storm surges in Houston and Galveston. Already talk of rationing of petrol in the affected areas.
nb interactive zoomable map. The redraw is a bit flakey on my computer. hitting the page reload button helps.
Ike is anomalous. When supplied with extra energy its only been getting a lot bigger rather than bigger and faster at the core - I havent seen a decent looking eye in the satellite photos. Hurricane and storm force wind swathe is now bigger than Katrina. Storm surge along the coast might be a bigger problem than the extreme high winds normally found at the core of a large hurricane. This has thrown the forecasters a bit - very unsure what the category will be at landfall - 2,3 or 4. The low end of that range is favoured. Whatever. Still a huge amount of kit is going offline in the next couple of days. Time to start loading up the petrol tankers at Rotterdam.
"When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
John Maynard Keynes.
Wasn't Katrina described as a once in 100 year storm?
The current Hurricane season looks like its going to be one to remember.
I got miffed at the Shell spokesman saying the yanks are changing their minds about drilling in the Arctic now petrol's hit $4 a gallon
Meanwhile at Galveston we have the definition of crazy. Jacqueline Harris is sitting on the beach waiting to be drowned as a 20ft surge (plus some big waves) washes over her. http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/id ... 9820080912
"When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
John Maynard Keynes.
skeptik wrote:Meanwhile at Galveston we have the definition of crazy. Jacqueline Harris is sitting on the beach waiting to be drowned as a 20ft surge (plus some big waves) washes over her. http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/id ... 9820080912
Amazing!
She has stockpiled batteries, candles and a few tins of food
Er... how many of those things are useful under water?
Perhaps, if she has no children, we can nominate her for this year's alternative Darwin awards.
"If we don't change our direction, we are likely to wind up where we are headed" (Chinese Proverb)
This thing with "predicitions" is really nasty stuff, but I get indications that something fishy is about to happen to US gasoline and diesel logistics.
Many of the systems in the GoM were shut down in anticipation of "Gustav" and has not been restarted yet.
The system saw short spotwise disruptions in the wake of Rita and Katrina, but no major upheaval.
I dont think the system will break permanently, but the disruptions could be longer and deeper this time. The really nasty thing will be if people start to lose confidence and "belief".
skeptik wrote:Meanwhile at Galveston we have the definition of crazy. Jacqueline Harris is sitting on the beach waiting to be drowned as a 20ft surge (plus some big waves) washes over her.
I know that Galveston isn't Huston, but this is the advice for Huston:
LIFE THREATENING INUNDATION LIKELY!
ALL NEIGHBORHOODS...AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES...
WILL BE INUNDATED DURING HIGH TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING
EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES WILL
FACE CERTAIN DEATH.
IanG wrote:Wasn't Katrina described as a once in 100 year storm?
The current Hurricane season looks like its going to be one to remember.
I got miffed at the Shell spokesman saying the yanks are changing their minds about drilling in the Arctic now petrol's hit $4 a gallon
Anyway anyone want to play spot the difference?
The difference, apparently is that Ike is even more destructive:
The amount of water Ike has put in motion is about 50% greater than what Katrina did, and thus we can expect Ike's storm surge damage will be similar to or greater than Katrina's. The way we can estimate this damage potential is to compute the total energy of Ike's surface winds (kinetic energy). To do this, we must look at how strong the winds are, and factor in the areal coverage of these winds. Thus, we compute the Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) by squaring the velocity of the wind and summing over all regions of the hurricane with tropical storm force winds or higher. This "Integrated Kinetic Energy" was recently proposed by Dr. Mark Powell of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division as a better measure of the destructive power of a hurricane's storm surge than the usual Category 1-5 Saffir-Simpson scale. For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3 hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5 storm. Dr. Powell came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this scale (Figure 2). At 9:30am EDT this morning, Ike earned a 5.6 on this scale, the highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40 years.
Just in case anybody has not noticed, the first two graphics which I posted on page 1 of this thread are being regularly updated. You can follow the storms progress from there. the second image shows tropical storm force winds already on land at the Mississippi delta...and the first reports of minor surge flooding are starting to appear from there.
Blue Peter wrote:
I know that Galveston isn't Huston, but this is the advice for Huston:
Peter.
If you look at the wind swathe graphic that I posted on page 1 of this thread, you can see that Ike is so big that it wont make any any difference. Both Houston and Galveston are going to get splooshed. Galveston obviously comes off worse as it's right on the seafront sitting on giant version of Chesil beach or Norfolks Blakeney point.
"When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
John Maynard Keynes.
