Helene’s size shocked me but the storm surge for Katrina was unusually extreme. It was a well organized Category 5 and then weakened to a strong 3 right before landfall.
To compare with Helene, which was similar in terms of (east to west) diameter but covered much more area overall, with category 4 winds at landfall: the Weather Channel was making a big deal out of the 8ft storm surges. During Katrina, the Mississippi Gulf Coast had a 28 foot storm surge. (The Miss. Gulf Coast isn’t that geographically different from the Fla. big bend region but that plays a role too.)
Helene’s unusual movement speed kept it strong very far inland and caused massive issues in places that rarely see tropical weather. Harvey was the opposite: it stalled over Houston and dumped days of rain on a major metropolis.
I wish we could update the Saffir Simpson scale to something that takes into account more variables. There are other measurements but no storm is identical in terms of damage potential. A category 5 can not even make landfall whereas something like Hurricane Sandy was a category 1 (or equivalent since it wasn’t technically still a hurricane) when it hit NYC and caused massive damage and flooded subway systems. Sometimes, a storm hitting a place that isn’t used to them can knock over all the trees or flood rivers while a similar storm would be nothing to Miami or New Orleans.
Well, it's not over.
This is coming next week. Path is unclear, and its not as big as Helene, but anything near a 930mb in Tampa Bay and plowing over Orlando at 950mb, especially at this angle, is a catastrophe.
Katrina was 920mb at landfall, and these intensity forecasts have been undershooting hurricanes recently.
And there's another low pressure system at the edge of the GFS that I don't like, taking a similar path to Helene:
This is what the upcoming hurricane looked like a few days ago.
I remember when conservatives were hooting and hollering about Climate Science Being Wrong, because the predicted "Worst hurricane season on record" wasn't producing a record number of powerful storms.
Well... now what? I guess we can fall back to Gaetz and DeSantis blaming Biden for a bad cleanup job. Or go the MTG approach and start talking about HARP and the Jewish Space Lasers.
What I don't like about these graphics is there is no data source so you have to look it up to know how much to believe about what they say. So for those wondering, per Wikipedia:
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Helene was a Cat 4, its max diameter was between 400-450 miles, max wind speed of 140 mph is correct. Known fatalities so far > 227 and counting.
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Katrina was a Cat 5, 400 miles in diameter as shown, but with a max windspeed of 175 mph, not 125. For those too young to remember, Katrina was a very, very bad storm. So bad. Over 1392 fatalities (official estimate; exact number unknown). BTW Katrina also had a big tail/wing(?) stretching to the north when it hit land like what Helene had, but thinner since further west--but those don't count as part of the measured diameter of the hurricane.
My opinion of this graphic: Hurricanes are getting worse because of climate change, but we don't need to convince people of that by downplaying Katrina or making Helene look scarier--Helene is also very very bad. It's all bad, folks.
Katrina photo:
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Not sure what the science is between 2 images with no source or timestamp and nearly 20 years of technological improvement between them is but this isn't the peak of Katrina
Katrina ultimately reached its peak strength as a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale on August 28. Its maximum sustained winds reached 175 mph (280 km/h) and its pressure fell to 902 mbar (hPa; 26.63 inHg), ranking it among the strongest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.
It probably refers to its stats at landfall
Katrina weakened to a Category 3 before making landfall along the northern Gulf Coast, first in southeast Louisiana (sustained winds: 125mph) and then made landfall once more along the Mississippi Gulf Coast (sustained winds: 120mph). Katrina finally weakened below hurricane intensity late on August 29th over east central Mississippi.
But power doesn't equal damage for weather
[Katrina] is the costliest hurricane to ever hit the United States, surpassing the record previously held by Hurricane Andrew from 1992. In addition, Katrina is one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States
Sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorological_history_of_Hurricane_Katrina
It’s also good to remember that Katrina’s storm surge and the subsequent failure of the levees and flooding of the city is what was so damaging.
Besides the wind and rain the destruction of the levees took a huge toll on New Orleans.
As someone not from hurricane continent, these images are freaking scary. Like what do you mean the hurricanes are several times bigger than my entire country?
I'm just sitting here thinking holy hell I hope cyclones don't come to my comfy corner of North-Eastern Europe
Wimdy.
But the least wimdy going forward.
We gonna achieve such terrifying new records in just years!this can't be an accurate or reasonably accurate depiction, these are two completely different storms in a different category after all.
This is like me comparing the joplin tornado to the el reno tornado.
(for those that don't know the joplin tornado was an extremely erratic EF/F 5 tornado that was incredibly strong and just sort of showed up and then lingered over a particular area causing immense destruction, whereas el reno was a massive, very powerful tornado, that was collectively rated to be about an EF/F 3 i believe, although the core itself, and numerous shenanigans it pulled including sub vorticies or whatever the correct term is were much stronger, causing strong localized damage)
Awesome, blatanly obvious misinformation.
I see Yoda in the 2nd pic
W must be watching with popcorn
