Re: Lt. General Russel L. Honore
Posted by Chris in Tampa on 8/29/2020, 8:30 am
Because Lake Charles didn't get as much surge, and that's where most of the media was, I feel like they've moved on when it comes to that. The area that got hit with a lot of surge was sparsely populated, but there was a dangerous surge. I don't know how deep it got yet.

Of course Lake Charles did get slammed by the winds and they are focusing some on that. I feel when they don't follow up and say that the surge wasn't as bad as expected they make it sound like the NHC is wrong. It might not have gotten up to 15 or 20 feet, or maybe it did, that remains to be seen, but because Lake Charles didn't get a lot of surge, they act almost as if no one did. The media were in Lake Charles because they knew it wouldn't be as bad there. That was a given or they wouldn't have been there.

The one station at the coast got nearly 9 foot of surge, with a water level of around 11 feet.

I was going to write a post on the surge but got too busy. I was going to go over why Lake Charles probably didn't get a lot of surge. They got lucky. Had the storm tracked further west, they would have.

The water level dropped before rising there:


Saved image. Data from: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=lch&gage=lcll1

Had the storm been further west, that would not have happened like that. In the one instance I did see of a good discussion, a meteorologist on TWC talked about how the eye passing over compared to hitting further west could give you less surge. Had the water continued to build they would have got more surge. But that's focusing on the populated areas. It might be less populated, but some people did get the really bad surge and they kind of got ignored. I know there's a lot going on, but the first reports are what people will remember. We are now seeing, if you look, the devastation along the coast.

Satellite around Laura's landfall:







We don't know how high the surge got in the worst places you would expect because even with USGS sensors added, there were still few sensors measuring the water rise. If there was less surge than the values that the NHC said could be possible, it might relate to the storm's size, speed and angle. It did matter for Lake Charles certainly though.

I had created a comparison of Rita's track and Laura's track, with the six-hourly forecast positions, and hurricane force wind field swaths at those positions.


From Google Earth best track files in HurricaneCity's model system.

Closeup:



I could see where Rita could have more surge in Lake Charles.

These were for the last 6 hour position before landfall:

Surge Destructive Potential of Laura:

From: http://hurricanecity.com/models/models.cgi?basin=al&year=2020&storm=13&display=best_track&simple=&city_distances=&ike=1

Surge Destructive Potential of Rita:

From: http://hurricanecity.com/models/models.cgi?basin=al&year=2005&storm=18&display=best_track&simple=&city_distances=&ike=1

Integrated kinetic energy (IKE) and surge destructive potential (SDP) are based on the calculator (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/ike/Calculator_AllQuad.php ) from NOAA's Hurricane Research Division. "These estimates are based on some very coarse wind field assumptions."

I was going to get into that a lot more in-depth, but basically Rita made landfall further west. The water could just keep building into that waterway and into Lake Charles. And probably more over the land as well. It built all across the Gulf of Mexico. The storm was larger and larger for a longer time. It was a hurricane sooner. Since Laura's eye pretty much hit the waterway leading to the city of Lake Charles, the water didn't push up that waterway the whole time. And you can see from the six-hourly positions of both that Rita moved slower. And from the wind swaths, that Rita was larger so much so that the swath is just a lot of red. In Laura's swath there is a lot more space between the red. Of course that whole swath got hurricane force winds but because I only included the swaths at each six-hourly position, and didn't connect the swaths, you can see part of the reason was that Laura was moving fast and was smaller.

But again, some places did get really bad surge that in places was catastrophic. And the wind did some catastrophic damage too and the wind damage was felt by a much wider populated area.

I just hate for people to think that the NHC was wrong when we don't know what the surge was for sure and they had to give a forecast that said that area could see surge of that height. NHC can't know exactly where the center will cross land so they have to warn everyone that somewhere within an area the surge could be at those values. It just happened where there were a lot less people. It's good for most of Lake Charles when it comes to the surge, but there are still people who suffered greatly from the surge. And of course a lot of people who suffered from the wind.
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Links to Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Remnant Laura damage news, videos, pictures...... - AquaRN, 8/27/2020, 11:27 am
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