Good luck, Gulfport

[heidi]

New Orleans has seen the worst they're going to get - Katrina is en route to Gulfport, now, and NO turned out to be on the "big easy" side of the storm - the side with 120 mph winds, not 150. We'll know over the next 24 just how devestating it's been but the levees held enough to keep the city from going underwater.

This is the moment where I wonder whether what my science teacher in high school said was true - hurricanes never hit densely populated areas directly. Even when Katrina came thru miami-dade last week it didn't catch Ft Lauderdale, Miami Beach or downtown Miami. It was, like NO, 20 miles away.

Comments

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

What happens, Heidi, is that the storm always slows and changes course slightly when it strikes land. Had Katrina made landfall even 15 miles west of where it did, I bet New Orleans would be taking the brunt of the storm.

I just read that a levee in the 9th Ward (meaningless to you, but I know where it is) has been breached, sending 3 to 8 feet of water into that part of New Orleans. I'm hoping things aren't too bad there.

*sweatdrop*

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

I wonder why, if your science teach is right. It would be so interesting to see proper mathematical models of this. Of course, that's at least after we discover the Theory of Everything, so I guess I'm not going to be around for that anymore.

Was this theory true for Andrew, though?

Re: *sweatdrop*

[pengolodh-sc.livejournal.com]

Densely populated areas can tend to form their own microclimates - I think someone did prove that in cities it is far more likely with rain during the weekend, for instance. This has to do with all the emissions from vehicles, powerplants, people's homes, etc.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Maybe not downtown Miami, but one can hardly say that on a line between Golden Beach and the Hurricane Center isn't 'densely populated'. Westchester alone, with its near-Hialeahan building practices...?

Thanks for the link to that community, btw. I'm still waiting to find out about Bob Asprin -- for some reason, despite the fact he founded the Dorsai, the Klingons and is living in the Barony of Axemoor, nobody picked him up bodily and evacuated the man.