Outsiders' perception of New Orleans' hurricane risk and locals' attitudes toward storms (1 Viewer)

[Doug B]

TL;DR version: I've been having a vexing discussion with an "Other guy" on another message board. I've been saying that lifelong residents of New Orleans have developed a pretty good sense of what kind of threats storms in the Gulf can pose, and that we use info from reputable weather sources combined with experience to make reasonable decisions about what to do and how much to worry. "Other guy" seems to think anything that enters the Gulf should be "taken seriously" by Louisianians -- by which he means treat everything in the Gulf as the one that levels New Orleans for good.

I dunno ... I want to throw this here and get some opinions from a board with a good number of local Louisianians plus other Gulf Coast folks who know hurricanes. I realize the rest of this post is really long, so I've spoiler-boxed it. Anyone that reads through it and can give an opinion as to whether one of us is full of bull or not ... thank you in advance.

Just get tired of N.O. getting beaten up online regarding hurricanes. OK ... without further ado (my words in blue, my adversary's in red):

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Doug B, 12:28 a.m. Fri 7/12:
Calling it: the New Orleans metro area is in the clear from Barry. If something is going to happen, it’ll be worst 50 miles to the west.

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Other Guy, 6:53 a.m. Fri 7/12:
The Weather Channel has taken a lot of heat over the past decade (by me, included), but the past two years they've actually changed to become a legitimate weather source again. They aren't trying to scare anyone about Barry. Barry is a scary storm that needs to be taken seriously.

And this is the problem with any media service (I'm looking at you 24-hour news channels) doing the fear mongering stuff to get ratings. Even if you decide to stop doing that and actually legitimize yourself later, it's too late. The trust is gone. And, you can ruin it for other services that never resorted to that. There are local mets in LA right now who are probably pleading with citizens to evacuate and to get out and to higher ground. And a large amount of people are watching and thinking, "Pfft. Look at this idiot trying to scare up ratings." And this will be their last 24 hours alive.


Doug B, 7:13 a.m. Fri 7/12:

Barry is looking like half of a tropical system right now — no northern half at all.

Is dry air getting sucked in? If so, is that dry air going to end up taking Barry apart?


Other Guy, 7:22 a.m. Fri 7/12:
TS's will almost always be unique looking. There is circulation, but you usually don't get a closed eye circulation until it's a hurricane. That's why the worst side of a TS is on the eastern side of the circulation. If you look at the visible you can see the center of circulation is off the coast of central LA. And you can see the comma trying to build from underneath the circulation (south of it) and curling up around it to the northeast. Most building will take place over sea, and that's why the largest cloud cover is over the GOM. The ocean is the fuel along with the sun. So it's really not that odd looking right now.

I think if this storm would have formed in the southern GOM, you would see a more typical comma shape. But because this came from the US mainland, it's formation is slightly skewed.


Somebody else, 12:21 p.m. Fri 7/12:
If I refrained from visiting New Orleans because of rain I'd never get there. I've driven I-10 plenty of times when it was a car wash until Mobile. Hopefully Sunday it will be tracking further north towards BR.

Stay safe


Other Guy, 12:31 p.m. Fri 7/12:

There's rain. And then there's flooding rain. Like a month or two worth of rain in a 24 hour period.

I think Barry has a decent chance to swing less to the west and have a track slightly further east.


Doug B, 1:13 p.m. Fri 7/12:
Looks darn near untrackable. Just not organized tightly enough.

...

It's interesting to me that, looking at comments on this and other boards, most people near Louisiana's coast -- no matter how far east or west they are -- feel like Barry is going to largely avoid them and make a mess of somewhere else. We can't all be right


Other Guy, 1:19 p.m. Fri 7/12:
The key is, you track the circulation (I feel like I should get paid $10 every time I say that word) and not the clouds and convection. You can see where the center of circulation is. It's just off the coast. The general thought is it'll move slightly more west before it begins its trek inland. But the sudden move north seems to have happened unlike any model projection. I'm not saying it will be more east than the current track shows, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. And unless they live in northwest LA, they probably won't be unaffected, unfortunately.


Random dude from Northshore, 1:43 p.m. Fri 7/12:
Baton Rouge wishes it was only getting 10 inches from this.


Somebody else, 3:26 p.m. Fri 7/12:
Poor guys on Weather Channel - wearing long sleeve rain coats in 90 degree sun in New Orleans. Not a rain drop falling. But darn if the hoods aren't flopping around in the breeze.

The build up they are giving Barry is like trying to talk up the Broncos in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl 48 blowout by the Seahawks. They are running out of topics and drama.

ETA: .14 inches of rain so far today (in N.O.)


Doug B, 7:04 p.m. Fri 7/12:
Is it being reported nationally that New Orleans, specifically, is getting ready to be wiped out again by TS Barry, just like Katrina?

...

"Calling it: the New Orleans metro area is in the clear from Barry. If something is going to happen, it’ll be worst 50 miles to the west."

Standing by this.


Random dude from New Orleans, 8:07 p.m. Fri 7/12:
"Is it being reported nationally that New Orleans, specifically, is getting ready to be wiped out again by TS Barry, just like Katrina?"

Yes but the Wednesday events played into that. The Washington Ave / Palmetto canal was stunning.

But what gets me is how TWC, CNN and just about everyone loves to go out on that spit off of Algiers to portray that as the levee. It’s not, it’s basically an old fashioned batture. Looks good with the trees underwater and all though.

 

[Doug B]

Post was too long, so had to break it up into two pieces. Here's part 2:

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Other Guy, 7:45 a.m. Mon 7/15:
As I said earlier in this thread, models can throw out huge numbers and you don't want to be the one making that your primary forecast.

But I've also stated in the other weather thread, the biggest problem with weather forecasting today is the desire to be right on the money with rain/snow totals. But that's stupid. Trying to predict the exact amount is about as useful as the guys on the MNF pregame going around and making their score predictions for the game. It's nothing more than a guess and even if you pick it on the nose or close, it's still just a guess.

You tell people, "Look, this system has the potential to drop over two feet of rain. But it could also only dump an inch or two." It's important to be realistic. Sure, that's a huge spread, but the truth is it's the actual spread. If dry air doesn't come in at the last second, rainfall totals would have been nearer to the model outputs. It's not trying to scare anyone; it's the truth. People are too worried about being exactly right with their guesses, and less focused on preparing the public for all possible outcomes.


Doug B, 10:04 a.m. Mon 7/15:
I don't know if you meant the bolded in general, or specifically in reference to Hurricane Barry. If you meant Barry ... so far as I'm aware, that storm was taking in dry air from the SE U.S. since at least Wednesday 7/10. All that dry air kept Barry from forming a coherent center of rotation until very late in the game, and kept the northern half of the storm virtually cloud-free. The dry air mass certainly wasn't a last-second thing.


Other Guy, 10:14 a.m. Mon 7/15:
The dry air was there, but the models were taking it into consideration. Even with the dry air, the convection and eventual shift of the precip from the south to the eastern side was what was going to bring the rains. But the dry air pushed through and did not react as modeled.

As I said in the other post, there was circulation. A TS will not have that eye. It is a comma. So dry air on one side is not a deal breaker. The dry air ended up being stronger than modeled and kept that comma from turning and allowing for the bands to train over the same areas. If the bands had been moving south to north at landfall, 20 inches of rain would've been possible. But because the bands were moving west to east, training wasn't an issue and neither were high rainfall totals. The dry air affected where the bands set up.

So, yes, the dry air was always there. But the dry air preventing the bands from moving to the eastern side was more of a last minute thing. And when I say last minute, I mean day of the storm landfall.


...

One thing to keep in mind here, too, is that there were some places that did receive 15+ inches of rain. It just wasn't as widespread as the models showed.


Random dude from New Orleans, 3:00 p.m. Mon 7/15:
New Orleanians / Louisianans are pretty savvy and jaded about this stuff.


Doug B, 4:00 p.m. Mon 7/15:
Yep, this. You develop a "spidey sense" about this stuff living down here. After watching Barry struggle to develop through Wednesday of last week, at no point did Barry concern me aside from making preparations to be potentially without power from loose tree branches blowing down into power lines. But as far as immediate-neighborhood flooding, worrying about personal safety, worrying about getting around afterwards? No concerns.


Other Guy, 4:05 p.m. Mon 7/15:
I don't know if you do, but I say this to everyone, so please don't take this offensively: If you don't understand weather, when it comes to possible life or death situations, don't rely on your "spidey sense." There are hundreds of pro mets out there who have millions of dollars worth of equipment that can help them forecast a possible solution. And they still didn't get it 100% right.

People who live along the coast (and I was one of them) love to think they understand storms because they've dealt with a lot of them. But as I said before (many times), no two storms are alike.

If nothing else, and you want to decide to ride it out, that's your call. But please do everyone else a favor and DO NOT EVER TELL ANYONE ELSE TO NOT LISTEN TO THE PROS. It's fine if you want to put your life at risk. Do not persuade others to do the same on your "spidey sense." Hundreds of people die every year because they "lived through worse storms."


Doug B, 4:50 p.m. Mon 7/15:
The bolded is the lynchpin. True life-or-death situations from tropical weather at any one given place are simply not that frequent..

I make that point to underlay another point: When things really do get bad enough to where danger to life and limb is apparent ... the local meteorologists flip a switch and make their warnings much more definitive and precise. That's only happened twice in my adult life: (a) unanimously for for Hurricane Katrina and (b) by a majority of local meteorologists for Hurricane Georges (1998) with Nash Roberts dissenting.

For every other storm approach, there's hedging. A whole lot of hedging. "If" you live in low-lying areas. "If" the pumps don't work reliably in your neighborhood. "If" the pumps are started too late, or not at all. And so on. Storms spoken of that way are "regular" storms that every long-time resident has been through. The biggest two concerns with those is shallow house flooding and extended power outages. Threats to personal comfort rather than personal safety.

There are a small number of tough guys and hard-head who say they'll never evacuate no matter what. But they're really few in number and not influential -- the types that willfully stayed for Katrina (not stuck in town by circumstance, poverty, etc.) are usually seen as a little looney.

So there's really no need to worry especially about New Orleanians and the potential failure of their collective "spider sense". It's not about thumbing one's nose at weather authority and it's not about being tough, strong, or "better than" the storm. It's about pattern recognition, the same drill run over and over again many times. The same radar profiles and storm tracks (not exactly the same, but you take my point). The same tiny towns closer to the coast that take water whenever a fishing captain drops his beer in the Gulf ... those places always evacuate way early. New Orleanians take note and keep an ear to the news. Part of the pattern.

When the pattern is broken, we'll generally know and shift into another gear and make arrangements to leave. Otherwise. IMHO it's fair game for us to snipe at the sensationalist coverage of storms like Barry. Snipe at the non-expert media coverage that is -- don't mistake that for sniping at legit meteorological experts. In short, while we may not be working meteorologists ... regarding personal safety in tropical weather, we down here collectively know what we're doing.


Other Guy, 9:00 a.m. Tue 7/16:
If they are calling for 20 inches of rain and your gut tells you it's not going to happen and you have no weather knowledge, again, that's fine. Just don't tell other people not to listen to warnings.

People die everyday from weather. I posted in the other thread that just last week a pregnant lady and her 6 year old son died in rising flood waters when a thunderstorm dropped 5 inches in 90 minutes up here by my house. That's not a "once in a lifetime event." The mere fact that you're referring to Barry as something that doesn't need to be taken seriously is alarming. Again, news coverage of tropical systems are filled with people being rescued from certain death and telling the reporter, "We've weathered bigger storms so we thought we'd be OK with this one."

You are allowed to treat weather however you want and you can do whatever you want to prepare. But don't give other people advice on how to act to an approaching storm. That's all I ask

...

As I had pointed out before the storm, Barry had a chance to be almost as catastrophic as a Katrina type hurricane. People get caught up in the name and (TS v. Hurricane) and let their guard down. But if it would have played out like the models had predicted, you would have seen something similar to Harvey in Houston. And all of those people who were rescued from their house all said the same thing: "We didn't think it would be this bad."


Doug B, 10:00 a.m. Tue 7/16:
It's not my gut, and it wasn't my gut with Barry specifically regarding the New Orleans area. It was specific bits of information coming from meteorologists combined with knowledge of how storms typically form and behave. You had to read between the hedges, and you had to look past the "New Orleans gotta evacuate NOW!" sensationalism, but the information necessary for New Orleanians to come to a sense of ease about Barry was available and disseminated by last Thursday evening.

We'll have to come to a common definition of "take seriously". When Barry was still Invest 92 back on Sunday 7/7 - Tuesday 7/9, "taking it seriously" meant watching the forecasts and gathering information. It did not mean packing the car right then and there and leaving town. When Wednesday's news of dry air choking the system came out, "taking it seriously" meant continuing to watch and gather information -- mainly checking to see if the dry air intake was being maintained, and checking on the storm's movement. Also on Wednesday, I took Barry seriously by countenancing an extended power outage and thus stocked up on non-perishable groceries, batteries, and fresh water -- preparations to shelter in place in our X-zone neighborhood (more information -- I know our immediate area's flood risk).

So Thursday comes, and Barry finally limps to TS strength, but keeps drifting westward and keeps taking in dry air and keeps failing to form an eyewall. It was also noted by then that the rainfall amounts observed over the Gulf reduced significantly when those same bands passed over land. Still keep watching, of course ... but IMHO by Thursday evening the threat to New Orleans was reasonably known to be significantly minimized, even if a pro meteorologist would never guarantee it on air.

Please keep in mind that my focus here -- as was much of the media's -- is and was on the outcome in the New Orleans area. I never said nowhere, anywhere would get any kind of real effect from Barry. Henry Ford and I were discussing the rain models last Thursday night and during the day Friday in this thread -- models that I linked to in this thread for others to view. I never wrote "Those models are BS!" I wrote that those models showed that Barry would spare New Orleans of city-wide flood-event rainfall and that the worst impacts would be some distance west of the city. Repeating on the theme from above, those models were yet more information -- not gut -- leading to a sense of ease specifically for the New Orleans area.

The story of the pregnant lady and her son losing their life in a flash flood is crushingly sad, to be sure. But those kinds of situations are categorically different than an impending tropical storm. That kind of flash flood doesn't give you three or four days notice. You can't watch it progressively and see what's coming. What happened to that lady and her son was more akin to a meteor strike -- just cruel fate.

...

Now that I'm reading this ... "spidey sense" does imply more "gut feeling" or "reaching a conclusion without information". That definitely isn't right. I guess the sense of what tropical storm systems will do can be said to be informally learned through the accumulation of experience combined with in-the-now information coming in about a given storm. It is an evidence-based and a precedence-based sense to be sure.


Other guy, 11:00 a.m. Tue 7/16:
Look, this will be my last post on this because I don't want to harp on it and I don't want us to argue about stupid stuff, GB. But from what I'm just reading with what you write, I worry about where you think your knowledge is and where it actually is. Again, pro mets up until landfall were thinking flooding rains. Life threatening flooding rain. And they actually occurred in some areas, just not as widespread as thought. That's pretty much lottery odds of which areas received the 20 inches of rain.

You keep mentioning that it didn't form an eyewall and I keep telling you it was never going to form an eyewall. TS's don't have eyewalls. Most Cat 1 hurricanes have trouble forming an eyewall. They are comma shaped, with the eastern side having the most clouds and then it tapering south like a comma.

And I'm not trying to single you out, GB. Every year mets try to figure out ways to get across the fact that no two storms are alike. So if you look at radar and see something that looks like something you've seen before, it does not mean it will have the same outcome. If it were that easy, hurricanes would be easy to forecast.

Tropical systems usually give up to 3 to 5 days of warning. They usually get actual news coverage and not just weather coverage. Media runs with it and it's plastered all over pretty much anything you look at 48 hours before impacts are felt. And with all of that, people die with almost every single storm.

I've lived on the coast. I know how people love to wear a badge of honor about how they survived storms and how they knew it wouldn't be as bad as the weatherman made it out to be. It's crazy.

And I want to reiterate: I'm not telling you what to do during a storm. All I ask is don't tell others to ignore advice of the NWS. Because while you may come away unharmed, the people you told it wouldn't be so bad might not be so lucky. Don't be the reason other people lose their lives or loved ones.

I know I can sometimes come across angered or slightly bothered when discussing this type of stuff, but I just don't want people to get hurt


Doug B, 11:15 a.m. Tue 7/16:
Other guy posted: “All I ask is don't tell others to ignore advice of the NWS.“

Is it meaningful that for the New Orleans area specifically ... the NWS advice was at no point "evacuate now"? The sternest warning for New Orleans from the NWS was something on the order of "it might flood in your neighborhood** if your neighborhood is one that usually floods."

**And "flood" itself, I guess, can be a loaded word. The same word can be used to describe 3 inches covering a street, and also 30 feet covering two-story homes. Around here, if you say "[some part of town] flooded", it will be understood to mean that part of town took on roughly the usual amount of water it normally takes on. Almost never does, say, "The Garden District flooded" mean that whole structures were overtaken and hundreds of lives were lost. And that's the context in which NWS notifications and other official flood warnings are taken by locals.

Other guy posted: “Again, pro mets up until landfall were thinking flooding rains. Life threatening flooding rain.“

Yes, but for where? Remember, I'm talking about the N.O. area specifically, not about all of Louisiana.

Barry's landfall was early Saturday afternoon. Precipitation models by then had consistently shown for 36 hours that SE Louisiana east of Lake Maurepas was going to get at worst a manageable rainfall with minimal, incidental flooding (from possible pump outages more than sheer rainfall rate).


Other guy, 12:30 p.m. Tue 7/16:
I never said anything about evacuating. In fact, in an earlier post, I told you I agreed that evacuating was not necessary. Not sure why you're still harping on that.


Doug B, 12:45 p.m. Tue 7/16:
Other guy posted: “There are local mets in LA right now who are probably pleading with citizens to evacuate and to get out and to higher ground. And a large amount of people are watching and thinking, "Pfft. Look at this idiot trying to scare up ratings." And this will be their last 24 hours alive."

I was thinking somewhat about posts like this one from last Friday morning. Admittedly, you wrote "local mets in LA", not "local mets in New Orleans".

I was also thinking about a more general concept that I read online from time to time, whenever "New Orleans" and "hurricanes" are brought up in the same discussion: "Why don't they just evacuate way early? Why don't they leave? Why was anyone still there? Why? Why? Why?"

Back to your quote: Even on the New Orleans TV/radio stations ... when local officials (informed by NWS and NOAA) called for voluntary and mandatory evacuations for certain towns and areas that are outside of the levee system, the NOLA media dutifully passed the notifications on to the public. And locals don't take it as BS or as some idiots trying to scare up ratings. People in Grand Isle, LA and Venice, LA and Cocodrie, LA and places like that south and southeast of New Orleans ... yeah, they typically evacuate at least once every other year for some storm or another. But it's old hat for residents in those towns that don't have flood protection. New Orleanians simultaneously understand (a) that such evacuation calls are things those towns have to do and (b) they say little about the direct risks to New Orleans absent further information.


Other guy, 1:00 p.m. Tue 7/16:
OK

 

[MLU]

Where is "other guy" from?

I monitored the storm from PHX and was telling everyone it was going to be a TS and not much more. It never really developed an eye, it was moving pretty quick and any fronts that might cause it to slow down were pretty far north. About 85% of what I do involves weather, so while I am not a meteorologist, I do in fact attempt to make short term predictions and have gotten pretty good at it. We have some great tools, some of them provided by The Weather Company. Almost everything you see on TV projects the worst case scenario and often, has no real basis in reality.

Watch what airlines do when weather is building.

 

[Doug B]

Where is "other guy" from?

"Other guy" said he used to live near Corpus Christi, TX but now lives in the Northeast.

Thanks for your response. I really wanted to get confirmation that I wasn't way off base feeling relaxed about Barry 2.5 days before landfall. Due to info that was available at the time, and not due to wishful thinking or denial.

 

[Fanincowboyland]

I think what made this storm more worrisome than the same storm in other years, is the fact that the lower Mississippi River is so high now, and the rain it's dropping further up the Mississippi will likely make that problem even worse.

 

[Doug B]

Fanincowboyland, you're correct about river-crest concerns much of the week of July 7th-13th. I forgot exactly when -- late Thursday or early Friday -- but the Army Corps of Engineers revised the crest prediction from 20 ft to 17 ft. Point being that two days before Barry's landfall, the river crest concerns had largely been allayed.

 

[MLU]

"Other guy" said he used to live near Corpus Christi, TX but now lives in the Northeast.

Thanks for your response. I really wanted to get confirmation that I wasn't way off base feeling relaxed about Barry 2.5 days before landfall. Due to info that was available at the time, and not due to wishful thinking or denial.

The gulf coast doesn't evacuate every time a hurricane threatens landfall the same reason the Midwest doesn't evacuate every time a blizzard is forecast and the same reason the West coast doesn't evacuate for chances of earthquakes. We're all just playing the odds here and I trust the people who reside there to read the meterological tea leaves.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

"Other guy" said he used to live near Corpus Christi, TX but now lives in the Northeast.

Thanks for your response. I really wanted to get confirmation that I wasn't way off base feeling relaxed about Barry 2.5 days before landfall. Due to info that was available at the time, and not due to wishful thinking or denial.

thee other edge to this sword is a storm like Cindy is '05 contributed to some of the seasoned hurricane vets to get complacent when Katrina approached
of course the real damage to from Katrina was the failure of the federal levees, which several reporters had been harping on for years but few listened

 

[Doug B]

thee other edge to this sword is a storm like Cindy is '05 contributed to some of the seasoned hurricane vets to get complacent when Katrina approached

I remember Cindy as well. And the next 2005 storm, Dennis ... wasn't that the one for which a local politician said something like "just bring the family to Disneyland while the storm blows over"? The prospect of mass evacuation wasn't truly understood at the time.

Complicating the local reaction to Katrina was just how late Katrina turned to head to New Orleans. Up until late Friday afternoon of August 26th -- about 60 hours before landfall -- Katrina was steadily and consistently being predicted to hit the Florida Panhandle directly. So longer than 60 hours out ... the best information available was that New Orleans would be spared from Katrina -- so any New Orleanian complacent at the time (4, 5, 6 days out) could at least point to official weather forecasts (NWS, NOAA, etc.) and base their lack of prepatory action on information.

By contrast, Barry's predicted track stayed fairly steady over the course of a week. New Orleans had their eyes on Invest 92 way in advance.

 

[GeauxWhoDats]

First Line in the First Post

TL;DR version:

First Line in the Second Post

Post was too long, so had to break it up into two pieces. Here's part 2:

'

Back to your point. You either drink the kool-aid or you don't. Take any information from any news outlet and interpret that as you will. Others will do the same and you will never convince people (on a message board for sure) that their stance is incorrect if it differs from yours. In the end it really doesn't matter who is right or wrong. The day that news outlets stop making money or reporting "news" is the day that I take every thing they say as Gospel.

 

[Doug B]

Hey, Geaux Who Dats ... yeah, all of the text in the first two posts was supposed to go into the OP. There is, however, a 20,000 character limit that I didn't know about -- so I have to break off a chunk and put it in the second post. The spoilered content in the first two posts are all one conversation and should all be considered as one piece.

 

[Brennan77]

I think what made this storm more worrisome than the same storm in other years, is the fact that the lower Mississippi River is so high now, and the rain it's dropping further up the Mississippi will likely make that problem even worse.

This is true. Lower Terrebonne got beat up pretty good because the water levels were already high down there as they get a lot of effect from the Atchafalaya. There's a ton of dead fish and marsh damage due to 9ft of salt water coming in on top of the already elevated levels.

 

[gboudx]

I bet a fair amount of national perception is based on the sensationalized reporting from news media. I can't remember if it was the Weather Channel or Accuweather's station on DirecTV, but one of them had a TV met near the Lower Ninth Ward flood wall. They were talking about all the work that had been done, and that Barry was going to be a good test of if the walls will fail or not. Barry was never that type of threat though. It was never gonna push a huge surge on the east side of the river, west side of the river or anywhere. It was a flooding threat from rain. There is something to be said for local experience.

 

[jrdbrn]

As a homeowner and father, I take any storm that enters the Gulf as a threat.

 

[Swampy Saint]

I don't think anyone was ever worried about the intensity of the storm.

I believe it was always about the threat of major flooding.

If that dry air system had not stopped the heavy rain bands in the Gulf from coming ashore, I'd bet that we would have had major flooding. That was a ton of water we would have gotten 90% of the time in my opinion.
We dodged a bullet.