The last of Hurricane Laura faded over Arkansas last night, and its remnants will produce potentially flooding rains over parts of the Tennessee Valley today.
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| Flooding and wind destruction Thursday in Cameron, Louisiana. Photo by David J. Phillip/AP |
Hurricane Laura will be remembered mostly for its extreme wind damage. At least six deaths have so far been attributed to Laura. That's a huge tragedy, but the death toll is pretty low for such a terrible storm. Evacuations and people heeding warnings probably very much contributed to the relatively low death toll.
Now that Laura is going down in the history books, I have some final thoughts and answers to some questions.
STORM SURGE
Very strong hurricanes like Laura of course produce a lot of wind damage, but these storms also contain terrible, deadly storm surges.
There was a nasty storm surge with Laura, but it wasn't as bad as feared, and hit mostly unpopulated areas.
As the Weather Channel and other outlets point out, a few factors came together to prevent any confirmed 20 foot storm surges, the type that had been predicted.
First, Hurricane Laura came ashore at Cameron, Louisiana and moved north into Lake Charles, causing all that wind damage. However, the worst storm surge in a northward moving hurricane is immediately east of the eye. Strong southerly winds in that part of a hurricane would drive water onshore into the Gulf Coast.
Because the hurricane moved directly over Cameron and Lake Charles, the hurricane force winds came out of the east as the eye approached the coast. The wind wasn't pushing the water onshore as much as it would have if the wind had been from the south.
The result was about a nine foot storm surge in these two cities rather than 20 feet. The storm surge probably was higher to the east of Laura's path. However, areas where the wind blasted ashore from the south was low, swampy ground where hardly anybody lives and there are almost no tidal gauges.
Storm surges were higher with Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. Those two hurricanes were bigger in area than Hurricane Laura. A larger storm in size would push more water onshore than a smaller one.
BAD GULF LUCK
A worst case scenario for hurricanes is if they are already strong and still strengthening as they make landfall. A hurricane that's growing stronger has a better ability to bring more powerful winds a few thousand feet overhead down to the surface than a weakening hurricane would.
In three of the past four years, very powerful hurricanes were strengthening as they hit the Gulf Coast. Category 4 Hurricane Harvey did that in 2017. So did Category 5 Hurricane Michael in 2018. Now we have Hurricane Laura, Category 4 and just below Category 5 strength hitting Louisiana.
I think the Gulf Coast has had enough hurricanes for awhile.
NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ROCKS!
The National Hurricane Center always does great work during hurricane season, but with Hurricane Laura, they really shined.
Hurricanes are notoriously difficult to predict. Their paths and strength can veer off in all kinds of directions. This time, the NHC pretty much nailed it.
Three and a half days before landfall, the NHC said Hurricane Laura would make landfall somewhere near Cameron, Louisiana. The exact position of Laura's landfall was just 0.6 miles from that prediction. A forecast of that accuracy was basically an impossible feat but the meteorologists at the NHC pulled it off. That's pretty incredible.
Forecasting a hurricane's strength is even more of a formidable challenge. For at least four days in advance, the NHC said Hurricane Laura would strengthen quickly once it reached the Gulf of Mexico. The NHC plays things conservatively, so at first they weren't publicly forecasting a Category 4 storm at first, but made it clear that residents of Louisiana and Texas definitely had something to worry about.
I'm sure this saved a lot of lives.
LAURA'S SENSE OF IRONY
A Confederate statue called the South's Defenders Memorial Monument that consisted of a flag bearing soldier looking over the local courthouse lawn. It's been creating quite a bit of controversy in Lake Charles, but the county government recently voted to leave the monument in place. That didn't thrill the large Black Lives Matter contingent in the region.
However, Hurricane Laura knocked the soldier off the pedestal, and by Thursday, the figure was a broken mess on the court house lawn, along with the rest of the debris. I guess that takes care of that!
UP NEXT
Hurricane season is in full swing, and it ain't over yet. The National Hurricane Center is watching two systems way out in the Atlantic. They are not yet anywhere near a threat, and might or might not develop. But the chances are there, so we'll have to watch those little storms in the next week in case they develop into new hurricanes
NEW ENGLAND STORMS
As expected, severe storms developed over New York and southwestern New England yesterday. Some storms developed into supercells, and tornado warnings went out.
One storm in particular produced what I think is a likely tornado around the adjacent towns of North Haven, Hamden and Branford, Connecticut. There are reports of major damage to houses and widespread tree damage.
I'm pretty sure National Weather Service meteorologists will be investigating that area today to determine for sure whether it was a tornado or destructive straight line winds.
At first, it looked like the next storm for us here in Vermont would just be a chilly, steady rain on Saturday. Some indications indicate the storm might now go by just to our northwest and lift a warm front to near or just north of the Canadian border.
If that happens, there's a low but real chance we could have weather problems similar to Connecticut's on Thursday, If we get some clearing in the afternoon - which is iffy - that would destabilize the air.
There will be strong winds aloft, which would change direction and speed with height. If the skies clear, some strong thunderstorms could develop, and some of those could start rotating. Worst case scenario would be a few severe thunderstorms and a very slight risk of a brief tornado.
This, as noted, is extremely iffy, and we'll have a better sense of what might go on by tomorrow morning.
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