Hurricane Ida As Bad As It Gets; Enormous Trouble For Louisiana

UPDATE 2:15 pm. Saturday

Compare this satellite view of Hurricane Ida taken

early this afternoon compared to the early morning

image below and you can see that it has strengthen

and organized a lot since then

As expected, Hurricane Ida is gaining strength pretty rapidly. 

I wrote the post you see below at around 8 a.m., and in the six hours since, the hurricane has looked a lot more organized and symmetrical, and a well-defined eye formed.  An increase in strength usually lags a little while after an eye forms and a hurricane gets more organized.

That strengthening trend has definitely begun.  As of 1 p.m., strongest sustained winds with Ida were estimated at 100 mph.   Ida was moving over very warm Gulf water and upper level winds, or lack thereof, would encourage further strengthening, possibly rapid strengthening. 

This remains a huge, devastating threat to Louisiana. Hurricane Ida's track is now just a little bit east of where it was forecast, which is potentially bad.  If it keeps on that slightly more easterly track, it'll come ashore closer to New Orleans, and make things there worse.

However, strong hurricanes tend to wobble a bit in a subtle zigzag pattern, so it might sneak back west a tad. Who knows?

Wherever Ida hits, there will be real danger. To emphasize things, here's what the National Weather Service office in New Orleans tweeted this afternoon (capital letters theirs, not mine): "We once again stress that if you are under evacuation order or can leave, PLEASE LEAVE., DEVASTING conditions WILL happen." 

The evacuation itself is beginning to worry me. 

 Highways in the area are bumper to bumper, with some accidents and vehicle breakdowns making things worse. You want everybody off the highways before the rough weather arrives. People can be sitting ducks for real danger if they're on the road and the hurricane arrives.

There's still a little time to get everybody out of the way, so this piece is not a crisis yet.  But it's looking a little too chaotic for my tastes.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION, 8 PM

Meteorologists for the past day or two have been filled with dread over Hurricane Ida.

For good reason. 

Hurricane Ida already looking ferocious early this morning

on this satellite image. It will only get stronger as the day

goes on and poses an enormous threat to Louisiana.

Everything is set up for it to be an extremely powerful hurricane as it roars northward through the Gulf of Mexico today and tomorrow with its sights set on Louisiana.

It's the worst kind of hurricane. It's expected to be a Category 4 storm at landfall and will be strengthening probably all the way to the coast.  There is going to be huge destruction in Louisiana, which has already been battered by several hurricanes in the past year or two

You could by yesterday that Ida was going to be in trouble. You could see it blossom from a disorganized tropical storm to a well-organized hurricane in just hours.  The center of Ida crossed the rugged terrain of western Cuba. You'd expect that land interaction to really disrupt Ida's circulation.

Instead, Hurricane Ida just seemed to hiccup, and this morning was rapidly developing once again.  After Ida emerged into the Gulf of Mexico early today, two extremely intense thunderstorm complexes formed on opposite sides of the eye and started to swirl around the center. That setup is usually a sign that a hurricane will intensify quickly.

So far, 150,000 people have been ordered out and away from the expected path of Ida in Louisiana. There really isn't time to evacuate all of New Orleans, but people there are being urged to go today.

New Orleans erected a $20 billion levee system after the extreme devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I guess this will be a test of whether these levees can hold back Ida's expected 11-foot surge. Meanwhile, more than a foot of wind-driven rain is expected to fall on New Orleans.  Will the pumps be able to at least partially keep up with the flooding rains, or will power fails and such silence the pumps, with extreme flooding resulting? 

Unfortunately, that's the question right now. 

By the way, Hurricane Ida is forecast to make landfall on the exact 16th anniversary of Katrina's strike on Louisiana.

Other parts of Louisiana and Mississippi are going to get bulldozed by this, too.  Remember, hospitals in this region are already overwhelmed with Covid cases.  Dozens or hundreds of injuries and other emergencies from Ida won't be managed as well as usual.  This problem will extend well inland, as torrential rains will spread dangerous flooding all the way to Tennessee and probably beyond.

I know a lot of this seems like hype. After all, didn't the last one -Henri in the Northeast - turn out to be not as bad as advertised?

Sure, there's a chance Ida might not strengthen as much as forecast. Perhaps the Gulf Coast will get lucky and some dry air will get sucked into the circulation, causing Ida to falter.

Don't count on that.  Hurricane Ida will travel over super warm Gulf of Mexico waters. Such hot water is jet fuel for hurricanes. Upper level winds will be light, so the thunderstorms that surround Ida's center will continue to get stronger, thereby boosting the hurricane further. 

A lot of it comes down to exactly where Hurricane Ida comes ashore. The hurricane will be catastrophic no matter where it lands. So I guess you want it to come in where it will affect the least amount of people.

The worst case scenario is if it comes in just west of New Orleans. That would put NOLA into the most extreme push of storm surges, and the strongest winds.  

People in Louisiana don't have much time left to prepare or get out of Dodge. The weather will start going downhill this afternoon or tonight in southern Louisiana. Gasoline, drinking water and other supplies are probably going fast.

People who are sheltering in place will face no electricity and even worse gas and supply shortages in the days immediately after the storm, so that will be an issue.

Even if everybody heeds warnings and gets out of the way, many of the deaths and injuries from hurricanes comes after the wind dies down.  People get hurt chain sawing their way out of a sea of fallen trees, they have heart attacks and strokes from the stress, come down with heat-related illnesses since there's no air conditioning, or get hurt or injured in a myriad of ways during the immediate post-hurricane cleanup.

And, as mentioned, there's Covid, and the highly contagious Delta variant of that virus. Put a bunch of unvaccinated people in emergency shelters and that just makes the wave of Covid hospitalizations and deaths that much worse.

So yeah, I'm absolutely dreading this storm. We'd be crazy not to.