New Orleans Is Sinking And Scientists Say The City Is A Terminal Case

The Tragically Hip were right: New Orleans 
IS sinking, and some researchers say the
will no longer be viable in a century or 
less because of rising sea levels
and climate change 

 Back in 1989, the fantastic Canadian band Tragically Hip released one of their greatest songs, called "New Orleans Is Sinking."   

Turns out the band was pretty prescient. 

New Orleans has always been in, at best, a standoff with the Gulf of Mexico. The low lying city has always been prone to coastal flooding, especially in recent decades as the land itself sinks and climate change has begun to raise sea levels. 

Now, we're seeing new headlines, like the lede in this story from The Guardian: 

"The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached 'a point of  no return' that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a start new study has concluded."

The fossil fuel industry that is an important part of Louisiana's economy is to blame. The coastline is subsiding, sinking downward in large part by the effects of the oil and gas industry. Along with man-made levees and diversions along the Mississippi River that means silt from the river doesn't replenish the land along the coastline. 

"The delta loses roughly a football field worth of land every half hour to an hour,"  according to PBS. 

The new research says southern Louisiana will deal with three to seven meters (roughly 10 to 23 feet) sea level rise which would drown land surrounding New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

"Ultimately the main message of the study is New Orleans is not forever and we have to plan for our future and we have to start planning now," aid Dr. Torbjorn Tomqvist, a geology professor at Tulane University and lead author of the study. 

The research harkens back to a time 125,000 years ago, when the Gulf of Mexico shoreline was north of Lake Pontchartrain, about 30 miles north of New Orleans. 

In those days, global temperatures were about 0.5 to 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels and seas were 10 to 20 feet higher than today, notes Fox8 News in New Orleans. 

Climate change through the use of fossil fuels have made the world at least as warm as it was 125,000 years ago. "Tornqvist said that because of the increasing rate of sea level rise, combined with subsidence or the rate of sinking land, the Gulf one day reach that ridge again, putting much of Southeast Louisiana underwater," Fox8 News continued.

Jesse Keenan, one the paper's five co-authors said New Orleans is going to go away, no matter what. As for how long New Orleans will last, Keenan said it is likely decades, not centuries. Though they stress it's not imminent. The city won't drown this year or this decade, but several decades from now. 

"Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orlean's days are still numbered....It will be surrounded by open water, and you can't keep an island situated below sea level afloat. There's no amount of money that can do that," Keenan said.

Keenan summed it up with this gloomy assessment. "New Orleans is in terminal condition, and we need to be clear with the patient that it is terminal.....There is an opportunity for palliative care, we can transition people and the economy. We can get ahead of this."

The researchers said city, state and federal leaders should start working now to help people move away from New Orleans and environs. They recommend a coordinated effort, starting with the most vulnerable committees. The top suggestion is Plaquemines Parish, where many people live outside the levee system. 

Land loss to the sea is already driving depopulation along Louisiana's coastal areas. That area has lost residents since 2000, especially after big hurricanes. That population loss has a good chance of accelerating as the land continues to disappear and hurricanes continue to battler the Gulf Coast.  

If You Need A Heartwarming Weather Story, Here's Two: Baby In A Hurricane And Wedding In A Haboob

Dr. Juan Gershanik rescuing little
baby Christian Stewart from
Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago.
The two have kept in touch 
ever since. 

Christian Stewart of Houston, Texas just celebrated his 20th birthday. 

That shouldn't at first glance be a big deal. Plenty of people celebrate birthdays and you probably don't know Christian Stewart.  

But he's alive today against long odds.  Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina almost killed him. Except a kind, brave doctor saved him.

Stewart was born in New Orleans, nearly three months premature in July, 2005.  He weighed just one pound, 12 ounces at birth. He was still in the NICU at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans when hurricane Katrina hit on August 28, 2005. 

The hospital was swamped with water. The emergency generators clicked on, but the water began to go after those, too. If the backup generators failed, Stewart's mechanical ventilator would stop, and he would die.

Enter Dr. Juan Gershanik, who rescued Stewart via a harrowing helicopter ride to Baton Rouge. 

The obvious spoiler is that Gershanik saved Stewart's life.  The good doctor has been attending Stewart's birthday ever since. 

For the full story in a video, click on this link, or if you see the image below, click on that. Then, below the video, Story #2 starts. 

THE WEDDING HABOOB

Things can get a little dusty with events this time of year in Arizona. Just ask a particular pair of newly weds

As ABC 15 Arizona reports:

Bekka and Jamie Ham just married amid a haboob
near Phoenix Arizona. Photo by Madisen Ruehle

"After a decade together, Bekka and Jamie Ham finally decided to tie the knot. They planned nothing too fancy - just a courthouse ceremony followed by some photos with their photographer and friend Madisen Ruehle to remember the day."

The courthouse ceremony in Chandler, Arizona, just southeast of Phoenix, was quick and flawless. It was the photography afterward that got tricky. 

"'We leave the courthouse and we just see a wall of dust coming. I didn't realize how fast it was coming - we were right in the middle of the dust storm,'" Ruehle said. 

The dust slammed into the couple and the photographer, but a rescuer was nearby.  Paul Roupas was getting ready for the grand opening of his new Aristocrat Coffee Roasters shop in downtown Chandler when he saw the couple in distress.

He hustled them into his shop and made sure they had a memorable if off the cuff wedding reception. Roupas brewed up some heart-shaped lattes, and had the couple pick out music for their first dance on a vintage vinyl record player. He didn't have Champagne, so their first toast to their married life was in the form of his and her ice cream cones. 

Outside, the dust turned into a muddy rain, then a cleaner, but gusty torrential downpour. But the newlyweds were safe inside to start their married life. 

Ruehle put the event on social media, where of course it went viral. She said her favorite comment on her post was:  "If a wet knot is harder to untie, then let it rain."

Here's the news video: Click on this link to watch, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

 

Rare Southern Winter Storm Set To Strike As Far South As Gulf Coast, Florida

Fox Weather has this extraordinary snow forecast
map for the Gulf Coast. Lots of snow for places
that far south. Could be a couple record snowfalls.

The Northeast is gearing up for a winter storm later today, as I noted this morning. 

But that part of the nation is used to that sort of thing in January. The real winter news is going on along the Gulf Coast of all places.  

Meanwhile, though, there are separate winter storm watches in effect in decidedly non-Arctic cities like Galveston, Houston, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mobile and Pensacola. 

Yeah, this is a weird one. Chances are you'll see lots of photos of palm trees dusted with snow. 

Those winter storm alerts actually cover most of the Gulf Coast and Deep South.   Those watches extend through southern and central Texas,  most of the southern halves of Mississippi and Alabama, and even the western tip of the Florida Panhandle. 

Eventually the storm is forecast to reach the coastal Carolinas. 

Baton Rouge could see three to five inches of snow out of this. New Orleans is possibly in line for one to three inches. 

Parts of far eastern Texas and central Louisiana are expecting up to eight inches of snow.

A bit of snow or ice could mix in with rain Tuesday night even in Tallahassee and Jacksonville, Florida. 

Winter storms happen from time to time in the Deep South. There was just one last week. But those winter conditions usually don't extend southward to Interstate 10, which hugs the Gulf Coast from Florida to Houston. 

This time, however, it looks like it might just happen. 

This kind of thing can obviously be dangerous in areas that aren't used to snow.  There's the obvious travel problems, since the Gulf Coast isn't exactly ready with snow plows and salt truck like they are up here in Vermont.

The 5 to 8 inches of snow expected in central and western Louisiana could collapse flat roofs and awnings, since such structures aren't built for snow loads in that area. Trees could collapse under the weight of the snow and ice too. 

The cause, of course, is that Arctic blast roaring down from Canada. It's making it all the way to the Gulf Coast.

Storms often form on the southern and eastern edges of these frigid air outbreaks. That's why there's a storm on the leading edge of the cold air on the East Coast today. 

This bitter air is running into the warm waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico, so a storm is forming there. The storm will force balmy air from the Gulf to try and ride up and over the cold, dense air along the coast. 

There, the risk is freezing rain and sleet. But inland just a bit, the cold air will be thick enough so the precipitation will start out as snow and make it all the down to the ground as those flakes. 

Usually this kind of thing sets up a little further north, but this time, it's further south than usual. This could be a record breaker or near record breaker in some areas. 

GULF COAST SNOW RECORDS

 New Orleans has not seen measurable snow in 15 years. 

The biggest snowstorm in New Orleans history came on Valentine's Day, 1895, when eight inches accumulated. That same storm dumped an incredible 22 inches of snow on Houston, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana, and 12.5 inches on Baton Rouge 

At least something like that won't happen this time.  

In modern history, the biggest snowstorm in New Orleans was 2.7 inches on December 31, 1963. There is a chance they could get that much in this week's storm. 

Baton Rouge has a shot at receiving its biggest snowstorm in the past 100 years, too. The had six inches in February, 1940. The next biggest snowstorms were 3.5 inches on January 23, 1940 and December 8, 2017.

Florida's biggest snowstorm that I could find was four inches in the town of Milton, a little northeast of Pensacola on March 6, 1954. There is a very low, but not zero chance of that much snow falling in the northwest corner of Florida this week.   

In December, 1989 three inches was reported at two northern Florida cities and 2.5 inches fell that day at Jacksonville, Beach 

New Orleans Slammed By Tornado; Up Here In Vermont, We Gear Up For Some Late Season Ice

Television viewers in New Orleans were horrified to 
see this on their TV screens last night. 

 One of the last of the tornadoes in a two-day outbreak in the South proved to be the worst.

A tornado roared through New Orleans last night, killing at least one person, injuring others and leaving behind a trail of extensive damage. 

The tornado went through New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward, and through parts of St. Bernard Parish.  The community of Arabi seemed hardest hit. Those are neighborhoods that especially didn't need this. These are mostly mid to low income neighborhoods that were also largely destroyed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 

Local television stations showed live video of the tornado, which consisted of a large gray, wedge shaped funnel crossing the city. Other video, taken closer to the tornado, depicted a loud roar, debris in the air and bright blue flashes as power lines and transformers collapsed in the winds. 

Virtually no house in New Orleans has a basement, so people had to cower in bathrooms and closets in hopes of avoiding injury or death from the twister. 

The extent of the damage was a bit hard to quantify in the darkness of night, so there will be better assessments with daylight today. It is clear that numerous houses were either destroyed or badly damaged. 

NOLA.com said rescuers were hampered by debris covered streets, power outages and natural gas leaks.

The New Orleans tornado further destroys the myth that damaging tornadoes can't hit cities.  They do, both in and out of so-called "Tornado Alley"

A partial list of cities hit by destructive and deadly tornadoes over the past decade or two include Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlanta, Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, Sioux Falls, Raleigh, Brooklyn and Queens areas of New York City, Springfield, Massachusetts and Ottawa, Canada. 

The New Orleans tornado last night was one of 70 or so tornadoes in the South over the past two days, according to preliminary reports. 

Some more severe weather, including possibly a few more tornadoes, are on tap today in the Southeast and in Ohio. 

After today, forecasters think there will be a lull in severe weather for about a week before new storm systems entering the middle of the nation next possibly touch off more dangerous weather.

VERMONT ICE

Springtime in Vermont is about to go on hiatus, as it often does in late March and early April.

Yes, we can get freezing rain in the spring. This photo shows
ice accumulating on trees in St. Albans, Vermont on April 9,
2019. Similar scenes are possible in parts of Vermont tomorrow.

The forecast includes freezing rain, sleet, cold rains, eventually snow and a shot of wintry air.  

The parent storm that helped cause those southern tornadoes is finally headed our way.  After this morning's chill, you'll notice it clouding up today, and a bit of trouble will arrive overnight, mostly after midnight. 

A winter weather advisory is up for all of Vermont except the Champlain Valley tonight and tomorrow morning. 

Mixed precipitation will overspread Vermont overnight.  It won't come down super hard, but it will be enough to coat untreated roads and sidewalks with ice, so tomorrow morning's commute could be a toughie for some of us. 

The ice won't get thick enough to damage trees or power lines, except possibly in a few isolated spots in the southern Green Mountains where ice could accumulate up to a quarter inch in thickness. 

The Champlain Valley is expected to stay slightly warmer, so there it will be mostly a plain, cold rain there, perhaps mixed with a snowflake or ice pellet here and there. 

Temperatures will slowly warm up tomorrow, so most of us will go over to plain, cold, light rain during the day tomorrow. Winds could also get gusty for a time along the western slopes of the Green Mountains tomorrow morning. 

Rain will continue Thursday night, with perhaps a bit of a mix in the mountains.  Scattered showers of rain and snow continue Friday and Saturday before, yup, a nice sharp Arctic cold front arrives Sunday. That front should produce at least a dusting of snow, with maybe a few inches up in the mountains. 

That'll get us right back into winter. It'll get down into the upper single digits and teens for lows Sunday and Monday nights, and it won't even get above freezing Monday afternoon.

As is typical with these late season cold shots, it won't last all that long. A slow but real warmup will start next Tuesday.  

Hurricane Ida: Now Awaiting Word On Just How Bad Things Got

Roofing and other material littered New Orleans'

French Quarter during Hurrcane Ida. Photo: Eric Gay/AP

 When a big, disastrous storm strikes, it often takes a day, or more often several days, to understand just how bad things got. 

We're in that mode right now with Hurricane Ida.

As we all know by now, Ida crashed ashore in Louisiana with top winds of 150 mph.  We know of one death already, but that toll will surely rise as people get out to the hardest hit areas to check and see who made it and who didn't.

Judging from the social media posts and videos, we know there's huge storm surge damage, never mind what the wind did. New Orleans is entirely blacked out as the power grid basically blew away in Ida. People were pleading on social media for help as storm surges inundated the homes they were in, but nobody could come get them. The weather was too harsh in the midst of Ida.

Early images of New Orleans this morning shows collapsed buildings, windows blown off, and parts of facades ripped off of high rises.  We haven't even gotten much out of areas closer to the landfall area yet. I'm sure the updates will show plenty of devastation. Again. 

Ida's winds have now diminished, as that happens with all hurricanes that move inland. But it looks like it will continue creating a long stripe of flooding, some of it severe, all the way to New Jersey over the next couple of days.  The potential zone of nasty flooding includes Tennessee, where a devastating flash flood earlier this month killed about 20 people.. 

I can't even begin to imagine how stressful things were in Louisiana hospitals Sunday, and how stressful they'll continue to be. The hospitals are filled to the brim with Covid patients, and they all had to ride out the Ida Sunday.  

The roof of one Louisiana hospital is seen being ripped away in video posted on social media. No word yet on what's going on with the people who were in the hospital at the time.

These same hospitals will be slammed in the coming days with Ida-related injuries and illnesses and probably lots more  Covid cases. I don't even want to think about that anymore. 

One question I keep hearing is, "Why didn't people in harm's way evacuate? They knew Ida was coming.  Yes, there were some stubborn people that didn't leave despite warnings of unsurvivable storm surges and 150 mph winds.  

Hurricane Ida ripping the roof off of a hospital in

Louisiana Sunday. 

The bigger tragedy is that a lot of people didn't have the means to leave. They were essentially abandoned.  

If you don't have a car, or money to put gas in the car or money to get a hotel room or other shelter, you don't evacuate. All you can do is sit and hope for the best. Seems like there should have been some sort of system in place to give low income people the same chance at hurricane survival as those with more means.

But I guess poor people are dispensable.   I know that's harsh, and I shouldn't talk since I myself don't have a good plan in mind to help in these situations. But it just feels like we could do better.

Meanwhile, as Ida departs, people in Louisiana have a rough few weeks ahead of them.  Power will be out for weeks in some areas, which means no air conditioning. That's dangerous in a humid place like the Deep South.

The flood damage alone has to be immense, and will take months or even years to repair.  That's on top of the ongoing rebuilding from destructive hurricanes that hit Louisiana last year. Luckily, Hurricane Ida did not directly hit the areas that got nailed by three hurricanes last year. 

VERMONT IMPACTS

I wouldn't worry too much about Ida around here, at least at this point. 

Torrential showers that rolled through northern Vermont this morning had nothing to do with Ida, by the way.  The air has gotten very humid ahead of a cold front, so the pooled moisture made things ripe for downpours.  A disturbance ahead of the approaching cold front triggered those heavy showers.

The remains of Ida, as noted, will spread flooding rains through the Tennessee Valley and on into the Middle Atlantic States and probably southern New England. 

There's a lot of questions as to how far north those rains will get Wednesday night and Thursday.  Far southern Vermont in particular could get some drenching downpours from Ida, so we'll have to watch that.  The southern end of Vermont is still prone to flooding after a wet summer there.

Computer models are all over the place about the amount of rain and whether any of it gets as far as northern Vermont. Stay tuned. 

Hurricane Ida As Bad As It Gets

Hurricane Ida had its expected burst of rapid intensification overnight and early this morning and at last report early this morning, it had top winds of 145 mph. 

Extreme Hurricane Ida on approach to Louisiana
early this morning. 

Oops. It's still strengthening rapidly as I write this at 7 a.m.. Top winds are now 150 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. 

Conditions were already going downhill fast along the Louisiana coast and it will just get worse and worse as the day goes on. 

Everything about this is just beyond awful.  The storm surge near and just west of the mouth of the Mississippi River will be up to 16 feet. Large areas of the coastline in Louisiana and Mississippi should expect to see storm surges of six to 12 feet.

I hate to say it, but anybody who didn't evacuate from the large low lying areas where these storm surges are to hit will probably die. It's almost impossible to survive that. 

I worry about the people who didn't evacuate, either because they didn't have the transportation, money or means to go or because they were stubborn.  I hope everybody got out, and I hope there's still nobody stuck in gridlocked traffic as they tried to escape, as everything heading out of the hurricane zone yesterday was a parking lot.

Here's what the National Weather Service in New Orleans wrote last night. It's about as strong a message as you can send.  

"Once sustained tropical force winds move in first responders will button down and YOU WILL BE ON YOUR OWN.  Please understand this, there is the possibility that conditions could be unlivable along the coast for some time and areas around New Orleans and Baton Rouge could be without power for weeks. 

We have all seen the destruction and pain caused by Harvey, Michael and Laura. Anticipate devastation on this level and if it doesn't happen we should all count our blessings. Please again if you have the means to leave and you are 1. in a mandatory or voluntary evacuation zone, LEAVE. 2. are in  a very flood prone area, LEAVE. 3. are uncomfortable and have trees around your house, LEAVE."   

Most hurricane victims drown, either because of the storm surge or due to inland flooding.

There will be huge inland flooding, with up to two feet of rain forecast.  After it comes ashore, the remains of Ida could cause dangerous flooding in the coming days all the way up to Pennsylvania and possibly southern New England.

But that's down the road.  For today and this evening, the National Weather Service in New Orleans is warning residents of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and nearby areas to expect winds of over 110 mph, with 10 to as much as 20 inches of rain.   Those storm surges will inundate wide areas, include heavily populated areas around Lake Pontchartrain.

Basically, the storm surge will be as bad or nearly as bad as Katrina in 2005. And the winds will be quite a bit stronger than in Katrina when it made landfall.

That is all incredibly dangerous. And will be incredibly destructive and deadly.  I, and everybody else, is dreading this. 

Hurricane Ida will come ashore later today.  It's still in a healthy environment, so it could strengthen more.  Even if some miracle happens and Ida starts to weaken now, it's too little, too late. 

Ida is an incredibly strong, self sustaining hurricane, so anything that can weaken it - dry air entrainment from inland, an eye wall replacement cycle, or unexpected upper level winds  - won't come fast enough to prevent Ida from being a powerful, incredibly dangerous hurricane at landfall, even if top winds fall from their current screaming levels.

And, as noted, the hurricane could actually strengthen further. 

By the way, the eye wall replacement cycle, for those uninitiated, is when the strongest storms immediately around the eye die off to be replaced by another circle of intense storms around the eye that's a little larger. This can weaken the top winds of a hurricane some, but also increase the area raked by the strongest winds.

It's unclear whether Ida will go through this cycle before landfall or not.  I'm guessing not. This eye wall replacement nonsense I just wrote about won't matter much anyway. This is going to be rough, to say the least. A tragic day in American history. As if we haven't had enough of them lately.