Something Incredible about Ivan.....

[~SirCane]

A guy just down the road from me on my street who lives right on the water (the same bay as the I-10 bridge) did some research on how high the water has come up in this area in the past 150 years. He found out that the water never exceeded 10 feet, so he decided to build his house up 12 feet above the ground. Well-Ivan completely washed through his home and destroyed EVERYTHING.

It's no wonder the I-10 bridge got demolished. It's really incredible.

[vbhoutex]

Having driven that bridge many times, I was FLOORED when I saw the first pictures of it!!! I never dreamed something like that would happen in even the worst case scenario of a hurricane hit on P'cola!!! If I remember correctly the water normally sits about 15-20 feet below the bridge. I figure there was at least a 16-18 foot surge in that area and with miles and miles(at least 6-8)of open water to it's south and a south wind howling at 100 mph there were probably 15'+ waves on top of that surge. Incredible to say the least!!!!(I've seen 8' waves on that same bay before in both hurricane and non-hurricane conditions)

[pcola girl]

Once the engineers went out to the bridge and examined it, didn't they come up with an estimate of approximately a 40 foot wall of water to cause that amount of damage? I live on the west side of Pensacola and it was no picnic over there either. We never experienced the eye, "just" the eyewall all the way as it moved inland.

[~SirCane]

Getting the eye is a good thing. We didn't get it. We never got a break. We were stuck in the Eastern eyewall-the WORST part of the storm! What an aweful night it was!

You're right pcola girl. They came out and said it would have taken a 40 foot wall of water to destroy the bridge. Incredible!

[Sanibel]

Goes to show that you can't bank on statistics. If they want to research something they should research Ivan's perfect eye and form just before the north Gulf. There was an intensification there even if it resulted in surge and not windspeed.


I drove across that bridge a year ago. I probably said something to the person I was driving with like "Imagine a hurricane surge funneling up the bay and into this bridge"...


We were very lucky with surge on Charley here 400 yards from the Gulf. Because of that we didn't lose the car and have Pensacola-like damage...

[EmeraldCoast1]

NOAA readings show that the highest surge from Ivan anywhere on the gulf coast occurred at a gauge just to the north of the I-10 bridge along the banks on Scenic Hwy. The measurement was just shy of 13 feet.

If you look at the topography of the scenic bluffs, it's easy to see how the bridge became a sitting duck.

First: The bluffs served as a dam, blocking any rising water from migrating inland. Only a few places (probably less than 10% of the bluffs) are low lying, the rest is mostly steep cliffs.

Second: The wind direction was primarily 100 to 120 deg which drove much of the water in the bay toward the bridge area and, most importantly, against the scenic bluffs.

Third: Both ends of the bridge are constructed at points in the land (both natural and man-made rocky areas) that create a narrowing point in the bay. This, coupled with the fact that the water pushing WNW had nowhere to go but back into the wind, created a turbulent mass of water right around the bridge area. It must have been like a giant bath tub with water sloshing violently around the bluffs area.

I can't imagine what kind of video that would have made had Ivan come onshore during daylight!

Of course, this is all my opinion and is based on little or no science. I am just trying to use basic logic to understand how such massive pieces of concrete can be slid off their pilings. Awesome power.

[Sanibel]

You wouldn't be able to video it because of the water spray from the winds. Down in Cayman at the height of the storm they said you couldn't see across the street because the air was a white sheet of blowing spray.

I saw a photo from Cayman of an apartment house that was completely gone with only a concrete slab remaining...


The poor truck driver had a close-up view...

[vbhoutex]

EC1 I grew upin gulf Breeze and graduated Woodham High School. You give a very good explanationof the topography around the bridge and leading up to it. It indeed is at the base of a natural funnel with the small part of the funnel pointed North and the "cliffs" along Scenic Highway do run in a SSW to NNE direction or close to it. That would indeed have been incredible video if it could have been captured!!

[EmeraldCoast1]

EC1 I grew upin gulf Breeze and graduated Woodham High School.

vbhoutex: Thanks for reply. Seeing those sections slide off the bridge (or float then flip) would not only be amazing, I think it would be one of the most incredible examples of the force of mother nature ever captured on tape. But Sanibel has a point that the spray would have probably made a daytime video impossible to shoot at any distance.

I think the 18-wheeler driver was intentionally breaking the law and taking his own daredevil risk by driving over the bridge. What truck driver in the world would be on the road period with 70 plus mile per hour winds during a hurricane? Ridiculous.

vbhoutex: If you drove through P'cola and GB today, you wouldn't believe your eyes. You'd think you had gone back in time when there was 40-50% more tree canopy. You graduated from Woodham? School was heavily damaged. I live next door to a long-time teacher there. I won't mention his last name, but his first name is Harrison.

[Opal storm]

I remember sitting here at home looking at the radar of Pensacola and almost the whole night P'cola stayed in that eye-wall.Probably had sustainded winds of 100+ for a couple of hours.

[Droop12]

Your right Opal storm, we in Pensacola probably had winds sustained over 100mph for a good 4 hours. My estimate, from damage in the area I stayed, and just the sound, the peak was probably near 115 sustained for about 45 minutes. Im thinking a peak gust where I stayed (North of Downtown) was 150mph. Judging by the steel billboards, snapped oak and pine trees and several buildings with complete roof and wall failure. I know before the storm I was so excited with anticipation of the storm...It was my first. But during and after the storm that excitement turned to horror and helplessness. I didnt know if my neighbor in Gulf Breeze was alive, if my house was still standing. Summed, up it really impacts people, and you just dont know how much it really does until it happens to you.

[CFL]

Ivan spawned a lot of tornadoes in that right front quadrant. I'd never have imagined the amount of damage I'd come home to living off of 10 Mile Road. As soon as I can get my house repaired (probably take at least a year) we are packing our bags and moving elsewhere. We've got half a roof (with a blue roof now installed), ceilings and walls that need replaced, and a bare concrete slab because we had to take out the damp carpet. I'm trying to find a rental because after one month I am sick of camping. I've never seen such destruction, red tape, and bad traffic in all my years of living here.

[hurricanetrack]

I lament over the fact that Ivan hit at night. That we cannot change. However, the technology is there now to at least see more at night. With just a little light- there are plenty of low light level cameras out there. That being said, my team and I are about to build two new Hurricane Landfall Project vehicles and will do two things with them:

HLP #1 will be placed in the direct path of the eye to gather data and video of the eye passage.

HLP #2 will be placed in the RFQ to record as much data and video as possible in a situation like Ivan. If I had listened to Jim Canotre who I met at PC Beach, I would have been there for Ivan in Pensacola. As it was- I went to Gulf Shores and placed our first generation HLP vehicle on the beach there. It did indeed capture some incredible video- out there all by itself- but once it got dark, only a few power flashes lit up the night enough to see anything. This will all be on my DVD by the way- but the point is, I wish I had a 2nd vehicle that night to place in Pensacola. Jim Cantore told me that the area would have a massive storm surge- so did Gulf Shores- but they got the eye. Pensacola did not. Now, for 2005, my team will have two units to place out on the islands in harm's way. Each mini-wind tower will have a complete automated weather station and 4 CCD cameras built in to SCUBA housings that one would use to shoot extreme underwater action. All of this will be wired to the Internet once again using Sprint PCS connection cards- so we can sit back and watch the force of nature from a safe place. After Charley, I said NO MORE eyewalls for me- not in my Tahoe. I was scared enough to know that one day, I'm a dead man if I stay out in the core of a major hurricane. So that it what the HLP vehicles are for. The new generation will be built on trailers for ease of towing. They will look like steel frames with a mini-wind tower on top (15 feet tall total). We plan to debut the first tower at the '05 National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans.

Anyhow- from now on, my team and I will at least have another set of "eyes" out there to see things that would normally kill people if they were there. I will put technology and innovation to use in order to be in the next Camille, Andrew, Gilbert, Allen or Ivan, Jeanne and Frances without having to actually be there. You can't go wrong with that plan. So far, the first experiment of it- during Ivan- worked very well. We just need some night-time lighting, which we will solve- and the project will be good to go for 2005.

Enough from me- hope things get back to normal in Florida soon- you all have been through plenty.

Mark
Hurricanetrack.com

[~SirCane]

Sorry you had all that damage CFL! It's just aweful to hear the stories and see all the damage. I waited the storm out off 10 mile and it was just plain scary that night. It was also my Bithday. One I'll never forget!!