ATL: LAURA - Post-Tropical - Discussion

[supercane4867]

wow that looks bad

 https://twitter.com/TheBradSowder/status/1298991534537203718

[supercane4867]

 https://twitter.com/jribas/status/1298991765156839427

[sbcc]

Brandon Clement drone footage, Lake Charles

 https://twitter.com/KATVToddYak/status/1298969493369171969

[supercane4867]

Lake Charles NWS radar is found to be destroyed. Similar to PR radar after Maria

 https://twitter.com/AlaStormTracker/status/1298992015405805570

[Blow_Hard]

We need a helicopter survey of the area, but so far it appears that Lake Charles had Cat 1/2 sustained winds with Cat 3/4 gusts and the damage seems consistent with this. You need to remember Lake Charles is 30 miles inland and typically the worst winds in a hurricane occur within 1 miles of the immediate coastline in the northeast eyewall. If there were 160mph Cat 5 sustained winds, we will likely never know as they occured over swamp land and only the bayou critters experienced them.

I expect damage to be less extensive than Hurricane Michael. Downtown Panama City was pounded by the western eyewall for hours with no break for the eye and was a coastal city only a few miles from the beach. Looks like Lake Charles had a good break with the eyewall and the southern eyewall was weaker.

I'd be interested in seeing what happened to the little town of Iowa directly east of Lake Charles. That town was in the eastern eyewall for hours with no breaks. The worst damage will probably be there in Iowa.

That's not completely accurate. Michael was moving every bit as fast as Laura, if not slightly faster. And I'm not sure about Lake Charles, but as someone very familiar with Tally -> Pcola, Panama City was not built to code. Lots of older structures predating Andrew. I do agree with your point about distance from the coast, it's right on St Andrews Bay (hence the name Bay County). I also think due to Michael's continued RI through landfall as a Cat-5, more Cat-5 gusts mixed down to the surface. Laura seemed to level off just a tad. Hung out ~ 938 hPa from the 7 CDT advisory onward.

As a resident of Panama City I agree with both of you. Larry is correct in his assertion that many of the buildings in Downtown PC were old and definitely not built to code. However, I agree with Panda because we were in the western eyewall for over 2 hours and if you go back and look at images of Michael at LF you'll notice the western eyewall was very, very intense. There were many, many structures on 23rd st and points north that were newer and built to code and they were obliterated. I live 8 miles north of town rightoff Hwy 231 and on my street there was a home that had been built by the contractor who lived in the home and he had put rebar in the foundation and the studs were fastened to that to take extra precautions. After the storm the four walls were all that were left of his home, I think the greatest testament to Michael's strength was blowing rail cars off the tracks. An empty boxcar weighs about 30-50 tons. I know I've probably harped excessively about Michael but being an avid extreme weather junkie who always used to get pumped in anticipation of experiencing a TC, I can tell you that going through Michael changed my perspective forever and I will be perfectly fine if I never experience another Storm or Hurricane.

[Steve]

We are getting our little bit of feed line from Laura now. Look out for possible tornadoes today in front of that line. I haven’t looked at the helicity yet to know the setup, but be careful in the SE today and pay attention to earnings if you have any in your area.

https://www.weather.gov/lix/

[EnnisTx]

https://youtu.be/RkmRkb280rw

[EquusStorm]

Lake Charles NWS radar is found to be destroyed. Similar to PR radar after Maria

https://twitter.com/AlaStormTracker/status/1298992015405805570?s=20

It captured one hell of an iconic last shot as it went, also similar to Maria

[p1nheadlarry]

We need a helicopter survey of the area, but so far it appears that Lake Charles had Cat 1/2 sustained winds with Cat 3/4 gusts and the damage seems consistent with this. You need to remember Lake Charles is 30 miles inland and typically the worst winds in a hurricane occur within 1 miles of the immediate coastline in the northeast eyewall. If there were 160mph Cat 5 sustained winds, we will likely never know as they occured over swamp land and only the bayou critters experienced them.

I expect damage to be less extensive than Hurricane Michael. Downtown Panama City was pounded by the western eyewall for hours with no break for the eye and was a coastal city only a few miles from the beach. Looks like Lake Charles had a good break with the eyewall and the southern eyewall was weaker.

I'd be interested in seeing what happened to the little town of Iowa directly east of Lake Charles. That town was in the eastern eyewall for hours with no breaks. The worst damage will probably be there in Iowa.

That's not completely accurate. Michael was moving every bit as fast as Laura, if not slightly faster. And I'm not sure about Lake Charles, but as someone very familiar with Tally -> Pcola, Panama City was not built to code. Lots of older structures predating Andrew. I do agree with your point about distance from the coast, it's right on St Andrews Bay (hence the name Bay County). I also think due to Michael's continued RI through landfall as a Cat-5, more Cat-5 gusts mixed down to the surface. Laura seemed to level off just a tad. Hung out ~ 938 hPa from the 7 CDT advisory onward.

As a resident of Panama City I agree with both of you. Larry is correct in his assertion that many of the buildings in Downtown PC were old and definitely not built to code. However, I agree with Panda because we were in the western eyewall for over 2 hours and if you go back and look at images of Michael at LF you'll notice the western eyewall was very, very intense. There were many, many structures on 23rd st and points north that were newer and built to code and they were obliterated. I live 8 miles north of town rightoff Hwy 231 and on my street there was a home that had been built by the contractor who lived in the home and he had put rebar in the foundation and the studs were fastened to that to take extra precautions. After the storm the four walls were all that were left of his home, I think the greatest testament to Michael's strength was blowing rail cars off the tracks. An empty boxcar weighs about 30-50 tons. I know I've probably harped excessively about Michael but being an avid extreme weather junkie who always used to get pumped in anticipation of experiencing a TC, I can tell you that going through Michael changed my perspective forever and I will be perfectly fine if I never experience another Storm or Hurricane.

Yes, he/she is right. Didn't take the eye going east of town into account, but the Springfield/Callaway/Parker area was hit even harder (Wewa Hwy was breathtakingly bad when I drove through it the first time) which did get the eye. I was going to be in the area where my gf was in Gulf County at the time but stayed in TLH.

[Texas Snowman]

Also, nhc accounted for the eye landfall location in their 10:00 surge map. It was orders of magnitude better for lake Charles than the 4:00 one where it could still have hit Sabine Pass...

This is true. Many of the news outlets reported the headlines that said "Storm surge could go inland 30 miles," "20+ foot storm surge," and "Surge Unsurvivable." But when the surge forecast was updated, I didn't see one headline that said "Storm Surge May Be Less Than Feared." The former type of news headlines promotes more clicks, likes, and shares while the latter gets largely ignored by most.

I sometimes wonder about this fascination that I/we have with things like severe hurricanes and tornadoes. And why I find any sort of adrenaline increase as the numbers tick up in wind speed, Saffir Simpson ratings, EF ratings, etc. I guess some of it is just human nature, that we're all drawn to a train wreck. Or to use a NASCAR analogy here, we're bored to the point of yawning as we watch lap after lap at Daytona take place with cars screaming by at 200 mph. But let a wreck take out half the field, the so-called "Big One," and we're on the edge of our seat and texting photos to our friends of the cars flipping end over end and smoke and flames erupting.

Bottom line is that each storm is unique, each storm is writing a chapter in history, and for many people today, this is the worst experience of their lives as they try to pick up the pieces. I remember that Harold Taft, a retired AF meteorologist and the late great TV meteorologist in Fort Worth, was introduced for his evening weather segment once after the station showed video of a tornado that hit East Texas and destroyed two or three homes on the outskirts of the town. When the anchor turned to Harold, he said "Well, thankfully that wasn't too bad of a tornado." Harold looked at him and quietly replied, "I guess that depends on whether or not you owned one of those houses or not."

[TallahasseeMan]

laura made landfall in one of the least populated areas on the entire gulf coast, the major population center in the eyewall was over 30 miles inland. I don't think it should be shocking that the damage from a landfalling CAT-4 would be less then assumed.

[Shell Mound]

 https://twitter.com/philklotzbach/status/1299004493573521408




As an aside, Laura marks the shortest interval—two years (2018–20)—between ≥130-knot landfalls in the contiguous U.S., the previous case being Michael ‘18.

[Shell Mound]

 https://twitter.com/dayronperezwx/status/1299006561914937344



 https://twitter.com/paytonmalonewx/status/1299005948455985152



 https://twitter.com/AndrewElswickWX/status/1299002687598592000



 https://twitter.com/MarcoPatriotsHQ/status/1298999456394694659



 https://twitter.com/xWxClub/status/1298992816115167239

[ajurcat]

Any updates on Hackberry or Cameron? Edited to add - above post was done as I was posting.

[p1nheadlarry]

https://twitter.com/paytonmalonewx/status/1299005948455985152

Didn't Camille also make a LA landfall

[tolakram]

Washington Post has a live drive through video going if interested.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/iS0vCDqU9b4[/youtube]

[Shell Mound]

https://twitter.com/paytonmalonewx/status/1299005948455985152

Didn't Camille also make a LA landfall

Camille’s eye remained just offshore of the MS River Delta as it bypassed LA, though islands in the vicinity did experience Cat-5 conditions.

[Shell Mound]

Another live stream, this time by local media:
 https://twitter.com/WarRoomIntel/status/1299002643226988544



Additional footage reveals a derailed train:
 https://twitter.com/MarcoPatriotsHQ/status/1298995698113761282



 https://twitter.com/blkahn/status/1299002622079389697



 https://twitter.com/JeffEhlingABC13/status/1299001359660916736



 https://twitter.com/MartyJChabert/status/1299013110985043969

[ConvergenceZone]

I don’t want to downplay any of this damage whatsoever, but I expected so much more to be flattened and underwater when I woke up, especially after hearing what they were forecasting. This is great news though. Perhaps the storm wasn’t as catastrophic as they thought? My prayers go out to those though who did suffer damage or lost their homes

[Hypercane_Kyle]

I don’t want to downplay any of this damage whatsoever, but I expected so much more to be flattened and underwater when I woke up, especially after hearing what they were forecasting. This is great news though. Perhaps the storm wasn’t as catastrophic as they thought? My prayers go out to those though who did suffer damage or lost their homes

Keep in mind many of these buildings have been built to withstand pretty intense hurricanes. I think too many people are forgetting that fact. They build things though along the Gulf Coast for a good reason.