This time we will likely see data throughout the storm as long as the instruments themselves hold up (Rollover Pass may have just bit it). During Katrina the instruments held up for awhile, then the National Bouy Data Center itself went offline as it took a direct hit. Of course, this storm isn’t much like Katrina, but there’s definitely already some pretty major flooding.

Click on each of the plots to see the water level plots.

Galveston Pleasure Pier:

Rollover Pass, TX (close to the worst storm surge)

Clear Lake, TX (right next to Johnsson Space Center):

Since the links below stopped working in the middle of the storm, I did some searching to find out where the NDBC is. As it turns out, the NDBC is at Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi, near the Louisiana border—the area directly hit by the eye of Katrina. I assume it’ll be a few days before they’re back up and running, but I’ll leave these links up on the off chance it does happen sooner. A bouy in Waveland, MS, close to the most devastated areas, reported up through 4AM yesterday, but hasn’t been heard from since, and one in SW Pass, LA, recorded throughout the storm showing the 6-ft storm surge there.

A National Data Bouy Center station located very near where Katrina will make landfall (here’s another). Click on the image to see more about the recording station; click here for a map of more bouys in the area, including some very near to New Orleans. The ones closer to New Orleans will record water levels above normal; this will give a good idea of the storm surge.

Headed straight for New Orleans…

And will be a Category 5 when she gets there…

Keep up-to-date at www.nhc.noaa.gov

4 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 165 MPH…WITH HIGHER GUSTS. KATRINA IS A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN STRENGTH ARE LIKELY UNTIL LANDFALL. KATRINA IS EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL AT CATEGORY FOUR OR FIVE INTENSITY. WINDS AFFECTING THE UPPER FLOORS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY STRONGER THAN THOSE NEAR GROUND LEVEL.

KATRINA IS A LARGE HURRICANE. HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 105 MILES FROM THE CENTER…AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 230 MILES. SUSTAINED TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS ARE OCCURRING OVER THE SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA COAST. SOUTHWEST PASS…NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER…RECENTLY REPORTED SUSTAINED WINDS OF 48 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 53 MPH.

A NOAA HURRICANE HUNTER PLANE REPORTED A MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE OF 902 MB…26.64 INCHES.

COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 18 TO 22 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE LEVELS…LOCALLY AS HIGH AS 28 FEET…ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES…CAN BE EXPECTED NEAR AND TO THE EAST OF WHERE THE CENTER MAKES LANDFALL. SOME LEVEES IN THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA COULD BE OVERTOPPED. SIGNIFICANT STORM SURGE FLOODING WILL OCCUR ELSEWHERE ALONG THE CENTRAL AND NORTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO COAST.

Over the course of last weekend’s hurricane Jeanne, I set up a couple of scripts to grab all of the radar scans from the area and store them for fun later. My Mom was in Tampa through the storm, and I wanted to have some record to show her what the beast looked like from this side. She said they made it through everything just fine, with not much more than a lot of rain and some heavy wind. Using ImageMagick’s convert function, I combined all of the images into an animated gif. Clicking on the image above will take you there, but beware: the file size is about 12MB.

A few of the stills we took while storm chasing Saturday. We saw one confirmed tornado and one funnel, amongst a good number of classic wall clouds. We got trapped between two merging storms, dodged softball-sized hail, and drove over 700 miles on a day that saw at least 91 tornadoes nation-wide. The weekend total was over 170, making this Memorial Day Weekend one of the larger tornado outbreaks in history. I’ll have some more pictures once I get them off the video—I was short on stills this go round but we got some pretty fair video, which is more interesting anyway.

I went out all day chasing Saturday, and got lucky by sighting one of only two tornadoes in Texas that day. Both of the tornadoes came out of the same supercell thunderstorm. Shortly after this photo was taken, the tornado died out and the storm turned outflow dominant, meaning that it’s outflow (rain, hail, and wind) overpowered it’s inflow (warm, moist air that feeds the storm). After this, the storm joined into a squall line with a few other storms, and they dropped some pretty good hail on parts of North Texas. The funny thing is that I though this was a tornado at the time, but I had just moved to get further from the storm because I was too close, and rushed to snap the couple of pictures that I got. The thing was probably only on the ground for about 30 seconds. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool to drive 450 miles and get lucky!