Blake, Andy, and I headed up to Mt. Baldy after a week’s worth of storms dropped 5-7ft on the local Southern California ski area. Roads were restricted, lines were long, but we made the best of the day and got in some stellar runs, including skiing the east face of Mt. Harwood after hiking 500ft up from the top of chair 4.

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.

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.

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But we finally got a break from the rain.

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.

Katie and I went out shooting last night as the storms rolled into south Dallas. We found a perch above Joe Pool Lake, set up the camera and tripod, and snapped a roll before the storms overtook us.

These storms were about 6 miles away, and at the time were dropping 1-1/8 inch hail (larger than golfballs). All I had was Kodak High Definition ISO 400, so I shot with that. After shooting last weekend on a bad roll of Kodak 400, and overexposing all of my lightning shots (30 seconds was way too long for 400!), I tried to learn a bit from that lesson and do better this time.

Most of the shots I took were still overexposed – light levels were fine, but ISO 400 is still just too fast for shooting 15-second exposures, so all of the shots showed a lot of grain. Both of the shots below came out because I caught a bolt mid-exposure and was able to close the shutter. Both of the shots were from a tripod and manual shutter, no remote, . Next time I do this I hope to have a roll of ISO 100 to try out. Again, the scans are bad, and as you can see there is some debris on my scanner. Those blotches are not on the film.

         

As of now, it looks like I am consistantly getting about 2 good shots out of a roll. So, after film and processing, that’s about $5 per good shot. This is yet another hobby that is going to break me if I’m not careful.