Hurricane Isaac

Bob wrote:On the other hand, they weren't as accurate on Ivan 3 days out. Had the center hit Ft. Walton (as this indicates) we would have been spared.

At one point the weather experts predicted Hurricane Ivan would take an eastern turn and hit Tampa....that is where I was when Ivan hit. I watched in horror as it hit my family in Gulf Breeze.

No matter where this thing hits, I will be on the north east side of it. I am going to get it. I live on a island. I need this like a hole in the head right now.

I see some overtime coming in the near future.

Question: When Ivan was four days away from hitting us, how accurate was the NHC when predicting the intensity of Ivan at landfall?
Answer: Four days out, it predicted the wind speed at landfall to be 132 mph. Right on the money...

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/dis/al092004.discus.032.shtml

Same question with Dennis. Four days out, the NHC predicted Dennis would have winds of 115 mph at landfall. Still pretty accurate.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al042005.discus.010.shtml

After I found both of those forecasts I was feeling a lot more confident of the accuracy of the NHC's intensity forecast 4 days out. Especially since the intensity forecast for Isaac at landfall is only 85 mph (category 1).

But damnit then I had to go and spoil that by looking at the Katrina forecast four days out. And that one was way wrong. That one was forecasting the winds to be only 103 mph at landfall (when Katrina's actual wind speed at landfall turned out to be about 130 mph)...

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/dis/al122005.discus.011.shtml?

I really dont worry about Hurricanes very much. I dont live on the water and I have a old house with plaster walls and planked t/g hip roof. The old ghetto house is off grade so flooding is not much of a issue. Ivan took off a couple of shingles and I did not even file a claim. The same was true with my other house on "K"st. I hate to be a smart ass but a lot of the stuff that gets blown away has been built where the old timers knew not to build.
I hope a hurricane doesn't come and God forbid anyone gets hurt, but for me personally, it is no big deal.......

Georgie Boy, My mom was born in 1917 in Pensacola. She would say that only riff-raff lived on the waterfront. Nobody respectable would live among the waterfront that was teeming with ships full of sailors. It was pretty cutthroat back then.

Gunz wrote:I see some overtime coming in the near future.

Oh Lordy, Gunz, that's been my thought for the past two days. It's overtime I don't really want, either.

Ah, well. I am happy to have a job, and it's kind of cool to know they depend on little, ol' me.

Bob wrote:On the other hand, they weren't as accurate on Ivan 3 days out. Had the center hit Ft. Walton (as this indicates) we would have been spared.

Ya'll just don't understand.....or so my friend the Turtle Lady would say.

She has a theory that the only time we need to worry is when a hurricane goes through the "flippers" - Cuba on one side, Cozumel/Cancun on the other.

You know, "flippers" - like on a pin ball machine. Shoots those hurricanes straight up to Pensacola.

Or so she says.

Bob can relate to flippers... Having repaired pinball machines all his life.

Yomama wrote:Bob can relate to flippers... Having repaired pinball machines all his life.

I've been painting the cabinet on one under my carport right now. And because of this *&**$#*& hurricane I have to drag the damn thing into the house before I finish. lol

Here's one hurricane tip for hurricane newbies for what it's worth.
Most people who have generators wait until the hurricane has passed before they run their extension cords and power strips and plug up the fridge and the fans and the lights and crank up the generator.
If you have an outside covered area like a carport that's just stupid.
Before the storm I fill up my plastic gas cans. I place the generator up in the corner of the carport where the wind won't blow it away. I go ahead and run the extension cords into the house and get the power strips connected.
That way, when the power goes off during the storm I can go ahead and crank the generator and have tv (with an antenna), fans, lights and the fridge on DURING the storm. And the pinball machine too (lol).

hallmarkgrad wrote:I really dont worry about Hurricanes very much. I dont live on the water and I have a old house with plaster walls and planked t/g hip roof. The old ghetto house is off grade so flooding is not much of a issue. Ivan took off a couple of shingles and I did not even file a claim. The same was true with my other house on "K"st. I hate to be a smart ass but a lot of the stuff that gets blown away has been built where the old timers knew not to build.
I hope a hurricane doesn't come and God forbid anyone gets hurt, but for me personally, it is no big deal.......

I agree. And that is true for most hurricanes. But since we've never experienced what a category 5 hurricane is like I have to reserve judgement for that one.
I used to know someone who lived in Long Beach MS when Camille hit. His house was in the eyewall about 6 miles east of where the center came through in Pass Christian.
He was a reserve deputy at the time and left his family at home while he was put on duty at the Sheriff's Office in downtown Gulfport.
After the hurricane had passed the streets were impassable so he walked the couple miles to his house in Long Beach and on the way home he encountered dead bodies up in the trees.

I can survive an Ivan. But I don't want to be here when the sustained winds are 165 mph. That's equivalent to the wind speed of an F3 tornado.

Bob wrote:I used to know someone who lived in Long Beach MS when Camille hit. His house was in the eyewall about 6 miles east of where the center came through in Pass Christian.
He was a reserve deputy at the time and left his family at home while he was put on duty at the Sheriff's Office in downtown Gulfport.
After the hurricane had passed the streets were impassable so he walked the couple miles to his house in Long Beach and on the way home he encountered dead bodies up in the trees.

Don't leave us hanging! Was the friend's house still there... family okay?

Eric, that's the prettiest picture anyone has ever posted to this forum.
Especially if you can post the same picture on Tuesday night. Keep you fingers and your toes crossed and say prayers.

If you think there is any chance that your house will be compromised, tree falling, roof, windows blowing in, go ahead and get dressed for going out side. I put on my shoes or boots, have a jacket ready, stocking cap, and gloves in order to try and protect me from the flying stuff. If you get hit with something big then it will not help but it will help with the little stuff. Dont sit around in your underwear watching TV. Be ready to get out. where are you going? Can you get into your car? Harder to do than you might think. Sometimes I park one of my vehicles close to the house then run a rope to it so I can follow the rope. It is damn hard to see and keep orientated in the middle of a big blow at night.

Yomama wrote:

Bob wrote:I used to know someone who lived in Long Beach MS when Camille hit. His house was in the eyewall about 6 miles east of where the center came through in Pass Christian.
He was a reserve deputy at the time and left his family at home while he was put on duty at the Sheriff's Office in downtown Gulfport.
After the hurricane had passed the streets were impassable so he walked the couple miles to his house in Long Beach and on the way home he encountered dead bodies up in the trees.

Don't leave us hanging! Was the friend's house still there... family okay?

He left his wife and two teenage children at home. His house was an old frame house, three blocks inland from the water, and it stayed mostly intact. But they got six feet of water in it and had to get up on the furniture to keep their heads above the water.

I asked him why he didn't evacuate them. And his answer was that since nothing like Camille had ever happened before they just never thought it could ever be that bad.
You may remember the story about the Richilieu Apartments and that tends to confirm what he said. A large number of people were in that apartment building having a hurricane party when the apartment building was directly across highway 90 from the beach. All of those people died and obviously they never thought it could be that bad either.

Bob wrote:Eric, that's the prettiest picture anyone has ever posted to this forum.
Especially if you can post the same picture on Tuesday night. Keep you fingers and your toes crossed and say prayers.

Bob, if you get scared you can come over here and you and me and Bear will sit in my garage where we can have cold beer and collard greens and watch trees as they fly past at supersonic speeds. We will be safe because my garage has been declared to be a art repository and is therefore untouchable.

[quote="Yella"]

Bob wrote:


Bob, if you get scared you can come over here and you and me and Bear will sit in my garage where we can have cold beer and collard greens and watch trees as they fly past at supersonic speeds. We will be safe because my garage has been declared to be a art repository and is therefore untouchable.

The Yelladawg Shelter. I like it. lol

There are a lot of amazing Hurricane Camille stories but the one that always comes to mind is this one.

A shrimper decided to ride out the storm on his shrimpboat tied up in the back bay of Biloxi.
So you can picture where this is at, it's that horizontal body of water you see on this map behind Biloxi...

https://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=biloxi&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x889c0e5c20b742d7:0xc47a6051136f6842,Biloxi,+MS&gl=us&ei=h6U3UNucDKrq2AXxqYDoCw&ved=0CLABELYD

So he gets his boat tied up there and then prepares to ride out the storm.
As the storm came in and got intense for him, he was washed overboard.
But as it happened he managed to grab a rope.
Then he's in the water struggling to survive in one of the strongest hurricanes ever on record. He manages to survive with that all around him in the water for about a mile. And then he's carried to where a bridge is. And even still he's able to use the rope to tie himself to the side of the bridge. And tie himself to the bridge at about the level of the roadway since the storm surge has now raised the water in the back bay to that level.
We don't know how long he survived one of the worst hurricanes in history tied to that bridge. Because after the hurricane passed they found him hanging dead from the bridge still tied to the rope.
What a way to die. You just cannot imagine what sheer terror that must have been.

Joey Patti rode out Ivan on the Shrimp Boat "Our Mother" in Bayou Chico. They ran the engines and kept it headed into the wind. But when a big surge came it put them on the beach. Matter of fact it put both of the Shrimp Boats on the Beach. We hired a big floating jackleg crane to lift them back into the water. We lucked out because they were in the area doing some work so they did not have to pay travel time. I think the going rate was $50,000 a day. They did not supply any of the rigging. That was just for the barge for 24 hours. And they nicked the new bridge on the way out.....

According to this story http://camille.passchristian.net/hurricane_party.htm, people survived and it wasn't a party.

I thought that somebody survived, Bob. But, this is the first time I have read that it wasn't a party.

bob, youve scared the shit out of me with those stories.

Keep it up, Im a big horror fan.

Yomama wrote:According to this story http://camille.passchristian.net/hurricane_party.htm, people survived and it wasn't a party.

I thought that somebody survived, Bob. But, this is the first time I have read that it wasn't a party.

For some reason I can't get your link to work, Eric.
But I did find this and it's saying the "hurricane party" was a myth too...

http://camille.passchristian.net/hurricane_party.htm

I had not ever read anything to correct that fact either.

But here's the thing. Even if they weren't having a hurricane party, they WERE riding out it out across the street from the beach. And all of us who have been on that beach know how low the land across highway 90 is to the water. And hurricane party or not they stayed in that thing across from the beach and eight died.
So it's most likely the same mindset as my friend. Even when the weather dudes were telling them how bad it could be, they just couldn't accept it.

I can relate to it a little. Before 2004 I had been through a lot of hurricanes here. And my attitude was "I aint ascared of no damn hurricanes".
And then the first REAL hurricane hit us and my tude changed after that. lol