It appears that the catastrophic flooding of New Orleans that everyone feared has been avoided. The US Army Corps of Engineers shows near real-time measurements of the levy system on the Mississippi at RiverGauges.com. Here’s the latest graph (with record high level in red):
Click for full size graphic
It was suggested that the 8 foot mark on Lake Pontchartrain would be catastrophic. Among the levies on the Mississippi the peak levels appear to have been reached, as shown below.
Click for full size graphic
There’s still widespread flooding, and portions of the city are said to have 6 feet or more of floodwaters, but the possibility of the entire city vanishing under 30 feet of water seems to have been avoided by a last minute eastward shift of the eye of the hurricane by 55 miles. Of course now it’s just a horrific disaster, as opposed to an unprecedented one…
Katrina pounds Louisiana, Gulf Coast – [CNN]
La., Miss., Ala. feel Hurricane Katrina’s pain – [MSNBC]
Update: Perhaps the early optimism was, well, too optimistic…
The time of the last reading on the graph (and the web site) appears to be 05:00, so I wouldn’t be so sure that the city is out of the woods yet based on this information.
Thank God!
Uh oh, aren’t we giving ideas to the Terrorists?
Well, but for a bit of luck with the slowdown and a more northerly turn, NO would be in very, very bad shape. That’s not to say NO wasn’t hit pretty bad, nor to say that it’s ‘out of the weather’ so to speak yet, either. There’s alot of water that got dumped on the lake and northward, and it’s going to move somewhere — This speaking from experience from the Hurricanes in FL last year. Those flows can be pretty unpredictable (though a topo map helps identify weak spots I suppose) and can develop hours and days later in places you might not have expected it to happen, especially in an already saturated area.
In N FL we had water pop up all over the place in areas we never really expected with Frances and Jeanne. There’s more to it than just the inital onslaught.. there’s going to be flooding issues for weeks to come.
Plus just because NO didn’t get smashed doesn’t mean Gulfport MS and other areas east of NO didn’t get it. There’s alot of little towns east of NO that you probably won’t hear about for a while that are pretty wrecked, you can bet on it. The aerial flyovers of Hancock, St Bernard and Harrison counties (and northward) are going to be fun over the next week, I’m sure.
For some reason my trackbacks don’t seem to be taking, so ping!
This is all George Bush’s fault!
ideas to terrorists? I’m sure they already know about the leveees. And besides, I heard on one of the news channels (every single one of them is covering the hurricane) that one of the levees has broken, explaining the section of new orleans that actually is underwater.
Palmateer—indeed, we are! I mean, if they can just figure out how to get the Mississippi River to rise above 30 feet, New Orleans is doomed 🙂
Is it just me or does the graph look like it needs a push up bra.
Sorry but I have been thinking and praying for all those girls that wont be able to lift their shirts on Bourbon street…
If ever there was a post that should be tossed on the Bonfire of the Vanities, this one is it.