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Tropical Major Hurricane Laura

Stump said:
Looks like possibly both from observations? I’m asking more than making a statement really. I’m unable to find the 140+sustained winds or 30 mile inshore surge. All of which is good.... not complaining. Just wondering what happened.
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Thanks. It seems like the aircraft measured sustained don't usually get measured over land. Maybe they weaken quickly or blow out instruments...or both. As far as surge goes, no idea. 40 miles inland sounded like a lot to me, but I'm not a surge expert.

I kind of agree that so far, it looks like the observations didn't quite match up to the forecast language. But the end result is still pretty widespread destruction from a legit Cat 4 hurricane. Glad it wasn't worse!
 
Seems to me actually the wind was the biggest story. Rather then the surge I mean I could be wrong.


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Rain Cold said:
Thanks. It seems like the aircraft measured sustained don't usually get measured over land. Maybe they weaken quickly or blow out instruments...or both. As far as surge goes, no idea. 40 miles inland sounded like a lot to me, but I'm not a surge expert.

I kind of agree that so far, it looks like the observations didn't quite match up to the forecast language. But the end result is still pretty widespread destruction from a legit Cat 4 hurricane. Glad it wasn't worse!
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It will be interesting to see how it shakes out, track was east enough to spare Lake Charles etc the full brunt of what was possible surge wise and the fast forward speed helped to I am sure. The winds were big time sustained in the mid 90's gusting to 130-140 is impressive anywhere anytime but its high end Cat 3 type winds IMO. Still its gonna be a sad sight when the sun gets up I am sure...
 
I’ve noticed over the years that inland sustained winds never come close to the actual storm strength but the gusts usually are pretty close to the actual storm strength. It seems to be hard for the actual sustained winds to mix down to the surface effectively and/or be properly sampled by a weather station that doesn’t get knocked out. Friction I imagine has a part in reducing the actual winds since you have trees, buildings, etc whereas in the open ocean there is nothing like that to hinder the wind. Usually those high sustained winds would occur right on the coast in a very open area where the winds are not hindered like they are inland.
 
First, I am thrilled that, at least preliminarily, Laura's damage looks to be minimal, all things considered. I'm sure the immediate coast will be worse than what we're seeing out of Lake Charles and any loss of life/property is bad. I'm very thankful the surge wasn't the 15-20 ft forecast and is more like 5' (Lake Charles). Very good news for that city!! My concerns are, how can they miss surge forecast that bad? And, this type of thing sure feeds the "cry wolf" syndrome. "Unsurvivable storm surge" that didn't happen at all. I don't think it was overhyped; I just think it's a busted forecast. A real demonstration that we really don't know as much about storm surge as we think we do. Sometimes, they nail the surge forecast... on this one? It **looks** like a terrible miss, albeit for the good.
 
NWTENN said:
First, I am thrilled that, at least preliminarily, Laura's damage looks to be minimal, all things considered. I'm sure the immediate coast will be worse than what we're seeing out of Lake Charles and any loss of life/property is bad. I'm very thankful the surge wasn't the 15-20 ft forecast and is more like 5' (Lake Charles). Very good news for that city!! My concerns are, how can they miss surge forecast that bad? And, this type of thing sure feeds the "cry wolf" syndrome. "Unsurvivable storm surge" that didn't happen at all. I don't think it was overhyped; I just think it's a busted forecast. A real demonstration that we really don't know as much about storm surge as we think we do. Sometimes, they nail the surge forecast... on this one? It **looks** like a terrible miss, albeit for the good.
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Ummmm...9A49122D-2D1B-4F21-825B-89CA837A3BAC.png
 
Perhaps the impact at less than high tide, a northeast wind blowing at a slightly offshore angle at first pushing water out and the barely and slightly east of the border track spared them from the worst surge.
 
Blue_Ridge_Escarpment said:
Ummmm...View attachment 47496
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I know it's early. My post is really about what appears to be a huge miss on the surge forecast, particularly into Lake Charles and well inland from there. The coast is going to be very, very bad. But TWC people were just saying, "it's not the 15-20' forecast, but 5' is still a lot of water." If that hold up, that is a bad, bad miss. And I'm really glad if it is.
 
Shaggy said:
Perhaps the impact at less than high tide, a northeast wind blowing at a slightly offshore angle at first pushing water out and the barely and slightly east of the border track spared them from the worst surge.
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I hope so. I expected to wake up this morning and see 50% or more, of Lake Charles underwater... that's what was "supposed" to happen. In a cat 4, there's still going to be devastating damage and loss of life. But maybe, just maybe, it won;t be as bad as feared.
 

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Is it just me or are the winds usually not as high as the official wind speed ? I don't think anybody has reported even cat 3 sustained winds.
 
To show you how bad the euro was with this storm, Houston only recorded 0.06 of precip and a 25 mph gust. I think with a lot of Mets hugging the euro it prompted some unnecessary decisions. For example, United cancelled all flights into Bush yesterday.
 
Dewpoint Dan said:
Is it just me or are the winds usually not as high as the official wind speed ? I don't think anybody has reported even cat 3 sustained winds.
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Just to clarify, the strongest winds with a TC will never be measured onshore, they just aren't. Too much friction, etc, those winds will always be over the open water
 
Blue_Ridge_Escarpment said:
To show you how bad the euro was with this storm, Houston only recorded 0.06 of precip and a 25 mph gust. I think with a lot of Mets hugging the euro it prompted some unnecessary decisions. For example, United cancelled all flights into Bush yesterday.
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Yes, it was very bad. Even it’s members were bad. I really think the euro life line depends on aviation. With the travel ban between us and the eu. It really took a lot of data away...?


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LovingGulfLows said:
Not at all....in fact I would say nothing was as bad as you would expect of a hurricane that neared Cat 5 status. In fact, everything felt more like a low-mid Cat 3 storm.
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I mean it's still early but indications seem to be this was nowhere near a cat 4, much less a high end cat 4.
 
I think the southern eye wall looking like it was opening. Or maybe a little touch of dry air. Right before landfall really helped out in weakening it. Just my opinion


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The storm went a bit east of the predicted high impact areas and the eye was pretty large so fortunately the marsh took the brunt of it. Its just not comparable to when a coastal town or resort area with tons of impervious takes a hit. Doesn't mean the storm was not powerful. You really have to allow the damage to be surveyed a bit, they probably have not accessed the hardest hit areas. This was fortunate placement for the storm to come in.
 
Nobody is pointing fingers here at all, as suggested above. I'm sure the marshes mitigated the surge to some degree, maybe greatly. The meteorologists and hydrologists know all of this and still predicted a massive surge into Lake Charles and well beyond, that apparently did not happen hardly at all. That, by definition, is a bust. I'm fascinated by the science behind this. I'm certainly not disappointed. More info will come through the days and weeks ahead and certainly, the immediate coast is going to be horrible.
 
NWTENN said:
First, I am thrilled that, at least preliminarily, Laura's damage looks to be minimal, all things considered. I'm sure the immediate coast will be worse than what we're seeing out of Lake Charles and any loss of life/property is bad. I'm very thankful the surge wasn't the 15-20 ft forecast and is more like 5' (Lake Charles). Very good news for that city!! My concerns are, how can they miss surge forecast that bad? And, this type of thing sure feeds the "cry wolf" syndrome. "Unsurvivable storm surge" that didn't happen at all. I don't think it was overhyped; I just think it's a busted forecast. A real demonstration that we really don't know as much about storm surge as we think we do. Sometimes, they nail the surge forecast... on this one? It **looks** like a terrible miss, albeit for the good.
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Yeah, I agree about the boy crying wolf syndrome. Next time some people may be be liable to say, "last time they predicted 15-20' of surge we barely got 5' and refuse to evacuate, and then that 15-20' does actually materialize and they get washed away.

What caused the miss, anyways? I guess the storm came in a little east, but nowhere received the 15-20' of surge as far as I can tell. The storm itself was as powerful as progged. Are storm surge predictions just that inaccurate?
 
Dewpoint Dan said:
I mean it's still early but indications seem to be this was nowhere near a cat 4, much less a high end cat 4.
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Based on what? OBS from weather stations almost never confirms stronger hurricanes, this is nothing new. Winds won't be quite as strong over water, and the stronger winds will tend to know out OBS stations.
 
People always jump to conclusions after a few damage reports and videos sprinkle in. I remember that happening with Michael and then when people finally got access to the hardest hit areas people realized how bad it was once those pictures started streaming in. Also keep in mind the NE/E eyewall went over sparsely populated areas (which is good) where there weren't any weather stations to reliably gauge the wind. I expect we will see some eye opening damage coming in later today and tomorrow as damage assessment begins.
 
LovingGulfLows said:
Not at all....in fact I would say nothing was as bad as you would expect of a hurricane that neared Cat 5 status. In fact, everything felt more like a low-mid Cat 3 storm.
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Well that's a technicality. Did a tsunami rush inland 30 miles? Of course not but Lake Charles did record a 5 or 6 foot surge so In reality they are 30 to 40 miles inland.
 
superjames1992 said:
Yeah, I agree about the boy crying wolf syndrome. Next time some people may be be liable to say, "last time they predicted 15-20' of surge we barely got 5' and refuse to evacuate, and then that 15-20' does actually materialize and they get washed away.
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I fail to see how it's the mets fault that people don't think things through before making the life-threatening decision to stay put during a major hurricane. The forecasters do the best they can with the data they have. As always, I'm sure that this will be a learning experience that will allow them to further refine future predictions. That's just how science works. If people want to disregard the experts completely because of something like this then that's on them. You can't fix stupid.
 
Is the center of Hurricane Laura now moving northeast? I assumed it’d still be moving north at this point. Thoughts?
 
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