No, this is not a post with my predictions for the NFL season ... although I'll go with the Panthers and the Colts to make the final game this year (don't hold me to it, I just came up with that right now, without any analysis). Rather, it has to do with the location of the not-so-Super-anymore-Dome, which has a whole in the roof, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans, itself, is a sort of super bowl, a city built in a depression, kept dry by levees and pumps ... which contributes to its own demise by pumping groundwater which helps the city subside over time. And, this weekend was what everyone has been waiting for ... sort of the Superbowl of ADCIRC (one of the models I'm working with in my research). The Hurricane prediction people at LSU have been using ADCIRC to simulate various scenarios and Ivor (the head guy at LSU ... I can't spell his last name) and Rick L. (one of the original ADCIRC developers who's at UNC) have been on CNN and various other places, talking about things. By the eye of the storm being east of New Orleans, it saved a lot of damage, although there was still some flooding, probably caused by storm surge over the levees on the south side of Lake Ponchartrain. The east side of the hurricane has the higher coastal storm surge in the Gulf because the land is on the north and the counterclockwise nature of the hurricane has the wind stresses acting towards the shore on the east side of the eye. It will be interesting to see if they do any model validation, using the atmospheric data from Katrina as inputs to the model to see if the hindcast matches the actual flooding scenarios experienced in NO.
7 comments:
that's "hole," not "whole" ... oops
I had figured out the hole/whole thing. I was actually kind of impressed with the post as a whole. Sounded very scholarly, or at least like you knew what you were talking about!
Re: Hurricane Katrina, Sandi--Roy's friend Jason's mom-- stopped by my office this afternoon to report that Jason & family evacuated to Houston where there in a hotel. Apparently, they just squeaked out of New Orleans as Jenn's 1st year medical residency duties had her in a surgery until well after they'd planned to leave. The 2nd year residents had to stay to be available through the storm. So I guess hope for no big ones to hit New Orleans next year.
That's nice to hear that they're in a hotel ... see, I'm not the only one with a typo : - )
I do know what I'm talking about ... why the surprise? Actually, one of the ND grad students developed a very intricate grid to run simulations on ... it has over 2 million node points, I think. However, I don't know if they are using it, as it takes a whole lot of computational resources.
It will be interesting to see how New Orleans redevelops in the next couple years.
As a side note, gas prices went up 20 cents more today ... I'm wondering if we'll be over $3.00 sometime soon ... I'm going to start walking to school!!! (ok, not really)
Why are people looting? Isn't there enough damage already? Idiots!
I usually scour my writing for typos before posting it, but they still slip through from time to time. When that happens, I just edit the post. Saves embarrassment and extra comments.
It turns out that you can edit comments, too, though Blogger hasn't officially sanctioned that activity. It's a bit more complicated.
I e-mailed Jason yesterday to check up on them. I hadn't received a response. So, I appreciate the news. I suppose a phone call would have been a better method (I just thought of that).
We didn't call Nicole's brother either. They seem to have been right in the path of the storm (Lumberton, Mississippi).
From the looks of NO today, they should give it up and rebuild on higher ground.
GT
The idiots on Fox News made an interesting point about people who live in areas that don't get many natural disasters subsidizing people who choose to live in high risk areas ... they weren't advocating not providing help now, but that it might be an issue worth looking at in the future.
The pictures are pretty amazing ... 80% of NO under water is a fair amount ... and they are predicting the water level may rise another few feet. On weather.com, there was an interesting photo of a couple cars someplace that had been parked underneath a boardwalk type thing and had been buried up to the tops of the tires in sand ... it'll be fun to get those out. Depending on the extent of the damage (which seems pretty extensive), it could be an opportunity for a total rebuild of the levees, canals, pump, storm and sanitary sewer, etc., which could enable New Orleans to be rebuilt in a responsible fashion. However, that would be a massive undertaking. I think it will be interesting (from an engineering standpoint) to see what happens. I can't imagine people living there without food, water, shelter, sanitary systems, power, etc. The news people seemed disturbed by people stealing food from stores. I really don't see a major problem with that ... they don't have food ... people need to eat. However, I don't see the point of taking tv's and stuff like that. The power is out!
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