So was reading some old articles about Katrina and read if a pocket of dry air from the midwest hadn't came up, it would have hit as a category 5?
How much worse does this make the damage etc?
How much worse does this make the damage etc?
WI: Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans at Category 5
- Thread starter starwarsfan
- Start date
I don't think the damage could have been that much worse. It was almost total as is. A more interesting question is if New Orleans didn't swipe so much Congress gave it for flood control and use it for things like a floating casino.
Admiral Halsey
Banned
Katrina was pretty much as bad as it could get anyway so unless a Cat 5 did wipe the city off the map levels of damage then I don't see it being worse.
Could Mississippi be damaged worse with a cat 5 or was that maxed out too?
Coastal Mississippi practically got erased, Biloxi even the Seabee base at Gulfport suffered major damage. so it effectively was as bad as it could get AIUI.
Storm surge OTL went inland 20' high an avergae of 6 miles and in esutaries and bays and river mouths, 12 miles inland
Haley Barbour and others made a major point that the Feds ignored MS and AL damage b/c NOLA was such a train wreck. Mobile AL also took some major hits too from Katrina but the frontage of the storm extended from Port Arthur TX to Panama City, FL when it made landfall drenching that whole area and packing storm surges of 12-20', not many man-made structures can take that.
Storm surge OTL went inland 20' high an avergae of 6 miles and in esutaries and bays and river mouths, 12 miles inland
Haley Barbour and others made a major point that the Feds ignored MS and AL damage b/c NOLA was such a train wreck. Mobile AL also took some major hits too from Katrina but the frontage of the storm extended from Port Arthur TX to Panama City, FL when it made landfall drenching that whole area and packing storm surges of 12-20', not many man-made structures can take that.
If the storm hit at a full Category 5, the prospect of most of the entire city of New Orleans--including the center of town--being swamped with water from Lake Pontchartrain becomes very real. After the storm passes, there would be real serious talk of abandoning the entire city for good.
New Orleans will eventually be rebuilt as a very small city, primarily as a bedroom community for workers in the oil and chemical industries in southern Louisiana. Baton Rouge becomes the new largest city in the state, and it's likely that the New Orleans Saints move to a new joint-use football stadium shared with the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge.
New Orleans will eventually be rebuilt as a very small city, primarily as a bedroom community for workers in the oil and chemical industries in southern Louisiana. Baton Rouge becomes the new largest city in the state, and it's likely that the New Orleans Saints move to a new joint-use football stadium shared with the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge.
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Remember that the flooding in New Orleans did not occur until AFTER the storm had passed through. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is what got most of the hammering. Potential closure of Keesler AFB, the Seabee base in Gulfport, and moving of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmens Home to another location. The piece of New Orleans along the Mississippi River that didn't flood still didn't flood.
I will give you another POD, what if Kathleen Blanco directed the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries officers who were responding and rescuing people before the Coast Guard got there to take media reps along with them.
One other thing....there is absolutely NEAUX (NO) WAY that LSU would move from Tiger Stadium...Benson probably moves the Saints to San Antoino (and doesn't hire Sean Payton and sign Drew Brees, who goes to Miami where lil Nicky Satan stays rather than going to the land of the Gumps)
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that's probably ASB. New Orleans is the 6th biggest seaport in the United States. They're not about to just write off all those facilities, as that would require build a new seaport somewhere from from scratch.
Nobody knew that Louisiana authorities were doing anything except sitting on their rear ends...it was readily evident before the storm even hit that Blanco had lost it. One of these days I want to write a thesis on what happened to the Louisiana National Guard, it's not a widely known fact that an Engineer Company was at the New Orleans Convention Center...WITHOUT WEAPONS...
If the eye of Katrina had a Louisiana landfall other than lower Plaquemines Parish, i.e. landfall had been at Grand Isle, a lot of flooding in New Orleans would not have occurred because the storm circulation would have forced water toward the north shore of Lake Ponchatrain...
<sigh> and the stupid conspiracy theories to go along with it. I can just hear it now....
One possibility is the Atchafalaya River becoming the new mouth of the Mississippi River. If the levees broke up there and the other flood control structures fail you would have all of the river going that way along with all the rains and such associated with Katrina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchafalaya_River
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchafalaya_River
usertron2020
Donor
God and the American Voter (further northward up along the Mississippi River Region) may have some to say about that...
IIRC, 60 Minutes did a story several years ago about how overdevelopment along the Mississippi River along its entire length from St. Louis to Louisiana, in the name of preventing ANY flooding, ANYWHERE on what is after all an enormous natural flood plain, had caused a "quickening" of the river, preventing any alleuvial soil settling in Louisiana and leaving the state to the tender mercies of the Atlantic Ocean
When the US Army Corps of Engineers built a series of dams on the Mississippi to do this, it was under protest, as they told congressional subcommittees: "If we do as you are ordering us, we'll be playing God with the natural course flow of the Mississippi, and we can't predict WHAT will happen..." Congress: "God works for the Congress, not the other way around!"
God: "Oh really?"So, today, the Atchafalaya River has become the true mouth of the Mississippi River, and the story of the Amazing Disappearing State of Louisiana continues. On Dolby Sound [SIZE=-4]tm[/SIZE].
This is NOT a possibility. It is happening in real time RIGHT NOW. The US Army Corps of Engineers (post-Katrina IIRC) finally convinced Congress that God doesn't take His marching orders from them and got authorization for a series of dam demolitions along the Mississippi. Two. Big. Problems.
little problem: every idiot politician who is still fighting to protect "his dam" over everyone else's
BIG PROBLEM: God has apparently already made up His mind, as the project (with several dams blown already) seems to have failed. The New Mississippi seems to be just gouging its way around the blown dam sections and continuing to head ever more onto the New Man River even as we speak.
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Orville_third
Banned
If it hits Port Fourchon and destroys the LOOP Terminal and the oil terminal there, the US just lost a major oil delivery point. Think the oil prices were high OTL?
And if Rita damages Houston, the Ship Channel, and the refineries...that would be worse.
(Loosely based on the mockumentary, "Oil Storm".)
And if Rita damages Houston, the Ship Channel, and the refineries...that would be worse.
(Loosely based on the mockumentary, "Oil Storm".)
And where might this floating casino be within the city of New Orleans, my dear friend? Have I missed it these passed nine years, somehow, having lived through the storm and its aftermath? Because none of the levees were raised, none of them strengthened, the Lake Borgne surge barrier but a myth, and we're all blowing our FEMA money at the magical floating casino? You have no idea whereof you speak.
And just to be perfectly clear and in the rights, there was what we call a "riverboat" casino in Orleans Parish before the storm, a Bally's, moored near Lakefront Airport. It was destroyed during the storm and never replaced.