Rivers rising

The main effect of the storm was delayed by a day. There was 200 mm of
rain up in the hills above Cordoba and all of it is flowing down into
the rivers feeding into the Jamapa River. They are evacuating the subdivisions
close to the mouth of the river, using school buses, boats and helicopters.

Where's the US navy, it would be a good moment for some marine helicopters
to show up.

To help send money to the Mexican red cross:

http://www.cruzrojamexicana.org.mx/pagnacional/index.jsp

Storm over

The rain has stopped and the storm seems past.
Someone is already out in the surf playing, and
the major problems outside seem to be trees down.
The satellite loop shows the storm starting to
dissipate over land. Good riddance

The hotel has some damage, part of the entry way
was ripped off and the skytv satellite isn't working.
I'd expect wherever the storm came ashore could be pretty damaged,
here there is Cat 1 damage and we're 30 miles south of landfall,
I hope everyone is ok where it came ashore.

Looking more carefully at the map here, the beach faces northeast,
so I need to rotate any wind directions I gave 45 degrees.

I'd give pretty crappy ratings to the news here, they barely
mentioned the storm until it was 3 hours from landfall, then
after it made landfall they were saying it's just the eye and much
worse is coming. (probably true for the people just north of landfall,
but not for here) That got the hotel to bring everyone down to the lobby,
if there was any real danger they were 3 hours too late.

No Salgan!

The palm trees outside look exactly like the graphics that the
cbs new station used to use in New Orleans when there was a
hurricane watch, it always scared the heck out of me when I was
small....a hurricane is watching me? Yikes!

Local news is saying that we're seeing hurricane force
winds here in Veracruz boca del rio. The only recommendation
they are giving is don't go outside, the eye is touching the coast
and wind may drop off.

tv report:
Trees are down everywhere and electricity is out in some subdivision.
Some streets are flooding, with half a meter of water. "its an extreme situation"
and some palm trees are projectiles.

Wind is due east, blowing straight down the boulevard parallel to the coast.

The news is interviewing people going out to buy food, "si no compramos tortillas
falta para comer". Zero preparation here. Of course I have to walk downstairs
in a few minutes, if the hotel says they have no food then all I have is a
pack of almonds. doh.

Hurricane Blogging, Karl, 11 am

Power just blinked off and came back on, i think the hotel
is on a generator now, the lights seem dimmer and the wifi
signal is almost zero. Hopefully the generator has diesel
for several days.

The government is now saying to stay in place if you're in
a strong structure. I think they are missing the idea of a
forecast that would have said yesterday to be ready to go to
a shelter. There's a problem with the coverage we get in the
USA, sensationalism from the weather channel and news ('we're
all gonna die'), but here it's too far the other way, they are
talking about preparations and the center of the storm is almost
onshore. The real problem will be flooding of already full rivers.

Here the wind appears to be from the southeast, the waves are
mostly blown down and flat, any crests are swept up by the wind
in a flash of spray. The corridor outside is filling up with water
from blowing rain, and the satellite tv is down, other than that
and the power, not much effect. If no more posts that means the
lights went off.

Karl, 9:30 am

Note to self: Don't open the window in a hurricane.
I tried to crack open the window and stick my cell phone
out to film the surf. The wind looks calm because I'm in
the lee of the hotel, but as I crack open the window the
curtains were sucked out and billowed out towards the sea.

I got them back in, but it was a struggle, sort of a Lucille
Ball type fight, when I let go with one hand to push the window
shut a different piece of curtain went out the window.

The surf is laying down somewhat and the wind has changed from
an oooooo to a higher pitch, more like steel groaning. Spooky.

Not much on Mexican TV about the storm, they're still using up
their footage of the independence day parade. Different from US
news reports where it would be 24/7 stories on this 'possibly very
dangerous storm". (ok, i take that back, they just announced it's
category 4 and the whole state of Veracruz is on alert, a little bit
late to go on alert.)

Hurricane Blogging, Karl, morning update

It's 8 o'clock in the morning, the wind is moaning
awoooooooooooooo, and the waves are higher than the
breakwaters that extend out perpendicularly from the beach,
but the waves are spent by the time they hit the seawall,
and that's 15 feet high, so no big deal.

The latest center update is 60 miles away, and the center should
pass 30 miles north of here. Looking out of the hotel to the
south out of the lee of the structure, the wind looks like
it is from the SSW, which means the center is almost due north
from here.

Hopefully the worst is past and things should be
nice and calm by lunch. There is one outlier on the models
that show the storm approaching the coast, then dribbling
back east. That would suck.

It's kind of neat watching the waves build up, the spray blows
off the top then it curls over. It's especially neat being
30 feet higher up inside a cinderblock building with internet
and hot coffee.

Hurricane Blogging, Karl

it's 12:30 am and a pretty good squall is passing here in
Veracruz, wind sounds like it's 30-40 mph and the waves are
marching against the seawall in long white parallel lines.

Hurricane Blogging

I'm in Mexico and strangely enough there's hurricane headed right
here. I've been watching weatherunderground when the hotel's
internet is up, and as usual the projected track is behind the model
response. Eg. An outlier model points off the main forecast, then the
other models start to agree with the outlier, then they adjust the
forecast track. The key learning is when just one model points in your
direction and you have an easy option to leave and go to Mexico City
or Little Rock...then start to make plans to go there.

In theory the forecast takes it north of here enough that it will just
be windy and rainy, but the drumbeat from the surf is getting louder
by the hour, by morning the waves will be crashing on the seawall.

It's a big hotel, built up high and pretty sturdy looking, at this point
probably safer than being on the road at night, so I'll hang out here.

Hopeful panicking

We've been traveling for the past week while the double storms hit
back home, one the hurricane in galveston, the other the collapse
and possible resuscitation of the financial system. Watching events from
europe my face took on the appearance of several smileys from msn,
especially the one with teeth gritted and hand up in fear.

Hurricane Ike doesn't look like it was as bad as it could have been.
A little more severe and a little further west and galveston and south
houston would have been tostada. The mayor of Houston and Judge Ed
have things firmly under control and made adjustments to federal delivery
drops that made things better. (I think not perfect outcomes from the
feds is inevitable, it just demonstrates why most power should be at the state
and local levels)

The shitstorm in new york is even worse and left me bouncing from one foot
to another deciding if I should try and move whatever cash I have to euros
right away and sell every stock. Apparently I'm a good indicator for panic
because right at the point I was about to sell what stocks I have, everything
rebounded 10%, I'm lucky it takes me a couple of days of bouncing from foot
to foot to make a decision.

I'm in the hopefull panicking stage now. Maybe this bailout thing will work
and the government pledging it's full faith and credit for all this bad debt will
win the day. I feel more like I'm at a bar and I'm watching two drunks trying
to pay the tab. The first drunk is fairly shabby looking and hands over a beat up
nearly expired mastercard, the bartender runs it and it is declined. The second
drunk says " no problem, I got this one" and pulls and equally shabby looking creditcard
out and hands it to the bartender. If the bartender runs it, it might be declined
then he'll be short on his register. He does the safer thing and just takes a paper
imprint and sends the two drunks off into the night. The bar might never get paid
but at least he won't be short that night.

Zoiks!

I think the NWS and government have been lax with this storm, trying not
to repeat the Rita evacuation. Now they'll be ramping up quickly this morning
to shrill, but it might be too late to evac all of east texas. They better put some
thought into this and evac starting with the coastal areas first and not stampeding
out the whole city.

Yikes for Houston

If I were in Houston I'd be hauling ass out of there right now to someplace
that won't be without power over the weekend. The folks at weather underground
have added another plot to their repertoir, it is the ensemble model plot. I'm not
certain what that is, but it looks like they are initializing the gfdl model with
different initial conditions and and plotting the multiple runs. On the latest
plot there are two different clusters, one at south padre island and one at
galveston bay. What is really different about the plot is they are doing a
model verification on the same display by plotting the current hurricane positon
on 6 hour old models. It looks to me that the hurricane is trending more northward
and is following the northern cluster towards Houston.

If that trend continues tomorrow morning local time will be a different situation
with the first calls for evacuations. Better to be ready to leave at first light.
(our family policy was modified after hurricane Lily to say that we're not staying
for any hurricane, that looks like it might hit on the 3 day forcast. Just to remove
some of the decision making worrying.) I might foolishly evacuate sometime in the
future, but I don't want to sit and sweat with no lights or a/c for a week either.

Space-alien viewpoint of hurricane

Another great thing about google earth is the ability to turn
on weather and forecast layers. It's possible now to let GE run
and pretend to be an astronaut or space-alien looking down
on puny earthlings....then holy heck there's a big-assed hurricane
about to smack houston!


It's only a matter of time until we have near Real-time update of the
satellite imagery. mwa ha ha hahahha

watching gustav go ashore

I've been watching Gustav all day with the radar loop playing on main
monitor and trying to learn how to use vmware on the external monitor
but making little progress. It looks like New Orleans dodged a bullet
and the storm is going ashore just west of port fourchon. In the past
few hours it seems like the storm has moved more WNW than NW, and it
will follow Hurricane Andrew's path straight up highway 90 to Lafayette.

It might be pretty bad for Grand Isle. Fourchon doesn't have much in the
way of permanent structures that aren't built up 15' off the ground. Grand
Isle is also built up, but the storm might just eat away all the sand that makes up
the island, all the buildings could be standing in 4' of seawater after the storm.
There's not much else for the storm to hit until Morgan City, and by the time
it reaches lafayette it won't be much more than a strong tropical storm.
(he says with crossed fingers)

Of course on the morning of Katrina the storm was passed and the nytimes
said that New orleans had dodged a bullet, so I'll wait a few more hours before
I stop worrying. The local stations are showing the industrial canal with the
water to the top of the steel wall on top of the levee. I always wondered about
that as a kid, if those steel walls would do anything...appears so.

updated at 17:21 local time- John Snell on channel 8 just made a good point,
the water is about 1 foot below the top of the levee and some water is spraying
over the top, he suggests that once the category of this hurricane is firmly established
it will make a good calibration point for where the levee system is right now.
If the levees will be close to overtopping every 3 years, then the levees need
to be upgraded.
John Snell on channe

Obama on WDSU

The weathernerd linked to a site that is showing streams of all
the tv stations in new orleans. Pretty cool stuff, and I was lucky enough
to tune into channel 6 when Barrack Obama called into the show. He mumbled
through some platitudes about how Fema and the state appear to be working well
together, then he got some direct questions from Margeret Orr asking if he would
support:

- category 5 levee protection
- wetlands restoration

he said he would support both and he has supported both and thinks we
should have been further along in wetlands restoration. So maybe an obama
win would be better for Louisiana. Wetlands restoration would help the flood
protection for the west bank, and restoring the MRGO would help chalmette,
but the only thing to do for the east bank is higher stronger levees.

I watched Katrina from outside the country and before the storm the government
made all the noises of cooperation, supposedly with boats and airboats prepositioned,
but in the end the coast guard and local and state boats did most of the rescuing.
The main difference I'm seeing this time is that the evacuation is mostly finished a day
and a half before the storm, and they are searching for people who haven't evacuated
and need help. During Katrina the evacuation was just getting started at this point,
so much better performance this time. I think it is due to proactivity from the state,
and a local government which is what is supposed to happen.

Gustav pointed north, Bobby Jindal responds

I noticed this morning that most of the models now have Gustav
pointing towards southeast louisiana, and the scatter is a lot less, as
if the answer is converging. The times picayune has a response from
Bobby Jindal, with his plan for evacuation being activated. He's not waiting
for mayor nagin to maybe evacuate people sometime next monday, or
for Fema to swoop in on magic carpets and rescue everyone after the storm.

If the storm continues to threaten the state, Jindal would declare a state emergency and request a federally declared emergency on Thursday. Those declarations trigger regulatory and financing programs to help the government deal with a disaster.

The governor emphasized that all the plans are tentative based on the direction of the storm and that the steps for evacuation may not be necessary.

If the storm continues to head toward Louisiana, the governor on Thursday would exercise state contracts for up to 700 buses to assist with evacuations.

Governor Jindal is taking steps now when there is time available to do something
instead of using the previous system of waiting and hoping.

So there's a gulf of mexico in mexico too?

I know it must be frustrating for Mexicans that when gringo's
talk about hurricane impacts on the gulf of mexico, they generally
are talking about the northern gulf coast.

There is production that is exported to the US from the oilfields offshore
Ciudad Carmen, and right now that infrastructure is in the bullseye for
a hit from Hurricane Dean. From the Oil Drum:

















The Oil drum goes into great detail about what might happen,
the prevailing opinion seems to be not much, if Dean exits the
Yucatan as a Cat 1 or 2 moving 18 miles an hour and passes north
of the Cantarell field, then it won't affect much. The production will
just be stopped until all the offshore guys can get back on crew boats
and ride the choppy waters back out to the rigs and platforms.

In my opinion the worst case would be if the track shifts further south and bullseyes
the cantarell field as a cat 3. A lot of the older platforms build before
the bust in '86 could get knocked over as they seem to do in the
northern gulf coast. Since Cantarell production is already dropping
like a rock, this will only hurt mexico and keep the price of oil high.

update 22 Aug

It looks like the storm crossed the oilfields as a cat 1 moving pretty
quickly, so, probably nothing happened. For a weak storm to have a big
effect offshore it has to move slowly so that the wind has time to build
some big waves. (see hurricane juan, 1985 for an example)