MsPerky

True...that is the projection at this point.

Lainey

Stay safe those in the path of the storm.

We have a day off from heat and humidity. Just went for a walk. It was 64 degrees and breezy. New England weather.

S1997

The projections show that the storm will continue to be strong up across to the Northeast. So be safe everybody!

jukngene

1:00 PM (CDT) update now has it as a Cat 4.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refres.../DDHHMM.shtml?

dlq04

Damn, not good.

tof

No impact way over here in Mississippi. We are thankful but concerned for those in southwest Louisiana who took the brunt of this storm.

Fortunately, because Laura moved with such exceptional forward speed, storm surge there was less than what was feared. But the storm's fast forward movement also means parts of Louisiana that are well inland are experiencing Cat 2 hurricane winds this morning and Little Rock, AK is under a tropical storm warning.

Looks like Jim's area was also spared the worst as east Texas ended up on the west side of the storm center where conditions are far less severe.

Morris

Can you explain that Mike? I watched a couple hours of the weather channel last night and they kept talking about 6,9 12 and even 20 feet of unservivable storm surge. Today they are ignoring the fact that they were way off, but I'd like to know why. After all, they weren't predicting days ahead, only one or two hours.

MsPerky

No chance of fires here. We are getting one t-storm after another with a flash flood warning for tonight. Then tomorrow we get lots of rain from Laura.

tof

The predictions you read and hear are maximums. And they are, of course, only predictions. Predicting storm surge is really challenging because of the complexity of the interaction between water being pushed by wind and an irregular shore, on top of the uncertainty regarding the precise path of the storm and its forward motion speed. Meteorologists on TV tend to sensationalize storms and that includes focusing on the upper end of estimated ranges for surge, wind speed, rainfall, etc. This is especially evident with storm surge where the estimate range is relatively large resulting in predictions that are sometimes way off.

In the case of Laura, my understanding is that it was such a fast moving storm that water simply didn't have time to pile up into a major storm surge. The surge is a function of wind speed, size of the storm system, shape of the shoreline, tide levels as the storm approaches shore, and the amount of time the storm takes to approach the shore and make landfall.

They don't always get it wrong. Katrina hit with a storm surge between 28 and 32 feet. That was pretty close to the maximum predictions. I don't know the numbers for Sandy but I believe her storm surge did a huge amount of damage to the east coast regardless of what was predicted vs. what the actual surge level was.

News directors and meteorologists would probably tell you that it is better to err on the high side when predicting sever weather impact, but others would argue that this is just the media crying wolf, taking the impact out of their watches and warnings.

This picture gives you some idea of just what kind of damage storm surge can do. Those concrete slabs were houses before Katrina arrived. This scene was repeated across sixty miles of Mississippi coastline where one town pretty much blends into the next.

boltonblue

The thing to remember about that storm surge is it has waves on top of it.