Major Hurricane Ida

[MJO812]

2 minutes ago, cptcatz said:

I wouldn't be so sure about that. The Sandy impacts were mainly from coastal flooding with moderate wind impacts throughout the rest of the region. Inland area impacts were limited to widespread power outages from falling tree limbs and transformer blowouts. The bulk of the costly impacts were from the surge flooding along the coasts, flooding all the tunnels, basements, utility rooms, etc. in the coastal areas.

In contrast, last night's flooding looked to include all the coastal areas that Sandy flooded, IN ADDITION to incredible widespread inland flooding throughout the rest of the highly densely populated metropolitan region. Flooding insurance claims are FAR more expensive than moderate wind damage and there are going to be a ton of inland houses and office buildings waking up to feet of water in their basements this morning. Once people start assessing the damage today, this is gonna turn ugly and astronomically expensive. 

I take back my post

This is worse than Sandy as a whole . 

[chubbs]

Analysis of SST of gulf waters that IDA passed over. Below are the odds of being above the given SST by decade.

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2021/09/02/hurricane-ida-climate-change-makes-a-monster-storm/#more-11625

 

[nwohweather]

11 hours ago, cptcatz said:

Seeing the catastrophic flooding happening in New Jersey, NYC, and now moving into Long Island, I wouldn't be surprised if the flooding costs in the northeast exceed the wind/surge costs in Louisiana. Reminds me a lot of Floyd.

Easy rusty. The wind/storm surge damage is incredible down there, which will require massive infrastructure costs to rebuild. Also oceanfront property is not the cheapest

[NorthHillsWx]

Total costs of this storm are going to be absurd. It’s kind of that hurricane that had it all: catastrophic wind and surge at landfall, damaging winds in a major metropolitan area, and now widespread historic flooding in the most densely populated part of the country. Also, a fairly significant tornado outbreak from Virginia to the northeast 

[LongBeachSurfFreak]

3 hours ago, MJO812 said:

I take back my post

This is worse than Sandy as a whole . 

You were right the first time. I do not have the time currently to list the all the reasons why. A quick answer would be to compare the damage costs from Floyd to those from Sandy. Floyd caused similar fresh water flooding to Ida. 

[turtlehurricane]

The ‘remnants’ of Ida, which is not really a remnant but a powerful extra-tropical cyclone, is fixin’ to hit SE Florida today. 

Indeed, what’s left of Ida stretches all the way from South Florida to the Canadian Maritimes.

Delayed but not denied, lol!

[cptcatz]

3 hours ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

You were right the first time. I do not have the time currently to list the all the reasons why. A quick answer would be to compare the damage costs from Floyd to those from Sandy. Floyd caused similar fresh water flooding to Ida. 

Floyd caused river/stream flooding but I don't believe it caused the kind of urban flash flooding in upland areas like that occurred last night. I lived in Essex County during Floyd in a relatively low lying house with a basement. We didn't get any water intrusion during Floyd. I still have a lot of friends in NJ and they all had flooding around their houses last night like never before. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong but we'll see when the numbers start coming out. 

[thunderbolt]

16 hours ago, cptcatz said:

Seeing the catastrophic flooding happening in New Jersey, NYC, and now moving into Long Island, I wouldn't be surprised if the flooding costs in the northeast exceed the wind/surge costs in Louisiana. Reminds me a lot of Floyd.

Don’t forget about Pennsylvania

[Floydbuster]

 

[dan11295]

Two things made the urban flash flooding worse than Floyd. First you had saturated soils in NYC metro from Henri a week prior. Second was the extreme rainfall rates. 3"/hr rates were occurring and 5-6" over a 2-3 hour period.

[bigtenfan]

17 minutes ago, thunderbolt said:

Don’t forget about Pennsylvania

Vine Street  A major east west road through the center of phila 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTUsaQwL98Q/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=7419923e-5480-4246-b83e-6d4601465b35

[TheDreamTraveler]

45 deaths reported so far in PA/NJ/NY. Horrible :\

[hlcater]

6 hours ago, turtlehurricane said:

The ‘remnants’ of Ida, which is not really a remnant but a powerful extra-tropical cyclone, is fixin’ to hit SE Florida today. 

Indeed, what’s left of Ida stretches all the way from South Florida to the Canadian Maritimes.

Delayed but not denied, lol!

lol

[RamblinRed]

8 hours ago, bigtenfan said:

Vine Street  A major east west road through the center of phila 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTUsaQwL98Q/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=7419923e-5480-4246-b83e-6d4601465b35

The Vine Street Expressway photos and videos are the most amazing to me. That water has to be at least 12-14' deep in some areas.

The pictures and videos of the Schulykill River from NW of Philly through downtown are just insane. I lived there for a couple of years in the 90's and I could never even imagine that type of flooding that they saw. It is also much more built up along there than it was 20 years ago.

[drexelkathy]

The tornado that spun out of the remnants of Ida decimated the neighborhoods around us.  One that was either an F3 or an F4 missed our house by less than 1/2 a mile and just shredded through Mullica Hill.  Including the largest dairy farm in NJ.

[Maestrobjwa]

1 hour ago, drexelkathy said:

The tornado that spun out of the remnants of Ida decimated the neighborhoods around us.  One that was either an F3 or an F4 missed our house by less than 1/2 a mile and just shredded through Mullica Hill.  Including the largest dairy farm in NJ.

That is some crazy stuff...but I'm glad your house was spared though! Mercy...

[sojitodd]

So it looks like nearly 60 directly related storm fatalities. Who would have thought that about 75% of those would happen in the Northeast? I think this storm has already topped 50 billion in damage as well.

 

Maybe the extreme flooding caught so many people off guard because there had just been an extreme flooding event two weeks ago, with "records" being broken and all, and the flash flooding was bad but you did not have the fatalities? It would be understandable for people to think that it would not be as bad as what had just happened, and that even if it came close, again there would be damage but nothing like what actually happened? Nobody thought that the new 1 hour rainfall record in Central Park would be shattered by another storm just two weeks later-nobody was thinking that could happen.

 

Just really bad timing- a horrible flooding tropical system, and then just a couple weeks later, and even worse system. 

[Windspeed]

So it looks like nearly 60 directly related storm fatalities. Who would have thought that about 75% of those would happen in the Northeast? I think this storm has already topped 50 billion in damage as well.
 
Maybe the extreme flooding caught so many people off guard because there had just been an extreme flooding event two weeks ago, with "records" being broken and all, and the flash flooding was bad but you did not have the fatalities? It would be understandable for people to think that it would not be as bad as what had just happened, and that even if it came close, again there would be damage but nothing like what actually happened? Nobody thought that the new 1 hour rainfall record in Central Park would be shattered by another storm just two weeks later-nobody was thinking that could happen.
 
Just really bad timing- a horrible flooding tropical system, and then just a couple weeks later, and even worse system. 

Ida, though not as intense a hurricane, reminded me a lot of Camille in both track and extreme inland flooding far away from landfall. Sometimes these TC setups over the ECONUS can lead to much greater loss of life than the initial impact at landfall.

[Windspeed]

Ugh..

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 9/3/2021 at 12:18 PM, Windspeed said:

On 9/3/2021 at 12:08 PM, sojitodd said:

So it looks like nearly 60 directly related storm fatalities. Who would have thought that about 75% of those would happen in the Northeast? I think this storm has already topped 50 billion in damage as well.
 
Maybe the extreme flooding caught so many people off guard because there had just been an extreme flooding event two weeks ago, with "records" being broken and all, and the flash flooding was bad but you did not have the fatalities? It would be understandable for people to think that it would not be as bad as what had just happened, and that even if it came close, again there would be damage but nothing like what actually happened? Nobody thought that the new 1 hour rainfall record in Central Park would be shattered by another storm just two weeks later-nobody was thinking that could happen.
 
Just really bad timing- a horrible flooding tropical system, and then just a couple weeks later, and even worse system. 

Ida, though not as intense a hurricane, reminded me a lot of Camille in both track and extreme inland flooding far away from landfall. Sometimes these TC setups over the ECONUS can lead to much greater loss of life than the initial impact at landfall.

Yea, Camille was def. a solid analog.

[NorthHillsWx]

For anyone who wants to see what high-end hurricane damage looks like. Reminiscent of Mexico Beach after Michael. 

[LawdogGRNJ]

A lot of comments are pointing to Henri, as the sole contributor to the wet conditions in the tri-state area prior to Ida.  In reality, it was the just the last in a series of flooding rain events leading up to Ida. July 2021 was the 8th wettest on record for NJ.  Rutgers has a great write-up on it recapping each event.  You can find it here: https://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/?section=menu&target=jul21

The region was already very wet, Henri just kept the party rolling.

 

[Windspeed]

[Windspeed]

I think it is becoming pretty obvious here that the inner eyewall of Ida was very intense and clearly upper Cat 4 intensity. Was it as intense as Michael? No. But this particular gust was definitely supportive of 150+ sustained at the surface. It is really just a matter of luck that Ida's inner eyewall did not strike a populated community at landfall.

[Floydbuster]

1 hour ago, Windspeed said:

I think it is becoming pretty obvious here that the inner eyewall of Ida was very intense and clearly upper Cat 4 intensity. Was it as intense as Michael? No. But this particular gust was definitely supportive of 150+ sustained at the surface. It is really just a matter of luck that Ida's inner eyewall did not strike a populated community at landfall.

Yeah. I'm guessing the 150 mph seems pretty right now. You can have ridiculous gusts with a 150 mph storm. Look at Charley in 2004.

[NorthHillsWx]

6 hours ago, Windspeed said:

I think it is becoming pretty obvious here that the inner eyewall of Ida was very intense and clearly upper Cat 4 intensity. Was it as intense as Michael? No. But this particular gust was definitely supportive of 150+ sustained at the surface. It is really just a matter of luck that Ida's inner eyewall did not strike a populated community at landfall.

What’s amazing looking at the extreme damage in grand isle and is that the town itself never actually got into the inner eyewall. It was left kind of in the moat between the concentric eyewalls

[Normandy Ho]

From what I remember Grand Isle did get into the eyewall....Port Fourchoun was in the middle of the eye and Grand Isle is a few miles east of that location.  Its fairly likely Grande Isle received the worst winds in Ida

[ncforecaster89]

As I’ve been discussing on Twitter, it’s important to recognize that the Port Fourchon measurement was an instantaneous gust and not representative of the standard three-second value.  It’s just not simply the fact that it was also measured above 30 m height.  
 

Moreover, we have no idea as to the capability of said anemometer to accurately record wind speeds at such high velocities.  Some might recall the 212 mph observation during hurricane Andrew that was subsequently revised to 177 mph after tunnel testing of that particular model. 
 

These important points aren’t to minimize the fact hurricane Ida was most certainly a high-end Cat 4 at landfall, but rather to view these elevated and instantaneous wind gust measurements in their proper context.  

All the collective data is supportive of the operational landfall intensity of 130 kt.  At its peak (roughly 3.5 hours preceding landfall), I’d argue for 135 kt…based mainly on the 148 kt 700 mb FLWs measured by Recon.  

[Normandy Ho]

Instantaneous gust or not that still a ridiculous observation.  And what exactly is the definition of instantaneous (1-second long?)? I don't know why but since you claimed you saw stronger winds than Josh did in Dorian I always view your posts as angling to keep Michael greater than "x".

[ncforecaster89]

13 hours ago, Normandy said:

Instantaneous gust or not that still a ridiculous observation.  And what exactly is the definition of instantaneous (1-second long?)? I don't know why but since you claimed you saw stronger winds than Josh did in Dorian I always view your posts as angling to keep Michael greater than "x".

First of all, I’m a meteorologist first and foremost…and a chaser/weather enthusiast, second.  This means I’m far more concerned with the accuracy of scientific data than anything else. 
 

Your ignorant assumption that I give two cents about supposedly “angling to keep Michael greater than x” has zero merit!  
 

As for Dorian, I’ve already given my unbiased, wholly objective scientific opinion (has nothing whatsoever to do with me) as to why I still believe the winds in Michael (at the west end of MX Beach) were just a little stronger than what anyone experienced in Marsh Harbor.  It’s not just simply the video evidence (as it’s virtually impossible to accurately compare wind speeds at such extreme velocities), but also the fact that the strongest winds of Dorian remained well N of that area, and offshore, thankfully.  
 

Despite your false presuppositions, I genuinely could care less if someone records stronger winds on video than myself.  Why would I?  I’m not that kind of narcissistic, immature, attention-seeking individual…but nice try to discredit my well-reasoned viewpoint.  
 

There will be many far more intense tropical cyclones in the WPAC, for example, that I’m sure one day someone will capture even stronger winds than I saw in Michael.  It certainly won’t be me, because I have no interest whatsoever in chasing TCs outside the U.S. mainland.  For me, I don’t chase hurricanes to bring attention to myself, but rather to share that experience with others.  How many selfie’s have you ever seen of me?   Furthermore, I stay behind at least 1-2 days following each intercept to help in the cleanup…not rushing to get out of the area to showcase the footage I captured.  I bring these things up simply to highlight how misguided and ignorant your mischaracterization of me and my motives truly are…not to begrudge other chasers who may choose to do things differently.  
 

Back to Ida, “instantaneous” wind gusts are exactly that; they aren’t even of 1 second duration.  As I stated in the post you found so objectionable, those wind gusts should be viewed in their proper context.  Instead, I keep reading posts all over social media wrongly assuming these measurements correspond to a category-five MSW at 10 m.  That aside, we can agree that it’s an impressive recorded value, regardless.