Aug 27, 2020 03:06 AM
https://www.wired.com/story/hurricane-la...urvivable/
INTRO: Having strengthened with astonishing speed into a Category 4 storm Wednesday, Hurricane Laura will make landfall in Texas and Louisiana sometime early Thursday morning. With the landfall comes a dreaded storm surge—a rise in water level generated by a storm—that scientists say could spread seawater up to 30 miles inland, an inundation the National Hurricane Center just called “unsurvivable.”
The surge will be particularly dangerous along the coast, but it will remain a threat as the water moves inland. “You have very large currents, very large and dangerous waves pretty far inland along the immediate coastline,” says Brian Zachry, Joint Hurricane Testbed director at the National Hurricane Center. “And if you’re talking about a surge of 15 to 20 feet with very large waves, you just can’t survive that.”
“Even if you go inland,” Zachry adds, “as water gets over the tops of banks of rivers and other estuaries and such, that water can also have some velocity to it. As you see in flash flooding from rainfall, you can get swept away in that.”
For context, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 storm, had an 18- to 23-foot storm surge. “This storm looks like it will be comparable as far as the levels of storm surge that we're seeing,” says Mike Chesterfield, a meteorologist at the Weather Channel... (MORE - details)
INTRO: Having strengthened with astonishing speed into a Category 4 storm Wednesday, Hurricane Laura will make landfall in Texas and Louisiana sometime early Thursday morning. With the landfall comes a dreaded storm surge—a rise in water level generated by a storm—that scientists say could spread seawater up to 30 miles inland, an inundation the National Hurricane Center just called “unsurvivable.”
The surge will be particularly dangerous along the coast, but it will remain a threat as the water moves inland. “You have very large currents, very large and dangerous waves pretty far inland along the immediate coastline,” says Brian Zachry, Joint Hurricane Testbed director at the National Hurricane Center. “And if you’re talking about a surge of 15 to 20 feet with very large waves, you just can’t survive that.”
“Even if you go inland,” Zachry adds, “as water gets over the tops of banks of rivers and other estuaries and such, that water can also have some velocity to it. As you see in flash flooding from rainfall, you can get swept away in that.”
For context, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 storm, had an 18- to 23-foot storm surge. “This storm looks like it will be comparable as far as the levels of storm surge that we're seeing,” says Mike Chesterfield, a meteorologist at the Weather Channel... (MORE - details)