Ike update [nothing good]

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In a message dated 9/11/2008 15:05:50 Central Daylight Time,

jimmnn@... writes:

For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3

hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5

storm. Dr. came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge

damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale

ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this

scale (Figure 2). At 9:30am EDT this morning, Ike earned a 5.6 on this

scale, the highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40

years.

Interestingly enough, this proposal was first put out in 2006, but the only

reference I can find to it is a poster from a conference in April of that

year:

_http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/seminar/Fliers/April_18_2006.html_

(http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/seminar/Fliers/April_18_2006.html)

does sound good, just wish I could find more on it.

ck

S. Krin, DO FAAFP

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[Guest guest]

From Dr Jeff Masters blog at the Weather Underground

Ike is now larger than Katrina was, both in its radius of tropical storm

force winds--275 miles--and in it radius of hurricane force winds--115

miles. For comparison, Katrina's tropical storm and hurricane force winds

extended out 230 and 105 miles, respectively. Ike's huge wind field has put

an extraordinarily large volume of ocean water in motion. When this swirling

column of water hits the shallow waters of the Continental Shelf, it will be

be forced up into a large storm surge which will probably rival the massive

storm surge of Hurricane Carla of 1961.

The amount of water Ike has put in motion is about 50% greater than what

Katrina did, and thus we can expect Ike's storm surge damage will be similar

to or greater than Katrina's. The way we can estimate this damage potential

is to compute the total energy of Ike's surface winds (kinetic energy). To

do this, we must look at how strong the winds are, and factor in the areal

coverage of these winds. Thus, we compute the Integrated Kinetic Energy

(IKE) by squaring the velocity of the wind and summing over all regions of

the hurricane with tropical storm force winds or higher. This " Integrated

Kinetic Energy " was recently proposed by Dr. Mark of NOAA's Hurricane

Research Division as a better measure of the destructive power of a

hurricane's storm surge than the usual Category 1-5 Saffir-Simpson scale.

For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3

hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5

storm. Dr. came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge

damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale

ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this

scale (Figure 2). At 9:30am EDT this morning, Ike earned a 5.6 on this

scale, the highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40

years.