Really interesting. Is there a source for the pictures and data to share with friends?
I do not have a good source for that particular picture, but here are lots of links for you:
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/04/hurricane-helene-deadliest-us-storms-death-toll
Are these pictures even on the same zoom level?
They are not, but I think the main focus is on how obscenely tall Helene was. There’s many parts of the US that weren’t prepared because they didn’t think it would reach them
We even got some excessive wind in Chicagoland, which was obviously from the hurricane, because it was coming from the east. Normally, the wind here comes from the west.
Reminds me of youtuber LGR’s latest video, he didn’t prepare much because the storms don’t normally reach that far inland, and unfortunately he had a lot of his collection damaged because 2 massive trees sliced his house clean in half. Makes me think that the midwest will soon get more populated due to its position away from coastlines
There were warnings for Georgia and the southern Appalachia, but the storm moved so much faster at the end and carried so much water inland. The ability to hold more water in the atmosphere has been an ongoing concern from climate scientists, and this is a clear example of how it can lead to disaster.
Wasn’t a big part of Katrina’s destruction from the hurricane effectively stalling over the southern US which caused prolonged and massive local damage?
Not trying to discount either event, mostly worried about the time we get a stalled Helene sized hurricane
You are correct, they don’t appear to be. This one seems more accurate there, but the difference is still stark:
Helene looks like a thrice-divorced hurricane.
I think we’re just a few years away from the planetary cyclones in Day After Tomorrow.
It’s also good to remember that Katrina’s storm surge and the subsequent failure of the levees and flooding of the city is what was so damaging.
Besides the wind and rain the destruction of the levees took a huge toll on New Orleans.
Helene’s size shocked me but the storm surge for Katrina was unusually extreme. It was a well organized Category 5 and then weakened to a strong 3 right before landfall.
To compare with Helene, which was similar in terms of (east to west) diameter but covered much more area overall, with category 4 winds at landfall: the Weather Channel was making a big deal out of the 8ft storm surges. During Katrina, the Mississippi Gulf Coast had a 28 foot storm surge. (The Miss. Gulf Coast isn’t that geographically different from the Fla. big bend region but that plays a role too.)
Helene’s unusual movement speed kept it strong very far inland and caused massive issues in places that rarely see tropical weather. Harvey was the opposite: it stalled over Houston and dumped days of rain on a major metropolis.
I wish we could update the Saffir Simpson scale to something that takes into account more variables. There are other measurements but no storm is identical in terms of damage potential. A category 5 can not even make landfall whereas something like Hurricane Sandy was a category 1 (or equivalent since it wasn’t technically still a hurricane) when it hit NYC and caused massive damage and flooded subway systems. Sometimes, a storm hitting a place that isn’t used to them can knock over all the trees or flood rivers while a similar storm would be nothing to Miami or New Orleans.
Helene is more deadly than Katrina if you don’t count the deaths after the boat broke the levee that was well beyond its lifespan in New Orleans, which you shouldn’t since that was a 100% fixable issue that was not taken care of.
We always say Katrina was a man-made disaster. I worry with climate change, that other places will be testing their infrastructure. Katrina should have been the canary in the coal mine and a lot of people just said, “Don’t live below sea level.” Old river damns can break just as easily as neglected levees.
It was definitely a man-made disaster when it came to New Orleans. I made this analogy to someone else: if lightning strikes a skyscraper and the skyscraper burns down and kills everyone inside due to a lack of a sprinkler system, is that really death by a natural cause? I would say it’s death by gross incompetence.
What surprised me most about Helene was the ground speed. I don’t remember seeing any hurricane make landfall in the US moving at over 20mph. As a casual observer I have anyways seen 12 mph as a quick storm and 6 mph as slow.
