Hurricane Katrina taught meteorologists a lesson

Five years ago, the Katrina Hurricane stroke the Gulf region with disastrous effects: it killed almost 2,000 people and destroyed the belongings of another 250,000.

The hurricane season comes every year in the summer on the Atlantic Ocean waters and it usually comes together with tropical depressions. So it was not an unusual thing that a tropical depression formed five years ago in the southeastern of Bahamas. As it moved to the west the storm got stronger changing from tropical depression to tropical storm to a hurricane named Katrina. Soon after, Katrina became a Category 5 hurricane, changing from a strong storm into a natural disaster that was going to destroy the Gulf of Mexico. On the 28^th of August 2005 the wind was blowing with the speed of 160 mph, causing landfalls  in Louisiana, and showing signs that this hurricane was going to became the worst natural disaster in the American history. The disaster stretched from Louisiana to Florida and destroyed New Orleans on the way with incalculable damages which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated as exceeding 125 billion dollars.

Dr. Mike Brennan, a senior hurricane specialist with NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, says that Katrina had been a very powerful storm, but there was nothing special about the way it formed. He says that every storm is different but every season there is the possibility that a hurricane appears in the Gulf of Mexico. The Katrina Hurricane started as Tropical Depression No.12 about 175 miles in the south east of Nassau, Bahamas on the 23^rd of august 2005. By the 24^th of August the storm evolved into Tropical Storm Katrina and moved to the center of Bahamas and a hurricane watch for the southeast of Florida was issued, followed a few hours later by a hurricane warning. One day later Katrina was declared a minimal Category 1 hurricane and was registered at a 15 miles distance from Fort Lauderdale and one hour and a half later it made landfall in Florida between Hallandale Beach and North Miami Beach and had a registered a wind speed of 80 mph.

Katrina’s winds decreased  at first while moving across the Florida peninsula, but intensified when the storm moved over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina brought with it damage and flooding and had killed 14 people by that time. From the Gulf Katrina moved north and because of an upper level anticyclone over the Gulf and of the warm sea temperatures on the 26^th of august it was declared a major hurricane. Brennan sais that it had all the favorable conditions to transform from a storm into the major hurricane. The NOAA’s National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning for Louisiana and the north-central Gulf region for the 27^th, and on the 28^th of August Katrina reached Category 5 status, blowing winds with a speed of 160 mph. The maximum speed of the winds reached nearly 175 mph and remained at that level for a few hours and the hurricane reached its peak with winds extending up to 105 miles from the center. The NOAA’s National Hurricane Center started issuing flooding warnings of 18 to 22 feet above normal levels.

The storm approached Louisiana during the night and had its center about 90 miles away of New Orleans in the morning of the 29^th of August. Winds decreased to 150 mph and NOAA buoy, which is  located about 50 miles east of the mouth of the Mississippi River reported waves 55 feet high, the highest level ever measured by a National Data Buoy Center device. Katrina was now a strong Category 3 storm. It weakened as it moved north and the next day, near Clarkesville, it became a tropical depression again. Katrina was the third deadliest hurricane since 1900, outdone only by the Galveston hurricane in 1900 that killed at least 8,000 people and by  Lake Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 that killed about 2,500 people. The Katrina death toll was 1,500 people in Louisiana and at least 238 in Mississippi. The lesson Katrina taught meteorologists was that they lacked the ability to predict rapid changes in intensity and storm structure.