Katrina may seem like the last word in hurricanes, but there is a very
real possibility that another major hurricane may hit New Orleans or
some other portion of the 200-mile coastline devastated by Katrina in
the weeks to come.
HARAZ N. GHANBARI / AP
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broken levee wall along with several sand bags weighing nearly
7,000 pounds are seen from the air on Saturday..
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"We're not out of the woods yet," said Susan Cutter, director of the
University of South Carolina Hazards Research Laboratory. "We're not
even in the height of hurricane season."
A forecast released Friday by meteorologists at Colorado State
University calls for six more hurricanes by the time the hurricane
season ends on Nov. 30, three of them Category 3 or above. On average,
about one major hurricane in three makes landfall in the United States.
"We expect that by the time the 2005 hurricane season is over, we will
witness tropical cyclone activity at near record levels," the Colorado
State meteorologists wrote.
So far there have been four hurricanes this year - Katrina, Irene, Emily
and Dennis, a Category 3 storm that caused more than $1 billion in
damage to the Florida panhandle in July. There have been nine tropical
storms.
That puts this season's tropical cyclone activity to date above the
average for an entire year, the Colorado State forecast noted. In a more
normal year, Mother Nature has produced about a third of her annual
allotment of hurricanes and tropical storms by this point in the season.
No major storms currently threaten the U.S. coastline. The latest report
from the National Weather Service mentions only Tropical Storm Maria.
"Maria could be near hurricane strength by Sunday," said Jack Beven, a
meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The storm is not currently expected to reach the U.S. mainland.
The number and intensity of hurricanes is largely determined by water
temperatures at the sea surface. This year the waters of the tropical
Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are about as warm as they ever
get.
If a major hurricane were to make landfall somewhere on the U.S. coast
in the next two months, with the situation in Louisiana and Mississippi
still demanding such a large portion of the nation's emergency
management resources, mounting another relief effort would certainly be
more difficult than usual. But as Florida demonstrated when four
hurricanes passed through the state in seven weeks last year, repeated
storms are not necessarily unmanageable.
"It would be a challenge, but I don't think it would be catastrophic,"
Cutter said.
And in many respects another hurricane in the area already devastated by
Katrina would only add insult to injury.
"It sounds horrible, but it may not be that bad," Cutter said. "The sad
thing is that most of the damage has already been done."
But in New Orleans itself, any violent weather threatens to expand the
gaping holes that Katrina opened in the city's flood control
infrastructure.
"Even a tropical storm I think would wreak havoc," said Joannes
Westerink, a civil engineer at the University of Notre Dame who produces
computer simulations of storm surges for the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other clients.
Even the daily tidal flows of Lake Pontchartrain threaten to aggravate
the conditions left by Hurricane Katrina, he said.
Westerink said he and his colleagues have started working on simulations
depicting the effects of a hurricane on the New Orleans levee system in
its current state. They expect to have a complete picture in a few days
of what another hurricane could do to the city.
New Orleans also remains vulnerable to a Mississippi River flood brought
on by heavy rains upstream. But the usual flooding season for the river
is spring and early summer.
