Windswept_ The Story of Wind and Weather - Marq de Villiers [109]
The big question was—where would it hit the U.S. mainland first?
The Florida and Alabama emergency measures organizations wearily cranked up their evacuation procedures once again. There was the usual run on bottled water, portable generators, and sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood.
I had friends in New Orleans who were booking hotel rooms in Houston, just in case. New Orleans is a few feet below sea level, protected only by the fragile levees built to contain the Mississippi. The city hadn't had a direct hit from a Category 4 hurricane in living memory, never mind a Category 3—not, that is, until Katrina in 2003, which was a strong Category 4.
The technology exists to construct buildings capable of withstanding such hurricanes. But how do you rebuild—retrofit—New Orleans?
The Canadian Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth had been tracking the storm but had seen no need to issue public bulletins, either as warning or as reassurance. They were keeping on eye on Ivan, though. Hurricanes had done strange things before, and no doubt would again.
At five A.M. Eastern time on Tuesday September 14, Ivan had sustained winds of 160 miles an hour, once again making it a Category 3, but a Hurricane Hunters reconnaissance plane that penetrated the eye an hour earlier had measured a pressure of g24 millibars, slightly higher than before. The pilots reported that the eye was well defined with very cold convective tops, but Ivan was nevertheless expected to weaken before hitting the coast. The track forecast, hedged about with cautions as it was, nevertheless showed the landfall now missing Florida and coming ashore on the tiny stretch of Gulf coast owned by Alabama. New Orleans was still watchful—and my friends had indeed locked their apartments and decamped for Houston, laptops in hand. The resorts along the Mississippi coast were shutting down as their customers fled.
By the following morning, with Ivan still twenty-four hours from landfall on the U.S. mainland, the National Hurricane Center was issuing bulletins every few hours. At five A.M. the wind strength was 140 miles an hour, making it a Category 4, but nearing the category's lower threshold. All the models now agreed on the track—it was going to hit Alabama overnight or on Thursday morning. Satellite images showed the center was weakening, and pressure was up to g33 millibars.
A new note of caution was introduced at this time—once Ivan crossed over the coast, its steering currents were expected to collapse, and the storm could either stall entirely or wander erratically to the southern Appalachians, giving up its huge amounts of Caribbean and Gulf water in torrential downpours, with the consequent risk of flooding. The warning arc was extended inland—because of the storm's size and intensity, it was likely to still be a hurricane up to twelve hours after landfall, about 120 miles inland. That possibility—and the erratic wandering expected—caught the attention of weather people all along the eastern seaboard, all the way up to Dartmouth, where their scrutiny of the storm intensified.
In the hours before its landfall on the U.S. mainland, Ivan was once again penetrated by pilots from the Hurricane Hunters squadron. They reported that the southwestern quadrant of the eyewall had all but disappeared. Ivan was finally losing its potency.
But it was too late for the Alabama coast and its barrier islands. And it was too late for the Florida Panhandle, which once again, for the third time in a month, was battered by high winds and torrential rain.
Ivan was still generating winds of 130 miles an hour as it crossed the coast at two A.M. That made it a strong Category 3, just under the Category 4 threshold.
The northeastern Gulf landscape