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Pastimes : Hurricane and Severe Weather Tracking -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: redfish who wrote (3334)	9/5/2005 6:50:48 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26025

Coastal areas hit hard by Katrina remain under threat of more hurricanes this year By MATT CRENSON Associated Press 9/4/2005 Katrina may seem like the last word in hurricanes, but the possibility remains very real 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. "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 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. In addition to nine tropical storms, the year already has had four hurricanes - Katrina, Irene, Emily and Dennis, a Category 3 storm that caused more than $1 billion in damage to the Florida Panhandle in July. That puts this season's tropical cyclone activity to date above the average for an entire year, the Colorado State forecast noted. 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 today, 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 are 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. 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 if a major hurricane were to make landfall somewhere on the U.S. coast in the next two months. 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. buffalonews.com