Katrina Anniversary

I will probably share some more thoughts on the 5-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in the coming days. I was an on-air meteorologist at WTVA, the NBC affiliate in Tupelo, MS at the time. Katrina was a mere two weeks before I started at News 14 Carolina.

I will never forget watching the explosive strengthening of Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico that weekend. It was an awe-inspiring as well as gut-sinking process to behold for me personally. I had a strong feeling that this was, in fact, going to be the catastrophic event for New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf coast that our meteorology professors back in college had taught us to look for. I just remember the distinct feeling I had that this was going to be a tremendous disaster. I remember getting increasingly angry as evacuation orders along the Golf coast continued to be delayed. All of the ingredients were there for a colossal disaster.

I handled all of the television weathercasts that weekend....in fact, I think I was given nearly 5 minutes (!) for my weathercast on the 10pm Sunday evening show as Katrina was nearing landfall. I still have the tape of my weathercast that evening....I would like to get it up on youtube for anybody that is interested.

At any rate, I will never in my life forget reading the so-called "Doomsday Statement" put out by the National Weather Service in New Orleans. Here is a link to that weather statement.

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Sunday morning....

Out in the eastern Atlantic, Tropical Depression 6 formed late Saturday. This is the system off of Africa I discussed for much of the previous week in the tropical updates on News 14 and in my daily discussion and videos.

The system will likely steadily intensify, and should become a pretty decent hurricane. The general consensus amongst the modeling remains that this will bend northward in the Atlantic a bit, but the longer-range GFS and European wind up bending it back a little westward, which would result in it taking an eventual track that leads to some gnashing of teeth around the US East coast by early September. But lots of time between now and then.

On another note, I am on vacation this week, and I will return to the weather office Monday, August 30. This is my week of 'radio silence,' meaning this is the week I 'unplug' from the computer, television, phone, etc.....this is a real re-charge of the batteries for me.

Everyone have a wonderful week, and I will probably be plugged back in enough to make some comments or posts in some capacity by next weekend.

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