Weather

It was a familiar scene for many in New Orleans East, part of the city’s 9th ward.

“As helicopters hovered overhead and emergency response vehicles streamed into neighborhoods, it reminded them of [Hurricane] Katrina,” reported Tegan Wendland of member station WWNO in New Orleans. “The area was hit hard by that storm, and now many families will have to rebuild again.”

“This house looks like it belongs in a third-world country somewhere. If you was to walk through and walk around, you would think a bomb went off,” Terry Eubanks told Wendland, standing outside her apartment.

Eubanks was at the nail salon when the storm hit. Her apartment was completely destroyed.

Officials said at least seven tornadoes touched down in the state on Tuesday, the biggest of which hit New Orleans East. The Times-Picayune newspaper created this map.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said Tuesday that more than two dozen people had been injured in the city, with additional injuries reported in other parts of southeastern Louisiana.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency on Tuesday. After an aerial tour over the affected area, he told reporters he was “even more impressed that so few people were injured and there was no loss of life.”

The National Guard is on the ground in the eastern part of New Orleans, helping clear roads of debris, prevent looting and protect returning residents from downed power lines, Maj. Gen. Glenn Curtis told reporters.

Emergency responders were going house to house on some streets, checking for people who need help and marking homes with spray-painted x’s and o’s to show they had been searched.

Cathy McGraw’s home was badly damaged, she told the Times-Picayune. She spent Tuesday night at a Red Cross shelter at a local recreation center and said she planned to return there on Wednesday night.

“Ain’t got nowhere else to go,” McGraw told the newspaper.

Speaking to WWNO, Adriann Mitchell described the damage to her elderly parents’ home.

“The ceiling is caved in. The front window is out. And there’s just water all over,” she said. “It’s just a mess.”

Landrieu said at a news conference Tuesday that the affected area encompassed about 5,000 properties, and that the city’s emergency workers would transition from rescue to recovery operations going into Wednesday.

“There are a lot of families that lost everything,” he said.

As helicopters moved overhead on Tuesday, resident John Spears told the Times-Picayune he was not impressed with the city’s immediate response.

“The city is a day late and a dollar short,” he told the newspaper. “They should have people out here picking up debris right now.”

In addition to the tornado that damaged New Orleans, tornadoes also touched down in Livingston Parish, near Baton Rouge, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and near four other southeastern Louisiana communities.

National Weather Service Forecaster Mike Efferson told WWNO that big storms are common in the South this time of year.

“It’s not extremely unusual,” he explained.

“The unusualness is just the strength of the tornadoes. We usually don’t get a lot of very strong tornadoes, but it looks like this one produced a lot of damage over a large area.”

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The wind chill dropped to minus 77 in Arctic Village last week. That’s the coldest wind chill recorded this winter in a populated spot in Alaska. Seventy-seven below may sound bitterly cold, but climatologist Brian Brettschneider says its not even close to record territory.

“The record in Alaska, and for any populated place is -100 and that occurred in January 1989, in McGrath” he said.

The National Weather Service calculates wind chill by combining apparent — or actual — air temperature and wind speed. In January 1989 chills as low as minus 120 were registered on the North Slope.

“That’s kind of the low water mark of wind chills,” said Brettschneider, but in 2001 the National Weather Service (NWS) changed the wind chill formula and those temps on the new scale are closer to minus 80 or minus 90.

“So cold,” he said, “but not as cold as what some people might recall if they were around 25 years ago.”

Brettschneider explains that the original wind chill formula was based on experiments at Antarctic research stations, where researchers would see how long it took water to freeze on top of their huts.

“They determined that over the years that really wasn’t the best way to estimate what the apparent temperature is for what people experience,” he said.

The new formula the NWS started to use in 2001 yields a much better representation of the combined effect of the temperature and the wind.

“So the net effect of that is with high wind speed events, there’s a diminishing return on wind chill,” he said. “So a 30-mph wind doesn’t get you much more wind chill than a 20-mph wind. And also at low, low temperatures, even a small wind really jumps the wind chill value up.

In the new system, actual temperatures are more important than wind in calculating wind chill. Previously a 5-mph increase in wind speed would drop the temperature dramatically.

“Now that levels out quite a bit more, with a focus on the first few miles per hour of the wind speed,” he said. “So it’s the temperature that becomes the dominant player in the new wind chill formula.”

Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist in Anchorage who closely tracks Alaska climate data and trends. Alaska’s Energy Desk is checking in with him regularly as part of the segment, Ask a Climatologist.

Temperatures around Kodiak dropped for a while, but have recently risen again, and lakes may not be as hockey-ready as they once were.

That means people need to exercise caution before they venture onto seemingly frozen bodies of water.

Dicky Saltonstall, a member of Kodiak Island Search and Rescue, said there are pretty strong sheets of ice on the lakes. He says the recent snow and rain could contribute to that if the slush on the surface freezes and bonds with the ice beneath it.

“Again, though, typically here in Kodiak, the lakes are really shallow, and there’s a lot of gas bubbles that come up underneath the ice, and those create open holes,” he said. “Even in many cases like on Buskin Lake there are open holes created by the gas that is bubbling up ’cause it keeps the water moving, and maybe it’s a little bit warmer too, so it just doesn’t freeze as easily.”

Springs of water may also weaken the ice, and just because the lake is thick in one area, that doesn’t ensure that it’s secure throughout, Saltonstall said.

If a person has the urge to go out on a lake, they need to trust their instincts, he said. Don’t risk it if it seems unsafe.

And always bring ice picks, little handles with spikes, he said. That’ll be key if a person falls through the ice.

“You swim out of the ice or swim out of the water and onto the ice. You want to be horizontal. Envision a table. If you can be horizontal and swim onto the surface of the table and use the picks to assist yourself, to pull yourself horizontally, you’ll get onto that table. If you press down on the edge of the table and the table’s not very strong, you’ll just break it, and it’ll keep breaking around you.”

Saltonstall said a person should roll and try to distribute their weight across the ice so that they don’t put stress on any one point on the surface.

In addition to wearing picks, he advises people to go in pairs or groups and bring a line they can throw to their friends in the case of an accident.

A new tsunami survival option has come to the Pacific Northwest coast.

It involves climbing into a spherical aluminum pod for what is sure to be the ride of your life.

The first U.S. buyer of this technology resides in Ocean Park, Washington.

Jeanne Johnson just recently moved from the Seattle area to what she calls her “dream home” at the beach, about midway up the sandy, flat Long Beach Peninsula.

“When I decided to move to the ocean into a tsunami zone I felt like I should prepare,” Johnson said.

Her tsunami evacuation options are not good.

She could make a run for it, but this Microsoft executive doubts she could reach the distant high ground in the short time between the end of the shaking of a great earthquake and incoming tsunami waves.

“People panic and I don’t want to be caught in the panic,” Johnson said.

A bit of internet research led her to a new option: a survival capsule — a bright orange, high-strength floating metal ball.

She has taken delivery and is now deciding whether to tether her capsule in her herb garden or keep it in the garage. In any case, Johnson wants her dog to join her if and when “the Big One” comes.

“My model is big enough for two people to be buckled in like a pilot’s seat,” Johnson said.

The aircraft-grade aluminum sphere is about 4 1/2 feet in diameter.

The sphere looks a little bit like an astronaut capsule, with a round marine door and two tiny portholes.

The survival capsule delivered to Johnson came equipped with twin air tanks inside in case the capsule is pinned underwater for a time or is surrounded by burning debris.

The aluminum shell of the capsule has a ceramic blanket interior lining to protect against the heat of fire on the outside.

A welded tubular framework inside braces the exterior shell.

There are drinking water bladders in the bottom of the capsule and a GPS locator beacon in the event the capsule goes adrift.

“I have friends who say, ‘Oh my God, wouldn’t it be claustrophobic? How can you stand it?’” Johnson said. “All I can think is, what’s my option? To drown? I would rather be in that ball for the ride of my life and maintain my life.”

Johnson is the first domestic customer of a startup called Survival Capsule, based near Seattle.

Company president Julian Sharpe said he got the idea for the product lying awake one night while weekending in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

“I thought, ‘Well, what happens now if a tsunami comes?’” Sharpe said.

The aerospace engineer had a brainstorm.

“I just thought it’s going to be a disaster because I’ve got four sleeping kids,” Sharpe said. “If it comes at night, the lights are going to be out. You don’t necessarily know where you’re going. You can’t see the wave, how far it is. So I thought it would be great if I could design something to throw the family in and ride it out. That’s where it all started.”

Sharpe’s company’s initial sales have been to Japanese customers — eight capsule kits so far.

He anticipates local governments in Japan could become a major customer base along with private sales along the U.S. West Coast, Gulf Coast and East Coast.

“The target customer is the person who lives on the ocean who cannot vertically or horizontally evacuate,” Sharpe said.

That’s potentially a lot of people as long as they’re willing to pay the price. Sharpe said the two-person survival capsule starts at $13,500. A four-person model lists for $17,500. Six, eight and 10-person models are for sale as well.

Sharpe said he aspires to bring the price down through economies of scale when orders increase.

“We hope that people will see the value of this product,” Sharpe said. “It’s not a gizmo or a toy. It’s a life insurance policy. It’s really designed to give people who live in coastal communities peace of mind.”

Sharpe and Johnson hope the government will eventually subsidize private purchases of the survival capsules as an extension of public spending on tsunami readiness projects such as the planned safe haven berm proposed for a field behind Long Beach Elementary School.

While the inspiration for the product was tsunami survival, Sharpe said his company’s capsules are now drawing additional interest from coastal residents worried about hurricanes.

“Rather than evacuate from hurricanes and be 200 miles away while the hurricane decides it wants to go in a different direction leaving their home vulnerable — or business vulnerable — to looting, they want to stay at home and have a tsunami capsule as a last line of defense,” Sharpe said.

Residents who swung by Long Beach City Hall earlier to look at plans for a different evacuation option had mixed reactions to the tsunami capsule idea.

Jane Bena shivered at the prospect of sheltering inside while being battered by tsunami debris.

“I would hate to be bounced around in that,” Bena said. “I’m too old. I’m 80 years old. I don’t know that I would care to survive a tsunami.”

The city of Long Beach, Washington, is using grant money to design an armored, man-made hill that could be used as a tsunami evacuation platform for at least 850 people.

Bena favored building this, but as you maybe can tell she’s fatalistic about her own chances.

The ingredients for picture perfect snowflakes came together in Southcentral Alaska this past weekend. Climatologist Brian Brettschneider says the snowflakes that fell in were especially large and piled up quickly.

“There’s a couple ways you can get big snowflakes,” said Brettschneider. “You can have really wet snow where the flakes clump together, and when that falls, it really compresses. But we had a situation where the whole thermal profile of the lowest, say, 10,000 feet of the atmosphere was right in a sweet spot to promote large snowflake growth. That’s called the dendritic growth zone and it lets the arms, if you will, of the snowflakes get really, really big and it traps lots of air in it. So its light, low density, snow that really piles up quickly.”

He didn’t look at the flakes under a microscope. He didn’t need to: the flakes were that big. And the snow was really dry.

“And when you melt it all out, normally in a typical snowfall about 12 inches of snow would equal one inch of melted water,” he said. “In this case, at the Anchorage National Weather Service office, 25 or 30 inches of snow equaled an inch of water — so very, very dry, light snow that piles up quickly.”

If conditions are right, fluffy snow like this can occur in any part of the state. Anchorage, at least this week, was the sweet spot in the state.

“The farther north you go where its really, really cold, Fairbanks and northward, typically the atmospheric profile is too cold to promote that large growth, so usually you don’t get those big dry snowflake ratios,” he said.

In the Southeast where it’s typically warmer, the wet snow clumps together and doesn’t pile up in the same way.

“I think most people, especially if you have to shovel a driveway, appreciate the lighter, fluffier snow that’s easier to move around and doesn’t cause as many aches and pains,” Brettschneider said.

Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist in Anchorage who closely tracks Alaska climate data and trends. Alaska’s Energy Desk is checking in with him regularly as part of the segment, Ask a Climatologist.

Multiple destructive storm systems damaged property and killed at least 19 people over the weekend, and continued to batter much of the U.S. with rain, snow and wind today.

All 19 reported deaths were in the South, where apparent tornadoes ripped through towns over the weekend, damaging and destroying buildings in multiple states.

“Trailers are just flat, just laid on top of people,” Debbie Van Brackel, a volunteer EMT in Adel, Ga., told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday. “You need a bulldozer to pull it off. Trailers are upside down.”

The newspaper reported that 15 people died in the southern part of the state, including seven people in a mobile home community in Adel and four people in the town of Albany, Ga.

Patrick Marsh of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., told The Associated Press that 39 possible tornadoes were reported in the Southeast over the weekend. Of those, most were reported in Georgia.

The governors of Mississippi and Georgia both declared states of emergency for portions of their states where the destruction was most profound.

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency officials confirmed that an EF3 tornado struck three counties in the state, killing four people and injuring more than 50 in Forrest County, according to The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson.

All four fatalities were in the town of Hattiesburg, the paper reported.

In Palm Beach County, Fla., where the Sun Sentinel reported the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning overnight, the school district’s Twitter account announced that one of the county’s high schools would be closed Monday due to “apparent tornado damage.” The NWS warned of winds as strong as 55 miles per hour on Monday morning.

Also over the weekend, a separate rainstorm soaked Los Angeles and surrounding communities in Southern California. On Monday morning, a National Weather Service flash flood watch was still in effect for Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

“Coastal areas of Los Angeles County were among the hardest hit, with Long Beach Airport setting a new all-time rainfall record, 3.87 inches,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “The intense rain was too much for local roads. Sunday afternoon, both the 110 Freeway in Carson and the 710 Freeway in Long Beach were shutdown due to extreme flooding that left cars stranded like islands in a lake.”

“Today was very intense,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brett Albright told the Times on Sunday. “It’s not a normal event.”

The rain eroded hillsides, some them already weakened by wildfires, causing multiple mudslides. The Times noted that multiple cities had issued evacuation orders for neighborhoods near recent burns, including in Duarte, Santa Clarita and parts of hilly Santa Barbara County north of Los Angeles.

A hill that broke away in Sierra County, Calif., buried most of a road, according to Caltrans, the state’s transportation agency. In Topanga Canyon north of Los Angeles, falling debris closed the road through the canyon on Sunday.

At higher elevations, the precipitation fell as snow, closing Interstate 80 completely for a period overnight.

And in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, another storm was dumping rain and snow and battering coastal cities with wind on Monday. In New York City, “A high–wind warning is in effect until Tuesday, and with up to four inches of rain possible over the next couple of days, a flood watch and coastal flood advisory will take effect this afternoon,” The New York Times reported Monday.

The National Weather Service warned of gusts up to 45 miles per hour for parts of Maryland, including Baltimore, and snow in the western part of the state all week.

A winter storm warning is in effect for parts of central New York state and Pennsylvania until midday Tuesday, and the National Weather Service warned roads would be “very dangerous,” asking residents in the affected areas to travel only in emergencies. Around State College, Pa., the NWS predicted between 6 and 10 inches of snow.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.