Hurricane Katrina and her Dangerous Sisters: A Look Back

Hurricane Katrina on August 28, 2005  (Source: NOAA)

This week’s 10^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s infamous landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast has dominated news headlines this week.  Hurricane Katrina was the second of four Category 5 hurricanes to develop during the record-setting 2005 season.  Fortunately, it weakened slightly to a Category 3 hurricane before making landfall.  However, the size and intensity of the storm which contributed to a catastrophic storm surge that was more characteristic of a Category 5 storm (which it was while over the open Gulf of Mexico), than the Category 3 storm it was at landfall. 

 

Katrina surpassed Hurricane Andrew as being the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, causing an estimated $108 billion in damages.  Katrina was also the deadliest U.S. hurricane (having claimed nearly 1,800 lives) since the 1928 hurricane that devastated the Lake Okeechobee area in southern Florida, which claimed 2,500 lives.  The last “major” hurricane (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale) to make landfall in the United States came in October 2005 when Hurricane Wilma made landfall as a Category 3 along the southwest coast of Florida.

I recently wrote about the busier-than-average 17 year period in the tropical Atlantic (from 1995 through 2012), when there were a series of significant storms that impacted the East Coast in late August and September.  For example, Hurricane Fran made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in North Carolina on September 6, 1996.  It caused significant flooding and damage across much of the Mid-Atlantic Region with an estimated damage amount of $3.2 billion.

This week was also the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Irene’s landfall in the eastern United States.  It brought the DC Metro Region appreciable rainfall and high winds that made August 2011 the wettest August in the Nation’s Capital since 1967.  Ironically, this month has been one of the driest Augusts in recent memory.  

Currently, there are no active tropical storms or hurricanes anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean since Tropical Storm Erika dissipated this morning.  That means no short-term relief is likely from the recent dry weather pattern for the DC Metro Region.