What I don’t like about these graphics is there is no data source so you have to look it up to know how much to believe about what they say. So for those wondering, per Wikipedia:
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Helene was a Cat 4, its max diameter was between 400-450 miles, max wind speed of 140 mph is correct. Known fatalities so far > 227 and counting.
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Katrina was a Cat 5, 400 miles in diameter as shown, but with a max windspeed of 175 mph, not 125. For those too young to remember, Katrina was a very, very bad storm. So bad. Over 1392 fatalities (official estimate; exact number unknown). BTW Katrina also had a big tail/wing(?) stretching to the north when it hit land like what Helene had, but thinner since further west–but those don’t count as part of the measured diameter of the hurricane.
My opinion of this graphic: Hurricanes are getting worse because of climate change, but we don’t need to convince people of that by downplaying Katrina or making Helene look scarier–Helene is also very very bad. It’s all bad, folks.
Katrina photo:
Katrina was a man made disaster. It would not have taken a tenth of the lives it did if the levees had been maintained.
This infuriates me so much. I am sitting here like a dumbass saying that this storm is worse than Katrina. Like I know I should do research before being confident in what I know but how many small infographics like this do we digest and then regurgitate a political opinion based off of them
Worse is a hard metric to analyze when comparing 2 different storms. One may have higher winds. Another might dump more rain. Another might have brought a high storm surge to an area that couldn’t handle it. Another might come in kinda mild and just stall, battering one area for a long time. One storm might do massively more damage if it hits Atlanta vs. Miami. I’ll forgive people for getting a little hyperbolic when describing a storm that has personally impacted them. Storms may hit a broad region, but the impact of a storm is always hyper local.
According to wikipedia Katrina was only a cat 3 when it hit Louisiana. It did get up to a 5 at one point, but bot when it did most of it’s damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
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Are those images the same scale?
Not quite, the Helene one is between 25% and 50% more zoomed in based on what I can see of the bump of Louisiana and the shape of Cuba. Still a striking comparison even with that accounted for.
Edit: Oh wait, I misread the uncovered coast line on Cuba. I think that’s actually closer than I initially thought. They just have it panned and rotated a little.
Are these pictures even on the same zoom level?
You are correct, they don’t appear to be. This one seems more accurate there, but the difference is still stark:
I did one too. Top and bottom before I saw yours. Here it is as well to help with the scale. I overlaid them in Photoshop to help get the land the same but hell its nuts.
I was going to correct you on the comparison and I tried making my own scaled image … but I couldn’t because yours is a correct scale
I just couldn’t believe that Helene was that massive and widespread compared to Katrina which was known as a major event. wow
They are not, but I think thiemain focus is on how obscenely tall Helene was. There’s many parts of the US that weren’t prepared because they didn’t think it would reach them
We even got some excessive wind in Chicagoland, which was obviously from the hurricane, because it was coming from the east. Normally, the wind here comes from the west.
Reminds me of youtuber LGR’s latest video, he didn’t prepare much because the storms don’t normally reach that far inland, and unfortunately he had a lot of his collection damaged because 2 massive trees sliced his house clean in half. Makes me think that the midwest will soon get more populated due to its position away from coastlines
If you are ever fortunate enough to pay off your house DO NOT go without insurance because you can
In some parts of Australia you cannot insure your home any longer due to climate change.
Florida and California are getting like that in the US. The lawyers and public adjusters are contributing to the problem by suing and shaking down every insurance company that stays in the state. In California they are begging them to stay…
Parts of Massachusetts are like that as well. As far as I know, flood insurance basically no longer exists on Cape Cod.
Pretty much all home insurance doesn’t cover hurricane related damages if you’re on the east side of the US.
Makes me think that the midwest will soon get more populated due to its position away from coastlines
Unless they move near one of the great lakes or a big river, it will be unsustainable. Most areas without those get their water from underground aquifers, which are getting depleted already. These little towns and cities that dot the flyover states aren’t preparing for this at all.
Makes me think that the midwest will soon get more populated due to its position away from coastlines
We have our own shit show of extreme weather. For example, derechos (an oceanless, inland hurricane essentially) used to be rare. We’ve had 2 massive ones in the last 4 years. This summer alone there were hundreds of tornados hitting places that rarely ever see them. Hell, it’s god damn October and we’re still having ~90°F days, which hardly ever used to happen.
We don’t have winter in Chicagoland anymore. We have Spring, Summer, Fall, and Polar Vortex. Stays around 30-40 until mid January or early February and then get -20 for two weeks.
In nebraska here under a Red Flag warning and a high of 91 today
Hell, I think northern Nebraska had widespread, massive flooding a few years ago due to extreme weather causing one of the dams to fail. Wiped out several communities.
Texas had a derecho go from Central Texas to the coast, which is the opposite of how weather is supposed to work here.
Are you in Tennessee? Because that sounds like the last four years here.
Not super far from there (~6 hours), WNW Illinois.
We got one of those out of place tornadoes this year! My town had one set down basically in the middle. We lost so many huge old (50-150+ year old) trees because that just doesn’t happen here. And because it doesn’t happen here, and some of the trees were planted well before the roads were built (meaning a lot of the trees that came down were basically in the road, curbs built around them sort of thing), it really did a number on the infrastructure (to say nothing of the damage to homes and stuff).
But in addition to a random tornado, we’ve just had a ton more super strong wind/rain events that cause damage in the last few years. I honestly don’t blame my neighbors for taking down their big old trees rather than deal with the weather damage. (I disagree with it, but I understand it)
I wonder how deep inland hurricanes will affect the production of tornadoes up here (for good or ill).
Tornados seems to be moving eastward, so really the worst of the weather so far is hitting that side of the US
There were warnings for Georgia and the southern Appalachia, but the storm moved so much faster at the end and carried so much water inland. The ability to hold more water in the atmosphere has been an ongoing concern from climate scientists, and this is a clear example of how it can lead to disaster.
This bundled with droughts that cause the ground to not be able to absorb the water, causing serious flash floods, is just a start. I’m guessing in the next ten years, we’ll see this happening more and more each year for inland areas
It was ridiculously huge. I’m in Orlando, and when we were getting the first bands of wind, the eye of the storm was still over the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico
Wasn’t a big part of Katrina’s destruction from the hurricane effectively stalling over the southern US which caused prolonged and massive local damage?
Not trying to discount either event, mostly worried about the time we get a stalled Helene sized hurricane
A stalled hurricane doesn’t have to be large. Fran is an example back in history, and Harvey in more recent. But stalled storms also has its origin from climate change, because the weather steering systems are broken and cause/allow it.
Helene looks like a thrice-divorced hurricane.
I think we’re just a few years away from the planetary cyclones in Day After Tomorrow.
I want someone to project that map onto a globe to illustrate how ridiculous it was. The elegantly circular arcs of the north sides of those storms would look bizarrely teardrop-pinched, if I’m not mistaken.
It’s also good to remember that Katrina’s storm surge and the subsequent failure of the levees and flooding of the city is what was so damaging.
Besides the wind and rain the destruction of the levees took a huge toll on New Orleans.
As someone not from hurricane continent, these images are freaking scary. Like what do you mean the hurricanes are several times bigger than my entire country?
I’m just sitting here thinking holy hell I hope cyclones don’t come to my comfy corner of North-Eastern Europe
With Climate Change we’ll eventually run out of names. Unless Hurricane Karen manages to be the one that kills everyone before that happens.
There are something like ~500 million names.
Ok that may take a few years.
We’ll reach the Everstorm first I think
Awesome, blatanly obvious misinformation.
The next storm?
Is that a real image?
Hate how people are downvoting this guy just for asking a question, like what is this, reddit?
I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s a very sad person who tries to downvote all of my posts on a regular basis.
I call that the validation downvote. Just means the federation is still working.
I think they’re downvoting the Squid, not the content of the post. I imagine a poster like Flying Squid has made some enemies along the way, the kind of people who literally go and downvote all their posts.
I’ll take what I said on Reddit and bring it here: Don’t comment on downvotes, they don’t matter.
It’s a real screenshot from 2004’s banger The Day After Tomorrow.
Why would a satellite actually imaging storms want to place a satellite in the image as well?
I think its from some movie, like “the Day after Tomorrow” or something.
Because in movies you can have a shot of a satellite while showing a shot of the storm. I think that’s fairly harder to do in real life, seeing you’d have to have two satellites perfectly in sync (and they go pretty fast) or a satellite (space stations are satellites as well) with a very long selfie stick.
I’ve seen ISS photos that have bits of the ISS in the shot. 🤷♂️
But also, I did some searching and no, that is not Hurricane Kirk.
Oh yeah there’s shots like that. But like, in general. I don’t know just made me think of the day after tomorrow and yes it’s was that.
I googled "the day after tomorrow storm " and it was one of the first image https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/scale_862/public/2022/12/storm.jpg
So must’ve been in my subconscious or smth
Geostorm. Fun enough throwaway Gerard Butler movie.
W must be watching with popcorn
Well, it’s not over.
This is coming next week. Path is unclear, and its not as big as Helene, but anything near a 930mb in Tampa Bay, especially at this angle, is a catastrophe.
Katrina was 920mb and landfall, and these intensity forecasts have been undershooting hurricanes recently.
It’s clearly trying to help the US by amputating the injured limb.
Or take out Florida so it has a more open path to Texas.
I see Yoda in the 2nd pic
Good news! It’s gonna get worse! Much, much worse! Say thank you to petrol states and companies, preferably by blowing up their infrastructure
And a big thank you to politicians blocking major efforts to reduce carbon emissions thanks to lobbying by the industry and foreign governments.
The world finally needs to stop politicans getting huge donations and hold them accountable for their actions.
It boils my blood that Republicans would blame Democrats for not sending enough aide during these times, all the while Republicans vote against initiatives drafted up by Democrats to combat these issues specifically.
They use issues like this entirely to rouse their base and keep their support.
Alright so we’re going to change how we vote, right folks? Green New Deal or they are literally selling us out.
And also acting like “climate change” is a taboo topic that should never be spoken over the air, lest you offend someone.
But they brought a snowball into Congress and everything so obviously climate change is fake news!
Anything and everything for money… I wonder if they’ll take cash in hell?
You should read Ministry for the Future. It’s about how people cope with the world after the effects of climate change get out of hand. It’s sobering.
The idea of just blowing up the offending petrol infrastructure made me think of it.
As with everything, it also matters where it hits.
Katrina and New Orleans’s levees was a big deal. Helene flooding areas many moles from the coast in high altitude areas.
There have been bigger hurricanes that do less damage and likely there will be future weaker ones that do more.
I too worry about the poor moles getting flooded!!
Mathew and Hugo were pretty horrific.
Helene’s size shocked me but the storm surge for Katrina was unusually extreme. It was a well organized Category 5 and then weakened to a strong 3 right before landfall.
To compare with Helene, which was similar in terms of diameter but covered much more area overall, with category 4 winds at landfall: the Weather Channel was making a big deal out of the 8ft storm surges. During Katrina, the Mississippi Gulf Coast had a 28 foot storm surge. (The Miss. Gulf Coast isn’t that geographically different from the Fla. big bend region but that plays a role too.)
Helene’s unusual movement speed kept it strong very far inland and caused massive issues in places that rarely see tropical weather. Harvey was the opposite: it stalled over Houston and dumped days of rain on a major metropolis.
I wish we could update the Saffir Simpson scale to something that takes into account more variables. There are other measurements but no storm is identical in terms of damage potential. A category 5 can not even make landfall whereas something like Hurricane Sandy was a category 1 (or equivalent since it wasn’t technically still a hurricane) when it hit NYC and caused massive damage and flooded subway systems. Sometimes, a storm hitting a place that isn’t used to them can knock over all the trees or flood rivers while a similar storm would be nothing to Miami or New Orleans.
Helene is more deadly than Katrina if you don’t count the deaths after the boat broke the levee that was well beyond its lifespan in New Orleans, which you shouldn’t since that was a 100% fixable issue that was not taken care of.
What boat?
Wiki says the barge didn’t cause the break in the levee, so it was entirely forseeable due to lack of maintenance
We always say Katrina was a man-made disaster. I worry with climate change, that other places will be testing their infrastructure. Katrina should have been the canary in the coal mine and a lot of people just said, “Don’t live below sea level.” Old river damns can break just as easily as neglected levees.
We don’t respect rivers enough. I would never live in a floodplain.
The real problem with “never live on a floodplain” is that you can’t know where the floodplains are. The flood maps are all based on historical rainfall data, and that data is now obsolete. Even worse, it won’t stabilize in our lifetimes. So we can’t just observe the next ten years of rainfall and plan around that. No, things are changing, and they will continue to change. You might think you don’t live on a 500 year floodplain. But the cold truth of it is, we no longer have any idea where the 500 year flood plains are anymore. You need decades of weather observations of a stable climate to come up with accurate flood maps. And we just don’t have that kind of reliable data anymore. Unless you happen to live on the top of a very tall hill, you really can’t be sure you don’t live in a flood zone of some sort or another.
It was definitely a man-made disaster when it came to New Orleans. I made this analogy to someone else: if lightning strikes a skyscraper and the skyscraper burns down and kills everyone inside due to a lack of a sprinkler system, is that really death by a natural cause? I would say it’s death by gross incompetence.
But we couldn’t have the poor corporation taking the responsibility for that. They’d never get their insurance pay out! And after all that work disabling the sprinkler system and installing extra metal antennae in the roof…
What surprised me most about Helene was the ground speed. I don’t remember seeing any hurricane make landfall in the US moving at over 20mph. As a casual observer I have anyways seen 12 mph as a quick storm and 6 mph as slow.
Yeah, I’ve lived in New Orleans or on the East Coast my whole life and don’t recall that sort of movement speed. Usually, you want a fast moving storm so no one area takes on all the rain but Helene was going so fast and was so massive that it’s probably unprecedented.
