A Brief History of Hurricanes: Katrina and Sandy Case Studies

Yujia Huo

A Brief History of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy Case studies

A Brief History of Hurricanes

copyright © 2021 Yujia Huo Typset in Heletica 28/40, 18/31, 14/16, 11/16, 6

A Brief History of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy Case studies Yujia Huo

Contents Introduction to Hurricanes

2

Introduction to Katrina and Sandy 6 Case Studies Wind speed

10

Development

14

Location

18

Season

22

Conclusion

28

bibliography

29

Introduction to Hurricanes

2

What is Hurricane Hurricanes, which defined as a tropical store with winds that have reached constant speed of 74 miles per hour or more. It is dangerous when it hit the land with torrential rains, high winds and storm surges.

The categories Sacle shows different category name and the wind speed they represent

Why Studying Hurricanes Hurricanes, as a natural disaster, in some case will cause large amount of society and economy destruction without any early warning. Although it is hard to predict which hurricane will cause more damage, we still can study the data of hurricanes to find certain pattern or trend that can help us learn more about the development throughout the decays.

3

Storm Categories Categories

Wind Speed(Knots)

Tropical Depression(TD)

30 Knots or Less

Tropical Storm(TS)

35-65 Knots

Hurricane Category 1

65-84 Knots

Hurricane Category 2

85-94 Knots

Hurricane Category 3

95-110 Knots

Hurricane Category 4

115-134 Knots

Hurricane Category 5

135 Knots or Greater

Introduction to Katrina and Sandy

6

Katrina Katrina, known as the costliest natural disaster in the US history that struck the southeastern United States in late August 2005. In record, the hurricane and its aftermath claimed more than 1,800 lives. The total costs of Hurricane Katrina amounted to 125 billion U.S. dollars at the time the disaster occurred in 2005.

7

Sandy Sandy, Known as almost the second costliest natural disaster in the US history. From beginning to end, Hurricane Sandy’s progression caused deadly flooding, mudslides, and destructive winds from the Caribbean to the U.S. East Coast. The storm killed 286 people in 2012 in the northeastern region of the country, including New York and New Jersey. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates Sandy caused at least $70 billion in damages.

Case Study: Wind speed

10

Wind Speed When we talk about the power of the hurricane, one of the most obvious data will be the wind speed. The visualization presents the rank of top 10 hurricane based on the wind speed data and Katrina and Sandy are highlighted. It is hard to believe that those hurricanes that has higher wind speed than Katrina are not costlier.

While Sandy not even in the top 10 rank but it is the second costliest Hurricane. However, it doesn’t mean that wind speed is not one of the main factors that makes a hurricane costly, Katrina and Sandy’s wind speed still reach at least category 3 in the hurricane. What can be determine is that only using wind speed to identify the hurricane power is not all inclusive.

11

Hurricane Rank Based on Wind Speed

Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Name Allen Irma Wilma Gilbert unnamed Florida Keys Rita Mitch Carla Camille Andrew Katrina

Wind Speed 165 Knots 160 Knots 160 Knots 160 Knots 160 Knots 155 Knots 155 Knots 150 Knots 150 Knots 150 Knots 150 Knots

30

Sandy

100 Knots

Case Study: Development

14

Katrina and Sandy wind speed development and categories

Katrina 2005 160

maximum sustained wind(in Knots)

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0

Date(mm-dd) 08-23

08-24

08-25

Landfall at Florida

08-26

08-27

08-28

08-29

08-30

Landfall at louisiana

08-31

15

Categories

Wind Speed(Knots)

Tropical Depression(TD)

30 Knots or Less

Tropical Storm(TS)

35-65 Knots

Hurricane Category 1

65-84 Knots

Hurricane Category 2

85-94 Knots

Hurricane Category 3

95-110 Knots

Hurricane Category 4

115-134 Knots

Hurricane Category 5

135 Knots or Greater

Sandy 2012 100

maximum sustained wind(in Knots)

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Date(mm-dd)

0 10-21

10-22

10-23

10-24

10-25

10-26

10-27

10-28

10-29

10-30

Landfall at New Jersey

10-31

16

Development This visualization is a Bar chart. The X axis shows the time; the Y axis is the maximum sustained wind; the color of the bar represents the storm category. The chart shows the basic information about Sandy and Katrina by showing the relationship between time, maximum sustained wind, and storm category, which indicates the development of the hurricanes.

For Katrina, it reaches the highest wind speed of 150 knot before the day of landfall, which is relatively fast.

For Sandy, The landfall date in US is 10/29 with the wind speed of 85 knot, which is not the highest wind speed but the growing rate of wind speed is relatively high as well.

Case Study: Location

18

Location The map shows the landfall location of the top 10 hurricanes in the previous section. Katrina and Sandy are highlighted by red, and the other hurricanes are colored by black. Katrina cause most damage in New Orleans and Sandy cause most damage in New Jersey area. When look deep into the geographical characteristic of New Orleans, it can be noticed that New Orleans has been rate as extreme risk of flooding, Overall, New Orleans has an extreme risk of flooding over the next 30 years, which means flooding is likely to impact day to day life within the community. And Hurricane most likely cause flooding when it make landfall. So that’s one factor that makes Katrina so costly.

On the other hand, when we look at the geographical characteristic of New Jersey area, although it still has relatively high risk of flooding in the costal aera, the population density is more significant factor. According to World Population Review-United States by Density, New Jersey was ranked as the NO.1 highest population density.

19

This information will make sense to explain why Sandy seems not strong based wind speed but became the second costliest hurricane in the US history. Also, New Jersey area more unlikely get hit by a hurricanes, which might cause local government has lack of experience against hurricanes.

Katrina and Sandy with top 10 strongest hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland based on windspeed at landfall

Sandy

Katrina

Case Study: Season

22

2005 Hurricanes Recorded Overview

Maximum sustained wind(in knots)

160

Dennis

140 120

Emily

100 80 60

Katrina

Arlene

40

Franklin

Harvey

Bret

20

Ten

Gert

0 June

Maria

Irene

Cindy

July

Jose

August

Nate Ophelia

Lee

September

Katrina Highlighted

Maximum sustained wind(in knots)

160

Dennis

140 120

Emily

100 80 60 40 20 0 June

Katrina

Arlene

Cindy

Franklin

Harvey

Bret

Ten

Gert July

Maria

Irene

August

Jose

Lee

September

Ophelia Nate

23

Rita Wilma

Beta

Philippe Stan

Vince

Tammy Nineteen

Alpha

Epsilon Gama

Delta

Zeta

Twenty-two

Date

October

November

December

Rita Wilma

Beta

Philippe Stan

Vince

Tammy Nineteen October

Alpha

Epsilon Gama

Delta

Twenty-two

Zeta

Date November

December

24

2012 Hurricanes Recorded Overview

Maximum sustained wind(in knots)

100 90 80

Chris

70

Beryl

60

Debby

Alberto

50 40 30 20

May

June

July

Sandy Highlighted

Maximum sustained wind(in knots)

100 90 80

Chris

70

Beryl

60

Debby

Alberto

50 40 30 20

May

June

July

25

Michael

Gordon

Sandy

Kirk

Ernesto

Nadine Isaac

Rafael

Leslie

Florence

Oscar

Helene Joyce

Tony

Patty

Date August

September

October

November

Michael

Gordon

Sandy

Kirk

Ernesto

Nadine Isaac

Rafael

Leslie

Florence

Oscar

Helene Joyce

Tony Patty Date

August

September

October

November

26

Season When we look at the big picture of 2005 and 2012, when Katrina and Sandy occurred, the visualization using line chart to shows each hurricanes development based on the wind speed. It can be noticed that in the time period between August and November, the strength and amounts of hurricanes are relatively higher than other time in the year. So it can be understand that frequent hurricane appearance cause the landfall hard to predict and hard to prepare for the protection.

Conclusion

28

Conclusion From the above analysis based on the data that I have, I realized that the factors that identify if the hurricane became the costliest are various. Although normally people use wind speed to identify the strength of hurricane, it is not the absolute factor to identify hurricane’s cost. Other factors such as Development, season, and location. For example, although Sandy didn’t have very high wind speed compare with other strongest hurricanes in the history record, it still causes serious cost to the city due to the location’s population density. From this study, I hope we start to have better understanding of how to analyze and predict the possible cost of certain hurricane so that we can eliminate the cost as much as possible.

29

Bibliography New Orleans, Louisiana. Flood Factor. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://floodfactor.com/city/ new-orleans-louisiana/2255000_fsid.

United States by Density. World Population Review. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https:// worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/statedensities.