Hurricane Isaac

Just some pictures.

I’ve got Storm Predator running on the laptop now and it’s a fun toy to play with. So I’m “sharing” some images.

For those not familiar with it, Storm Predator lets you inspect various radar images in the USA. This time I also explored some of the other features, like adding rivers. How can you look at New Orleans and Mississippi and not have the Big Muddy? I also found that it has some nice national sized images available including satellites.

So, here’s the national view:

Yesterday, 27 Aug 2012 Hurricane Isaac

And what it looks like as I’m making this posting:

Yesterday, 27 Aug 2012 Hurricane Isaac

Kind of fun to have your own little archive of the progress and be able to watch it as it unfolds, without needing to hit the TV. Fox Business is reporting it as 400 miles across. “Only” a Category 1, but very wide. It could easily tighten up and become a Cat 2 before landfall, or stay spread out and hit a much wider area.

That track is right down the middle of Gulf oil production. Lots of oil and gas ‘shut in’. Though the oil markets have been a bit ‘confused’… due some refinery outages further north, there is excess crude that WAS being sent to the NOLA area; yet THOSE refineries are being shut down now… so crude is dropping in price, despite the probable reduction of supply from the Gulf. Similarly, something like 12 – 15 Billion CF of nat gas is being taken off the market, yet nat gas prices stay low. Land based fracked fields the likely reason, but the gas shortage hasn’t hit yet, so it still might have an uptick (though not much, IMHO).

OK, the more “fun bit” with Storm Predator is being able to change your point of view.

Here’s the radar view from New Orleans:

Isaac 28 Aug 2012 from New Orleans

Nice view of the front of the storm, but it has a cut off at the edge of the radar. If we shift over to Mobile, we can see how far it spreads out ‘that way’:

Isaac 28 Aug 2012 from Mobile Al

While the folks in New Orleans are getting all the news coverage, I’m pretty sure they are not going to have much in the way of “issues”. They are built for a Cat 3 and what’s still there has survived worse already.

Hurricanes have the worst damage and flood / surge on the right side. That fat band headed at Biloxi, Mississippi. IMHO they will get the worst of it. But we’ll see.

I’m also pretty sure the natural gas traders are figuring a Cat 1 will do no damage to the gas infrastructure and that in a couple of days the gas gets turned back on. That can be easily covered just by turning up the fracked fields just a bit and / or letting some out of storage.

It’s the longer outages from damaged wells, pipes, and rigs that takes months to repair that makes significant price moves.

With that, best wishes and Good Luck to the folks in the teeth of this thing. And lets hope is doesn’t reach Cat 2 and breaks up rapidly on landfall…

Update Just a bit later

Just discovered the “Long Range” setting on the radar. Here’s the view from New Orleans as the main heavy rain bands hit:

Isaac 28 Aug 2012 NOLA long range

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