Unidata

Hurricane Katrina: One Unidata Site's Experience

Over the years we have discovered that the hurricane itself is not the event. The emergency event is how people are affected and respond to the hurricane, and its effects on the natural and human landscape.
Dr. Kevin Robbins, SRCC Director and Climatologist

NOAA's Southern Regional Climate Center at Louisiana State University was in the trenches as Katrina began her landward move, and there it remained in the ensuing hours.

The SRCC, an active member of the Unidata community, is one of four top-tier NOAAport ingest sites for the IDD using Unidata's NOAAport satellite ingest software. For analysis and visualization of data, they use GEMPAK a software package upgraded and maintained by the program center.

The image at left is GEMPAK's NMAP2 graphical user interface display during Hurricane Katrina showing NEXRAD level II reflectivity and current NWS watches / warnings updated in real-time by the IDD.

Unidata posed a series of questions to SRCC staff and received informative answers to each one of them from NOAA site manager Kevin Robbins, SRCC Director and Associate Director of Operations for the LSU Hurricane Center. The following statements were excerpted from his responses.

Prior to, during, and following passage of Hurricane Katrina.the NOAA Southern Regional Climate Center (SRCC) used IDD data to brief emergency managers at the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LOHSEP).

Friday afternoon (August 26), we began communications with LOHSEP with a call alerting them to the possibility that Katrina could move further west than the current forecast track, and that they should be aware of possible impacts to Louisiana. IDD data were used to obtain National Hurricane Center Discussions and Advisories, and these data were used to produce plots of storm tracks and probabilities of storm position. Hurricane track model data were also plotted and used to determine the variability in model guidance. These uncertainties were conveyed to emergency managers.

Saturday morning (August 27). the SRCC, Louisiana Office of State Climatology, and the LSU Earth Scan Laboratory (ESL) were activated. Once activated we provided 24-hour on-site support to the LOHSEP. We used plots created using IDD data to show storm tracks and to produce briefing information. Hurricane imagery from the ESL was used instead of IDD-based imagery because they have local GOES, AVHRR, and SeaWif receiving stations. The SRCC created a local IDD feed from LSU to the LOHSEP over a dedicated fiber internet link. A GEMPAK system was maintained at the LOHSEP to provide weather information displays. They were extremely useful in mapping weather station outages that occurred when the storm tracked over Louisiana and Mississippi

Briefings were given on a 3-hour schedule to emergency managers that included USGS, COE, Department of Health and Hospitals, State Police, Louisiana National Guard, Wildlife and Fisheries, USDA, Department of Natural Resources, Red Cross, and a number of other agencies.

While we leave the forecasting to the NWS and the NHC, we provide concise information in the form of briefings and briefing products, interpretation of official forecast products, integration of data from sources such as NWS, USGS, NDBC, and local data collection agencies.

The IDD data made it easier for us to find information and to deliver custom display information to emergency managers. The information was used for pre-storm planning, determination of local conditions during the storm, and for post-event recovery.

We have been providing hurricane event support to Louisiana since August 1992 (Hurricane Andrew), and we have used IDD data since 1995 as the primary source of our information. In recent years we have improved our ability to operate effectively by piping the entire IDD data stream directly to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) where we have a dedicated work area at the front. We have provided support during numerous storms over this period and have become an important part of the operations.

Over the years we have discovered that the hurricane, itself, is not the event. The emergency event is how people are affected and respond to the hurricane and its effects on the natural and human landscape. Our job is to help emergency managers respond to the event without their having to wade through an increasing volume of weather information. If we can adapt the flow of information to managers such that we anticipate what information is needed at critical times then the tasks of pre-event planning, evacuation, emergency sheltering, road closures, and disaster recovery can be made more effective.