Talk:Hurricane Carla
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[edit] Galveston flooding
Cyrius states: Carla couldn't have flooded 90% of Galveston, storm surge wasn't high enough to clear the seawall.
I would estimate that the storm surge in the Galveston area was about 10 feet at the peak of the storm. This is about 5 feet below the top of the seawall. (This is a personal observation made during the storm.) However, the water did not come over the seawall; it came around the seawall.
It is important to distinguish between the city of Galveston, which occupies only a small portion of the Island, and the Island itself. I would say that 30% to 50% of the city was flooded. Well over 90% of the Island was flooded.
Most of Galveston Island West of 48th Street was flooded. There was also some flooding in the northern area of the city according to reports I received.
Carla caused very little damage in the part of the Island protected by the seawall. However, beyond the seawall, to the West, damage was quite heavy. Almost all structures made of cinderblock were destroyed by the waves that came in on the storm surge. Many of the wooden houses survived with only water damage.
Most of the damage came after Carla. About six or seven tornadoes struck Galveston. Only one did significant damage, but it was quite something to see. -- Carbon12 2004 Dec 25
- If you're sure about the flooding, you can add it back. But I'd still like to see some documentation from reasonably reliable primary sources. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:12, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The flooding is a minor part of the story of Carla. It only takes a few feet of storm surge to flood most of the island. (The part of the island on which the city sits was raised an average of seven feet during the construction of the seawall, and so is less flood-prone.)
More troubling are claims such as: "The storm remains the strongest to strike the Texas coastline." The strongest storm to strike the Texas coastline would have to be the 1900 Storm.
I do not consider myself an expert on this. I just happened to have been there, and unlike Dan Rather, I was out in the storm every day. I was thinking I might post an account of my experiences and let someone else make the editorial decisions. -- Carbon12 17:06, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- The NHC numbers say that Carla is tied with the 1900 Hurricane for wind speeds at time of landfall. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:15, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
UNISYS shows that they both had the same wind speed at landfall, but Carla [1] had a lower pressure: 931 millibars (27.49 inches) as opposed to the Galveston Hurricane's 936 millibars (27.64 inches). [2] When ranking the most intense storms in the Atlantic, most lists I've seen rank them by pressure. So, if we applied that here, Carla would be stronger at landfall.
E. Brown, Hurricane enthusiast - Squawk Box 19:57, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Stupidity
IS IT TRUE IT WAS THE LARGEST STORM IN SIZE IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN EVER??
- WHO KNOWS THEY DIDN'T HAVE SATELLITES BACK THEN!!
- While they didn't have satellites, they did have enough ship and land reports to construct surface maps. One of the ways of estimating storm size is to measure the distance between the storm center and the outermost closed isobar, known as ROCI (radius of the outermost closed isobar). The other method of estimating storm size is to judge its gale radius. While this can be estimated using satellite imagery, it is not the primary way the radius of gale force winds is computed. Thegreatdr (talk) 23:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Todo
Restructuring (separate meteorology from impact), better intro. Jdorje 23:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] table overlaying text
someone who knows how needs to fix the table in this article which is overlayinng part of the text. Thanks Hmains 18:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] pressure strangeness
Seems the 931 mbar pressure was from after the storm weakened to a category 4. But in the best-track there are pressure readings from the cat5 periods, in the upper 930s. I wonder if the MWR explains it. — jdorje (talk) 10:14, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- Tropical cyclones can yield lower central pressures with lower wind speed when they increase in size. While this normally happens during recurvature into higher latitudes, the bulk of the storm interacting with landmasses (Isidore 2002 and Katrina 2005) can produce lower winds than one would expect with a relatively low central pressure. Thegreatdr (talk) 23:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
