Somewhat incredibly, Ida killed far more people as a weakened tropical storm in the northeast after crossing the entire US than it did as a Cat4/5 hurricane on the gulf coast.
From Wikipedia:
> As of September 4, a total of 70 deaths have been confirmed in relation to Ida: 27 in New Jersey, 18 in New York, 13 in Louisiana, 5 in Pennsylvania, 2 in Mississippi, 2 in Alabama, 1 in Maryland, 1 in Virginia, and 1 in Connecticut.
I'm in NYC. Besides walking my dog briefly in the heavy rain twice I wasn't even aware of Ida until the clear morning after someone showed me flooded subway photos looking like from the end of MGS2. I'm not sure it was communicated properly save for the flash flooding broadcast that could have also come from just a lesser heavy thunderstorm.
From what I read, that was the very first time the NWS had every issued a Flash Flood warning for NYC. Seems like that might have earned it a little more attention.
This reminds me of the people complaining about how destructive the floods in Houston were after Harvey. Nevermind that the forecasts for days leading up to it were 40" of rain. What part of 40" of rain sounds like no big deal?
People in NYC get so many “severe” weather warnings for random parts of the metro area far from where they live that they just tune them out.
My reaction when I got the Ida updates was “yeah, I get it, it’s raining”. I left my house as normal and thought nothing of it. It was by pure luck that I didn’t take the subway anywhere because I’d almost certainly have been stuck when the rain went insane about an hour later.
I’ll definitely scrutinize the warnings more carefully in the future, but I totally understand why a lot of people ignored them and then were surprised by how bad the storm was.
If you've never had to deal with it, you don't comprehend the danger.
I know workers that moved to New Orleans after Katrina to do the actual post storm cleanup, first hand, and didn't evacuate for Ida, knowing it was a more powerful storm.
Some of them had their entire roof(s) blown off and had 100' pine trees fall through their house while they were home, riding it out.
Even seeing the post storm damage doesn't convey the actual danger during these weather events.
>"If you've never had to deal with it, you don't comprehend the danger."
I don't believe you need to experience something first hand in order to comprehend the danger. I've never visited an active conflict zone but I fully comprehend the danger of traveling to one for a holiday. Conversely I have friends in New Orleans who didn't evacuate for Katrina who also didn't evacuate for Ida. They obviously comprehended the danger very well. There will always be people who are stubborn, careless or possibly just have a much higher risk profile regardless of their personal history.
It's also odd to think that people wouldn't understand the danger of flash floods given that in the last 5 weeks alone we have seen the flash floods in Henan Province China as well as the flash flooding in Eastern Germany. These two flash flood events were major international news stories and you would be hard pressed to not have seen those images.
>"Do you, really? Without even knowing which conflict zone, or doing any research?"
Where did that even come from? I neither stated or even implied any of that. I haven't visited an active conflict zone precisely because I did research. It's somewhat bizarre you would make those assumptions when you know nothing about me.
>"I'm not sure it was communicated properly save for the flash flooding broadcast that could have also come from just a lesser heavy thunderstorm."
The National Weather Service Service issued it's first ever "flash flood emergency" for NYC on Wednesday.[1] It's not like these are common for the region.
Alerts went out to cell phones in NJ and NY at 8:41PM EDT with 3 more alerts following. Why would it matter whether a flash flood emergency accompanies a heavy thunderstorm vs tropical storm? It's still the same potentially life-threatening and catastrophic event.
I believe the warning alerts advise not to travel unless fleeing flooding and the flash flood emergency alerts specifically state "move immediately to higher ground" and "don't walk or drive through flood areas."
One criticism I've read a few times in the past week has been suggesting that people may have had alert fatigue. While it is true that things like the Weather Channel have contributed a lot of noise(naming winter storms for instance.) Additionally there were 4 separate alerts that went out the night of the flooding. And of course things like Amber alerts and similar seem to be commonplace now so there may be some truth to that. The irony however is that as a society we seem increasingly more fixated on our screens and don't mind the endless text messages and social media and app notifications yet somehow potentially life-saving alerts would be the source of fatigue.
IIRC what made it a superstorm was that several weather patterns combined and amplified each other. Same thing happened with Ida: there were storms already moving upwards into NYC and Ida just came through and gave it a push.
News coverage is really dropping the ball on this one. It might not have the optics of Katrina, but it was a far more powerful, even if smaller, storm.
Eg: New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and SE LA power outage maps [0][1][2]
Based on the damage in south Louisiana, it's a miracle there weren't far far more deaths.
The damage to Port Fourchon alone should be national news. Anywhere from 10~30% of the countries oil flows through there, depending on how you measured it. And it got a direct hit.
The gas pipeline fiasco from a few months back? All the refineries feeding it were shut down for over a week. Wait till that lag period catches up.
But for reasons that be, MSM decided this was a non-event until it got to NYC, and even then a relatively minor one. Hard to believe they're not downplaying this on purpose.
From Wikipedia:
> As of September 4, a total of 70 deaths have been confirmed in relation to Ida: 27 in New Jersey, 18 in New York, 13 in Louisiana, 5 in Pennsylvania, 2 in Mississippi, 2 in Alabama, 1 in Maryland, 1 in Virginia, and 1 in Connecticut.