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American Morning
Allison's Heavy Rains Have Turned New Orleans From Drought to Floods
Aired June 07, 2001 - 11:27 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHAD MEYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: We've already had Allison. Tropical Storm Allison came onshore across parts of Texas and Louisiana. You can still see the spin on the radar map, guys, just to the southwest of Lupton, north of Houston, Texas.
The real concern, though, this afternoon, and, really, throughout the next 24, maybe even 48 hours, is Louisiana. Notice all of this moisture feed coming up from the south. You can see the lines and lines of storms. We call when a storm gets in a line with a number of other storms "training," just like a train goes over a train track, one storm after another, just like a train has another car, one car after another car after another.
And these storms are going right on top of the same areas, so the precipitation totals can really get very high. In fact, New Orleans picked up quite a bit of rain, especially west of the city.
Brad Panovich from our affiliate WWL-TV, in New Orleans joins us this morning.
Good morning, Brad. How are you today?
BRAD PANOVICH, WWL-TV METEOROLOGIST: Very tired, Chad.
MEYERS: I bet. I worked in Oklahoma City with tornadoes many years, and I know what those rolling 24-hour shifts are like.
How is the city of New Orleans doing right now?
PANOVICH: The city itself, Chad, is doing rather well. The rain has, like you said, been mostly south and west of here, in outlying areas. Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes have seen up to 15 inches of rainfall. And as I took my radar a little bit ago, we're seeing more rain right now. So those areas are of deep concern because with all the rain yesterday, it almost doesn't take as much rain as yesterday to cause the same problems -- the bayous, the creeks, and a lot of the lakes around there are definitely above or near their bank level. So we're going to see more flooding, possibly, today.
As you know, New Orleans is a threat city because we are below sea level. We rely on the pumps to get a lot of our water out of the city, not gravity. But in the city itself, it's been fine. We haven't seen that many problems. MEYERS: Brad, tell me this. If it really rains hard -- let's say you get five inches of rain in three or four hours -- in New Orleans, what's going to happen?
PANOVICH: What happens, normally, in New Orleans is we can withstand maybe an inch in the first hour, but after that, the pumps can only pump about half an inch per hour, so when you get rainfall rates of one, two, even three inches per hour, the water sits in the streets for a couple of hours, until the pumps have time to catch up and get the rain out of here and into Lake Ponchartrain or the Mississippi River. So it takes a little time; there's a lag between when the rain falls and when it finally gets to get out of the city.
MEYERS: Now, this storm, obviously, missed you significantly, to the west, but I have a map behind me here. Here's New Orleans right there, and significant rains just to the west. These are the precipitation totals. We're seeing numbers here like 8, 10, and 12 inches of rainfall. And the good news is that didn't fall over New Orleans, because that really could have been a disaster.
PANOVICH: That fell in our western suburbs, and some of those areas received 8 inches, Chad, in just three hours -- amazing rainfall totals, prolific.
And this happened in 1998, when Tropical Storm Francis made landfall in Texas, but caused widespread flooding here in New Orleans.
MEYERS: We're still not seeing that storm move, and I know all the models are going back and forth. What are you saying? What are the forecasters there saying? It's kind of drifting southwestward, moving to the southeast -- what you do think?
PANOVICH: Right now the thinking is it's going to drift a little to the south and the east and just kind of sit there. As you know, the models don't seem to want to move anything. We're in this stagnant upper-air flow that doesn't want to move anything off to the east. So what's probably going to happen is the storm is really never going to move away; it's just going to have to sit here and dissipate right on top of us.
MEYERS: Certainly, a cut-off storm, kind of like we had across the northern plains a couple weeks ago, where Chicago didn't see the sunshine for 14 days.
PANOVICH: Chad, it's a little weird because we are in the severe drought, and you've got to be careful what you ask for, because, two days ago, we were 12 inches behind normal for the year -- today, we're three inches above. It's hard to believe.
MEYERS: Wouldn't Florida like some of the rainfall right now?
PANOVICH: We'd be willing to ship some over if they'd pay the shipping costs.
MEYERS: Fair enough.
Talk to you later -- maybe even tomorrow, to see how things go.
PANOVICH: Thanks.
MEYERS: A lot of rainfall is still forecasted for parts of New Orleans, into Houston, and as far east as Mobile.
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