< Blog
August 27, 2021
Hurricane Ida on its way
By Marc SimardInteresting times. Ida is on its way to the Delta-X study domain, and expected to hit coastal Louisiana on Sunday August 29th as a Category 4. On the day of the 16th anniversary of Katrina, as it made landfall as a category 3 hurricane. Ida’s peak storm surge could reach 10 to 15 feet.
Warning cone of Hurricane Ida
Yesterday was marked by a series of dramatic updates in forecast for tropical storm Ida becoming hurricane Ida on its way to Louisiana early Sunday rather than previously thought Monday or Tuesday landfall.
Phone emergency alerts to evacuate
Clearly, yesterday’s forecast updates forced leadership to cancel the planned Saturday flights. We announced cancellation to the UAVSAR team as the crew had already boarded AFRC’s G-III for their planned transit from California to New Orleans. In the meantime the AirSWOT pilot decided to plan for early take-off. Clearly, there will be no flights this weekend. Current plans include AirSWOT and UAVSAR science flights Wednesday, September 1st.
This morning, only 2 field teams went to the field. The Vegetation Team (Florida International University) successfully collected aboveground and belowground biomass at Delta-X Intensive site 294, their last site. The Island Team (University of Texas and Caltech) went to retrieve instruments at the Wax Lake Delta’s Mike Island. The Island Team also successfully completed all planned Delta-X measurements.
Delta-X Principal Investigator (PI) Marc Simard takes a departure selfie
Team Status:
- Population already receiving alert to evacuate
- The ADCP team from JPL already evacuated their lodging in Terrebonne bay. The team is currently in New Orleans, flying home tomorrow.
- The ADCP team from UNC also evacuated their lodging in Terrebonne bay this morning and have already returned to North Carolina.
- The Island Team went straight to Texas after retrieving their equipment and is already safe in Texas.
- The Vegetation Team has collected all their data and is departing tomorrow morning to Florida.
- The Water Quality (Boston University) packed-up and have arrived in Texas.
- UAVSAR is in California.
- AVIRIS-NG has transited back to Virginia.
- AirSWOT moved from New Orleans (KNEW) to Georgia (KAHN) this afternoon. AirSWOT is on standby before returning to KNEW for science flight planned Wednesday September 1st.
Current Plan:
Caltech and U. Texas Island team, and the FIU’s Vegetation team, successfully collected all the required data and will not return to Louisiana for Delta-X. However, in the next few weeks, LSU’s vegetation team will collect cores at the remaining feldspar stations. The Water Quality also plan on returning after Ida has moved along to collect additional water samples and spectral reflectance. Both the JPL and UNC ADCP teams will return to Louisiana to retrieve the 58 water level gauges that were installed in March 2021. The gauges data will particularly interesting as they will record Ida’s storm surge across the Terrebonne and Atchafalaya basins! The gauges will only be retrieved mid-September.