• JackLSauce@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Not sure what the science is between 2 images with no source or timestamp and nearly 20 years of technological improvement between them is but this isn’t the peak of Katrina

    Katrina ultimately reached its peak strength as a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale on August 28. Its maximum sustained winds reached 175 mph (280 km/h) and its pressure fell to 902 mbar (hPa; 26.63 inHg), ranking it among the strongest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.

    It probably refers to its stats at landfall

    Katrina weakened to a Category 3 before making landfall along the northern Gulf Coast, first in southeast Louisiana (sustained winds: 125mph) and then made landfall once more along the Mississippi Gulf Coast (sustained winds: 120mph). Katrina finally weakened below hurricane intensity late on August 29th over east central Mississippi.

    But power doesn’t equal damage for weather

    [Katrina] is the costliest hurricane to ever hit the United States, surpassing the record previously held by Hurricane Andrew from 1992. In addition, Katrina is one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States

    Sources:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorological_history_of_Hurricane_Katrina

    https://www.weather.gov/mob/katrina

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      But power doesn’t equal damage for weather

      Only if you count what happened in New Orleans after the storm, which was an infrastructure issue, not a weather issue.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 month ago

          No I am not. Those deaths were not the result of a natural disaster. The levee break was both predicted for years and preventable if the funds were just spent on it. Those deaths were directly the result of government incompetence.

          • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            So are you not going to count deaths from Helene resulting from people not evacuating properly? For not taking it seriously because it was preventable?

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 month ago

              Individual choices are different from government incompetence resulting in mass casualties. You understand that, right?

              If lightning strikes a skyscraper that doesn’t have sprinklers, causing it to burn down and kill 100 people- did the lightning kill those people or was it the lack of sprinklers?

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                1 month ago

                Individual choices are different from government incompetence resulting in mass casualties.

                There’s a systemic criticism here; people not evacuating Helene properly demonstrates we don’t have proper systems in place to facilitate evacuations in the case of a hurricane.

                Someone who chooses not to evacuate because they didn’t understand the severity or don’t have a car or anywhere to go isn’t an individual choice.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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                  1 month ago

                  I notice you didn’t answer my question. I will ask it again:

                  If lightning strikes a skyscraper that doesn’t have sprinklers, causing it to burn down and kill 100 people- did the lightning kill those people or was it the lack of sprinklers?

            • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              “Not evacuating properly”? Plenty of the people who died had no idea the storm was going to be as bad as it was when they were hundreds of miles inland in an area that had never had significant flooding.

              • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                I’m not saying any or all were preventable, only that OP is cherry picking out one single part of a catastrophe to tweak stats without fairly considering the removal of similar causes from the other event.

            • Maeve@midwest.social
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              1 month ago

              Where will poor people go and how would they afford to go and how would they get there?

          • thoro@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            What is the point of comparing Helene to Katrina? Harvey was also a 4.

            Why discount the impact of Katrina just because there were systematic issues? It was a natural disaster and that was the impact.

            Because it comes off to me like you’re trying to “well ackshully” about Helene being really the most devastating hurricane.