Assessing the season: LSU hurricane experts learned lessons during Hurricane S...( According to LSU Assistant Professor of...)

Assessing the season: LSU hurricane experts learned lessons during Hurricane Season 2004

According to LSU Assistant Professor of Geography and Anthropology and Louisiana State Climatologist Barry Keim, Hurricane Season 2004 beat the averages.

It also kept LSU experts on their toes.

There were 15 named storms, eight of which became hurricanes. Six of those fell into the intense/severe category. Keim said that 10 named storms and six hurricanes is considered average. Two intense storms a year is average, he added.

While there were an unusually high number of storms, Keim said that the season was forecast reasonably well, as experts even predicted that October would be a below-average or "weak" month. A developing El Nino helped keep things in check late in the season, Keim explained.

Nevertheless, the heavy activity in late summer and September meant a heavy workload for LSU hurricane experts, as they went about aiding state emergency officials in their preparation efforts and adding to their growing knowledge on the storms and their effects:

Marc Levitan, director of the LSU Hurricane Center and expert on wind-effects on buildings, spent time in Florida after Hurricanes Charley and Ivan, examining and assessing schools that were used as hurricane shelters. He looked at 25 schools in hard-hit areas and made a detailed report. Levitan said that, after Andrew struck in 1992, Florida adopted new, stricter building codes for structures designated as hurricane shelters. He explained that all of the new schools built to this code that he examined were fine following Charley and Ivan.

Levitan, who chairs an International Code Council committee on storm shelters, also went to New Orleans while Ivan was in the Gulf and was still a potential threat to the city. There, he conducted emergency pre-strike assessments of the major public hospitals and provided hospital administrators with information on the safest areas in their medical complexes to put patients who did not evacuate.

Greg Stone, directo

Contact: Rob Anderson
rander8@lsu.edu
225-578-3871
Louisiana State University
16-Dec-2004

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