On the morning of Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisiana. The levee system of New Orleans failed catastrophically. Storm surges penetrated the entire city and lingered for weeks. Hurricane Katrina became known as one of the most intense, costliest, and deadliest natural disasters ever recorded in the history of the United States. Almost exactly 3 years l...

Large tropical cyclones cause severe damage to major cities along the United States Gulf Coast annually. A diverse collection of engineering and statistical models are currently used to estimate the geographical distribution of power outage probabilities stemming from these hurricanes to aid in storm preparedness and recovery efforts. Graph theoretic studies of power networks have separately at...

[1] The response of hurricane frequency to climate changes in an aquaplanet configuration of a 50-km resolution atmospheric general circulation model is examined. The lower boundary condition is an energetically consistent slab ocean with a prescribed cross-equatorial ocean heat flux, which breaks the hemispheric symmetry and moves the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) off the equator. In t...

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in Florida's history, with four hurricanes causing at least 47 deaths and some $45 billion in damages. To collect information on the demographic impact of those hurricanes, we surveyed households throughout the state and in the local areas that sustained the greatest damage. We estimate that one-quarter of Florida's population evacuated prior to at least ...

The interaction between the atmosphere and ocean is of fundamental importance for understanding the dynamics and thermodynamics of the atmosphere and the ocean. Understanding of the upper ocean response to intense wind forcing has been limited by the paucity of direct observations. A circular region within a radius of 400 km of Bermuda has been struck by 188 tropical storms or hurricanes from 1...

Hurricane Sandy hit the eastern coast of the United States in October 2012, causing billions of dollars in damage and acute physical and mental health problems. The long-term mental health consequences of the storm and their predictors have not been studied. New York City and Long Island residents completed questionnaires regarding their initial Hurricane Sandy exposure and mental health sympto...

This study focuses on levels of concern for hurricanes among individuals living along the Gulf Coast during the quiescent two-year period following the exceptionally destructive 2005 hurricane season. A small study of risk perception and optimistic bias was conducted immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Two years later, a follow-up was done in which respondents were recontacted. T...

In response to Hurricane Katrina, CDC and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (LDHH) implemented active surveillance on September 9, 2005, to monitor for injuries and illnesses at functioning hospitals and other acute-care facilities in the greater New Orleans area (Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, and St. Tammany parishes). On September 20, the system was...

Observations of pre-1950 tropical cyclones are sparse due to observational limitations; therefore, the hurricane database HURDAT2 (1851-present) maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may be incomplete. Here we provide additional documentation for HURDAT2 from historical United States Army fort records (1820-1915) and other archived documents for 28 landfalling tropic...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of Hurricane Katrina on displaced students' behavioral disorder. METHODS First, we determine displaced students' likelihood of discipline infraction each year relative to non-evacuees using all K12 student records of the U.S. state of Louisiana during the period of 2000-2008. Second, we investigate the impact of hurricane on evacu...