Hurricane Katrina

Pre-Landfall 2 | Summary
Posting Date: August 25, 2005, 10:30:00 AM

As of 5 a.m. EDT, Tropical Storm Katrina, the eleventh named storm of the 2005 season, was located about 20 miles south-southeast of Freeport, Grand Bahama Island and about 90 miles east of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Katrina is moving toward the west with a forward speed of about 8 mph. Maximum sustained winds are currently 50 mph with higher gusts, and tropical storm force winds extend outward to 70 miles. Estimated minimum central pressure is 1000 mb. Forward speed is expected to decrease during the next 24 hours. This motion should bring the center of the storm through the northwestern Bahamas and into the Florida Straits later today and near or over the southeastern Florida coast late tonight or early tomorrow morning. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) currently forecasts Katrina to reach hurricane status before the center of the storm reaches Florida. A hurricane watch remains in effect for the southeast Florida coast from Vero Beach southward to Florida City. A tropical storm warning remains in effect for the northwest Bahamas. While Katrina’s winds are not yet hurricane strength, its slow forward speed is expected to produce heavy rainfall over the northwest Bahamas and south Florida with total rainfall accumulations of 6 to 10 inches with possible isolated maximum amounts of 15 inches in some areas. The storm is projected to make landfall between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach and is expected weaken while slowly crossing the Florida Peninsula and then re-intensify under light shear conditions over the Gulf of Mexico. A second landfall is forecast for early Monday somewhere along the Florida panhandle. The AIR tropical cyclone team has run scenarios using the latest information about the storm’s meteorological parameters and its forecast track, which are posted on the Scenarios page of this website. Note that the results provided in this posting are for landfall in south Florida only. On the Event Sets page there are both “All” and “Select” event sets for CATRADER and CLASIC/2. The “All” event set contains hundreds of scenarios simulated for this event and is therefore the most appropriate method for estimating your potential losses. A set of 11 specific scenarios, which are selected from the full event set and represent the range of potential losses across the full industry loss distribution, are available under the “Select” event set. Also included on the Scenarios page is the probability of loss exceedance curve for the industry using the “All” event set. AIR continues to monitor Tropical Storm Katrina closely and will provide a further update within the next 24 hours.

Pre-Landfall 2 | Downloads
Posting Date: August 25, 2005, 10:30:00 AM