Remembering Hurricane Katrina's impact on Pa.
Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as the most damaging and costly storm ever recorded.
Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as the most damaging and costly storm ever recorded. The hurricane slammed into the Louisiana coast ten years ago, on August 29, and flooded 80 percent of the city of New Orleans.
While the storm will always be remembered for its devastation in the South, it also had an impact on the Susquehanna Valley.
Although the bulk of the rain from the remnants of Katrina stayed in the western portions of Pennsylvania, we still saw severe storms. In the Susquehanna Valley, there were numerous reports of large trees uprooted and sheds and trailers overturned in York, Adams, and Cumberland counties. Initially it was believed that this damage was due to tornados, but the National Weather Service later ruled it wind damage. Even so, there were seven confirmed tornados in the mountains of Virginia, which prompted tornado watches in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
It’s relatively common for the outer bands of hurricanes and tropical storms to spawn severe thunderstorms and even tornados.
Hurricanes have some of the most important ingredients necessary to form tornados. First of all, hurricanes are made up of clusters of rotating thunderstorms, which tornados need to form. Hurricanes also carry warm, moist, tropical air, which creates instability in the atmosphere and therefore severe weather. They also create wind shear, which is a change in wind direction and speed with height. This produces swirling in the air, making it possible to spawn tornados.
Although the damage in Pennsylvania and surrounding states was nowhere near as devastating as along the Gulf Coast, it's a testament to the power of Hurricane Katrina, which left a trail of destruction from the southeast to northeastern United States.