katrina is inland, approaching the columbus/starkville area as a diminishing tropical storm. there's still some wind damage going on, and probably localized flooding from rains. the tornado threat over tennessee and kentucky tomorrow should keep some people on their toes, but katrina seems to be mostly over.
daylight assessments tomorrow are not going to be pretty. new orleans got off a hundred times better than i'd expected.. had the eye moved ten or fifteen miles to the west or the storm passed by as a 5, the city would be a loss right now. looks like a rough equivalent of what the city got from betsy, as far as the extent of flooding and wind damage.
areas that we haven't heard a great deal from that are probably much worse off are the delta towns and the mississippi coast. the small towns in the delta.. buras, pilottown, empire, venice.. are probably in shambles. i'd expect that numerous structures were obliterated by surge and extreme winds.. the hurricane was still a solid cat 4 when it crossed that location... with a pressure near 920mb. nearby offshore oil rigs are likely to have been damaged as well.
the landfall on the mississippi coast happened with the hurricane at around 930mb. pressure more directly dictates surge than wind speed, so the surges as expected approached or even exceeded 20 ft near and to the east of bay st louis. pass christian, gulfport, biloxi, and ocean springs i'd expect to have significant surge damage, and extensive wind damage as well. if people stayed behind in the low lying areas nearby they are likely dead. pascagoula over to mobile had significant tidal surge damage and light to moderate structural damage as well, i'd expect. inland towns like picayune and poplarville should have extensive wind damage... probably a modest amount further north around laurel and hattiesburg. slidell, covington, and bogalusa louisiana should have had a similar experience.
for the future, td 13 troughed out today. a sizable convective burst on the southern end has persisted and may redevelop, as it was showing a near-closed or closed circulation on visible earlier and has a 1.5 t-rating. whether it redevelops or not its future is the north atlantic. old 97L's remnant circulation is approaching disturbed weather to the west, but is likely too far gone. a small, sheared low level turning well east of florida is moving east and in this general direction as well. there is no strong model support for any of these features.
91L transferred emphasis to a racing itcz burst/turning near 10/30. this system is moving too quickly to develop in the short term, but may slowly organize as it trucks west. several global models move this system wnw into the central atlantic and develop it... gfs traps it south of bermuda in the long range.
a pattern pulse behind katrina as a large high settles in out of canada is shown on some of the globals to develop a low off the east coast on its wake trough. euro has more of a gulf feature that migrates west. cyclogenesis is favored in this general region late in the week/weekend timeframe, so am looking for model consistency.
there's a large african wave coming off tomorrow as well. globals showing waves tracking west, but not as gung-ho about development as in recent times. prospects of getting lee during august not terribly high with the demise of td 13.
HF 0130z30august