Storm sentinels

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 20, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:55 a.m.

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SHELL BEACH -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is setting up an observation station in Lake Borgne able to withstand Category 4 hurricane winds of up to 155 mph while gathering storm tide data every six minutes.

“It means early warning. It means earlier evacuations,” NOAA oceanographer Kate Bosley said Friday when asked about what the new station would mean to coastal Louisiana residents.

The Lake Borgne station off Shell Beach in St. Bernard Parish is one of four NOAA has constructed along the Louisiana-Mississippi Gulf Coast to measure real-time water levels and other weather observations.

Called “sentinels,” the stations are at Shell Beach, Amerada Pass and Calcasieu Pass in Louisiana and near Waveland, Miss.

The stations are platforms that stand 25 feet above the surface of the water atop single piles four feet in diameter. The piles are driven 60 to 80 feet into the seafloor.

The steel piles were moved out on barges to each location in early July, Bosley said.

All four sentinels should be completed in mid-August, but they won’t be fully operational until after a 45-day initial data gathering run has been completed, Bosley said.

NOAA received approximately $2 million in post-Hurricane Katrina federal recovery money to pay for building and installing the stations, Bosley said.

The sentinels can monitor water levels, tide data, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, and air and water temperature.

The information is gathered through computers installed in a “crow’s nest” at the top of each pile and then transmitted to NOAA oceanographers as well as other computers through a satellite system, Bosley said.

Lifelong Shell Beach resident Frank Campo, the owner and operator of Blackie Campo’s Marina, said that he has been told the Lake Borgne sentinel would provide residents with  “priceless” tidal information.

“They say the information will be more accurate and we will know exactly what the tide is doing,” Campo, 66, said Friday in front of his marina.

“I don’t know if it will mean an early warning for storms,  but it gives you a bird’s-eye view of tides and winds,” Campo said.
Campo, who doesn’t own a computer, said the sentinel makes him want to go out and buy one.