HULK SMASH!!!
Let's hope not
me
Doesn't look good. New Orleans is so vulnerable. A direct hit could be beyond devastating. Crossing my fingers.
Sh*t.
If it heads NO dead on, NO is lost.
The place is a bowl, kept alive by the levees that will drown it if the hurricane hits just right.
Yeah, yeah, you all know this, but....
...damn.
"heads"?
hits.
I give up.....
Some Hitchens to shed some light in this dark hole:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Co...05/
995phqjw.asp
It's still a couple days off, so things could certainly change, but that path looks like the worst-case scenario for New Orleans. IIRC, the NE quadrant of the eyewall has the most powerful winds, and between that and a storm surge, it looks like the basin would just get swamped.
Hitchens? That nimrod headed for his favourite watering hole directly from the set of TDS the other night and still hasn't come out.
RMJ
Damn indeed - we're trying to plan right now.
I'm freaked.
Hope Incog and our other New Orlinians head north now.
Geez.
Time to stock up on the beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde, eh?...
BTW: Nice gravatar, StevenNS
SteveNS
Yup, you right - just pick up Lake Ponchetrain and push it to the Missisipi.
I guess we flee - but the timing is awful - we're supposed to leave Thurs - Mr lb for 10 months in Hong Kong- me for a month in NJ (Yes, I am aware of who has the better deal here.
I guess we could leave early - the trick is the cat.
Ah, I am too freaked to thik straight - witnessed by the fact that I am here instead of doing something constructive
Perhaps we could send Snitchens to check out the NO drinking establishments during Katrina, and then pray that a lamp falls on him?
Seriously, if this forecast holds true, this is very, very bad news for NO. And what's left of Katrina looks like she'll be heading over SW Ohio. We need rain. We don't need that much rain, especially all at once.
Incog tells me this is a heterosexual hurricane that is doing to NO what heterosexuals have done for thousands of years.
Thanks, Cleveland Bob. That squirrel has gotten more compliments in the past 2 months than I have in my whole 34 years.
Think I'm going to have to mess up that cute little face.
Well I hope they don't have to evacuate. I was in FLA for Floyd with 1.5 million and other evacuees. What happens is, the poor stay put. No car or money for gas means-->sorry chump.
These evacuations are disgraceful and an exercise in mass hysteria. Interstate 10 was total, and I mean total, gridlock, even with the eastbound lands switched to westbound. No hotel rooms for 600-800 miles.
We said, screw it, and just stayed with a friend futher away from the ocean. We had no choice, really, since you couldn't use the jammed highways.
Again, these evacuations are a national disgrace.
OT.
Whadaya know...Tierney is not entirely batshit insane.
http://tinyurl.com/997zf
spinoza: Incog tells me this is a heterosexual hurricane that is doing to NO what heterosexuals have done for thousands of years.
How's Katrina's gumbo?
.
lb0313 - Don't wait too long -- even if you have to take the cat in a carrier when you go and bunk him/her at a kennel later, don't stick around long enough to jeopardize your chances of an expedient exit.
If it picks up momentum and the highways are clogged, it would be a nightmare.
Shit, is Rorsach in NO or Texas. He really doesn't need to cope with another flood. Incog was around earlier, hope he will be okay.
Damn indeed - we're trying to plan right now.
I'm freaked.
lb0313 | 08.27.05 - 10:13 am | #
Ate there orders to evacuate, or is it voluntary?
How's Katrina's gumbo?
.
Jeffraham
Now, now.
Sorry for you guys who were the butt of his rage, but that was just about the funniest non-issue raged about here.
re: Sharpton. Some posters were complaining of Al's visit to Crawfrawd, even saying he'd taken money from the Repubican party.
I don't know about you, but given Kerry's polite and reticent performance, I think I would have enjoyed 3 months of righteous Bush-bashing with Sharpton as the Dem's candidate knowing we were gonna lose than the deception of Kerry's loss. Can you imagine the rough treatment of the swiftboaters by Sharpton's colorful invective? Sweet!
Evacuation annoucement at noon....
Hecate, I thought Incog was near Barksdale AFB, which is opposite end of the state from NO. He was asking for rain earlier in the week. Alas, it looks like he's going to get it.
QL, Ror lives in Austin now, but used to live in NO, IIRC.
OT, but possibly as destructive: NPR's Weekend Edition, for it's review of important news of the week had on, unbelievably, Jonah Goldberg.
August 27, 2005 · Scott Simon reviews the week's news with Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online. Topics include the Iraqi constitutional stalemate; how results of a study on racial profiling and violence against minority motorists were distributed.
Says audio available at 1pm EDT, but did anyone hear it? I caught intro, but had to do something else, so don't know how "objective" young Goldberg was.
Anyone catch it? Was it terrible? WTF is NPR doing to its news broadcasting?
Oh,yeah...BushCo control.
Jonah Goldberg--ptooie! I wouldn't dip in such a foul pool.
ql in ny: Sorry for you guys who were the butt of his rage, but that was just about the funniest non-issue raged about here.
It would seem a majority of folx have been the butt of his rage. If you're heterosexual, you've endured his wrath (which is odd, since I'm sure he would agree that sexuality is not a choice).
Some folx are just more willing to indulge and/or endure it that others.
.
I was thinking Incog was in Shreveport, unless he moved recently.
If so, he's not even in the path; which is good.
as for the rest of you, well, Robertson thinks prayers steer hurricanes, but I don't. Still, all I can do is pray for the city to be spared, and for everyone in NO to be safe.
christ im sick of npr putting on wingers for "balance". if i wanted that kind of balance id watch fox.
Evacuations are mandatory for Plaquemines Parish (below NOLA). NO Mayor Nagin will announce something at around noon today.
Here in Baton Rouge hotels are all booked up...and, regardless of whether or not they open up I-10 in both directions, traffic will be awful.
Ouch. NOLA has been lucky more than once in the past few years--unfortunately, the city hasn't done a whole lot to protect itself in the interim. Not that there's a whole lot of money to do that locally (but some $200 billion dollars have been spent by the feds...over in the Middle East...on a fool's errand of a war).
Geez.
jawbone-
I caught a piece of it. Goldberg was arguing that the demotion of the Justice's head statistician was because he was biased and opinionated.
Yeah, right.
Michael--I have family in Baton Rouge. I assume, then it's considered "safe." Which is some comfort, at least.
Let me be the first -- and hopefully last -- to make the "Katrina and the Waves" joke.
Looks like "Katrina" will make some "Waves"! But she won't be "Walking on Sunshine!"
Let there please be no more of that sort of thing. Thank you.
Evacuations are mandatory for Plaquemines Parish (below NOLA). NO Mayor Nagin will announce something at around noon today.
Well, gonna go cue up Randy Newman, now.
"Louisiana. Louisiana. They're tryin' to wash us away. They're tryin' to wash us away."
Goldberg should be strapped to the bottom of an underarmored Humvee. If he absorbs the blast of an IED with the massive bulk of his body, thereby saving the life of a soldier, his life will not have been a total waste.
lb Katrina looks nasty.
Can you leave for NJ a few days early?
File this under the category: "Saying it to keep it from happening."
Louisiana 1927
by Randy Newman
What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne
CHORUS
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."
CHORUS
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
Ooh, rmj... looks like you beat me to the punch whilst I was googling the lyrics.
Great minds, and all that.
rmj
we have it playing right now.
Got a hotel in Birmingham in case we flee (queue more Randy....)
Let's all hope not. New Orleans could be in a world of hurt with a direct hit by a major hurricane.
I sure hope things work out well. Last year the place we stayed on Pensacola Beach disappeared in Ivan -- the building literally washed out to sea.
The Shrub Oligarchy is now in a pretty pickle --- secretly hoping that New Orleans gets hit BIG TIME so that the resulting massive Federal Aid will take Shrub's sinking numbers, the mess in Iraq, The impending Rove indictments, the Robert's hearings, and Cindy Sheehan off the front pages and out of the National Psyche for a few months .........
ON the other hand -- Louisiana's Gov IS a Democrat -- any aid to her State would only help those cravens who HATE America -- i.e., Blue Staters... and help preserve that patch of blue in the sea of red called The South.
AS the Wicked Witch said in The Wizard Of Oz -- "What a World, what a World!!"
Turned the radio on about 9am but didn't get up, and had slid back into a light doze before the week in review segment started. Woke up a cople minutes into it and within seconds was mumbling to myself "Jeez, who is this idiot?" Found out at the end. What a waste of protoplasm Goldberg is.
About all we can do for NO at this point is pray. What you want to bet if there is a major disaster, Pat "Assassinate'em" Robertson will be blaming it on the "immorality" of the inhabitants?
Anyone else get an image of Bush and Rove when you read the Randy Newman lyric about President Coolidge and the little fat man?
Oy. Looks as though Mississippi's in for a world of hurt as well...
Michael--I have family in Baton Rouge. I assume, then it's considered "safe." Which is some comfort, at least.
Rmj, Wandering Aengus - 10:33 am
we lost about a third of the roof to Hurrican Andrew...winds in Baton Rouge reached mor than 100 mph, more tyhan 90 miles inland...
but andrew was a monster storm...Red Stick is likely safe from flooding, though not necessarily the wind, if it is high enough...
Incog's in Shreveport.
New Orleans is a different matter.
Read "Isaac's Storm" by Erik Larson about the hurricane that wiped out Galveston in 1900. It's believed to have killed 10,000 people and remains the greatest natural disaster in the US.
I sure hope this avoids NO.
Sheets. Couple sets. No starch unless GWPDA got to them already. Atrios is into the espresso beans again.
No starch unless GWPDA got to them already. Atrios is into the espresso beans again.
Ahianne
They're only sprinkled!
I am sure they will be ironed into submisssion in no time flat.
I am sure they will be ironed into submisssion in no time flat.
Damn, where's that mangle?
Morning.
I've got my sister, bro-in-law and large dog living in Jefferson and her in-laws living in Kemmerer. No one is answering phones at their abodes, which I hope means they've goten the hell out of there (Ponchetrain is in her in-law's freaking BACKYARD). Knowing that fmaily, though, they're just making liquor runs for their hurricane party. Apparently, courage under fire stems from drinking oneself under the table. Well, at least you're nice and relaxed when the riverboat casino lands on your roof.
fmaily=family
Heloscan has not been letting me post at all for the last week. I keep getting a "get failed" message, when offends me in some way I can't really articulate...
"Michael--I have family in Baton Rouge. "
just outta curiosity...why did someone name a city 'red stick'?
just outta curiosity...why did someone name a city 'red stick'?
More mysterious, certainly, than "The Grand Tetons."
To all of you in who are in the path of Katrina; Be safe, go with grace and know our thoughts and prayers are with you.
Thanks, guys. I plan to keep blogging until we lose power.
just outta curiosity...why did someone name a city 'red stick'?
jdw | Email | 08.27.05 - 11:06 am
the original french settlement there was built on the border of lands presided over (not 'owned') by two contesting, though neighboring, tribes...
the 'red stick' was a marker which denoted the border between the two...
iirc
TJ, lb1313 (others?)...
good luck...
all i can say...
all my best wishes cannot stop the wind and flood, but you are in my thoughts...
.
For details of what the forecasters are thinking see
www.nhc.noaa.gov
Click on the 'discussion' and that summarizes the latest set of model runs. Models are run every 6 hours and so discussion is updated 11 am/pm and 5 am/pm est.
11 am discussion has most models in fairly good agreement on track. Usual caveats apply but track forecasts of a storm this large are guite good.
Only hope for a negative to decrease strength of Katrina is upper shear strengthening just before landfall.
Please follow local emergency officials. If you insist in staying, notify someone and consider 'vertical' evacuation in a strong hi rise. Take at least 3 days supplies, esp. water.
Stay safe
My parents split for Alexandria this morning. The rest of our friends are heading for the hills probably tomorrow morning.
I'm glad I moved to NC in June. Man, what a mess. Everything says this is the worst-case scenario. Hoepfully it will do a Georges and hook toward Gulfport at the last minute. But what are the odds of that happening twice in 10 years?
Cross your fingers and hope Cooter Browns stays above water.
Thanks, WoodyGuthriesGuitar. Figured it had to refer to some sort of property marker but have never heard an explanation.
Rmj, Wandering Aengus
Sorry about not getting back sooner...Saturday morning chores and all...
BR should be safe enough--it's pretty far inland (100 miles or so) and if the storm track is to the east we'll get more wind than rain. It's also on relatively high ground (20-40 feet above sea level).
Interestingly enough, the Mississippi river is WAY low for this time of year--until the hurricane, most news/weather stories were focused on the low water--they say "4 feet above sea level," but I think they mean 4 feet above absolute low water level. Again, upriver is worse. Barge traffic is restricted to one direction at a time.
NOLA, though, could be in BIG trouble if Katrina hits.
More mysterious, certainly, than "The Grand Tetons."
SteveLG
Those wascally French exploreres. What ever could they have been thinking.
On a related note, Jackson Hole used to be called Jackson's Hole by way of an early trapper that used to occupy the flatland surronded by the mountains. Some uppity society types thought that it didn't sound proper. Wimps.
And WGG is right about "Red Stick." The dividing line between the Native and French settlements was (I think) a red cedar that they stripped the branches off of. Natives called it Istrouma--meaning "Red Stick" in their language, the French called it Baton Rouge. There's a neighborhood in north BR called Istrouma to this day.
The bluff at Southern University is traditionally considered where the marker was located.
Oh, WGG--obviously the Randy Newman original is awesome, but Chris LeBlanc does a decent cover of Louisiana 1927. As for THAT, a really good book called Rising Tide is worth reading (Coolidge, btw, never made it down here. Herbert Hoover did, and that propelled his candidacy in 1928. The dynamiting of the levee in Plaquemines wasn't necessary, and, despite written promises, the folks down there were never adequately compensated for their losses. Even weirder, Leander Perez was, at that time, one of the 'good guys'--it was before he turned himself in the the Pasha of Plaquemines Parish).
My brother, sister-in-law and two nephews are in the NO area. IIRC, Steve said they're on what passes as "higher ground," which really wouldn't help all that much, I'd guess, in a really bad storm.
It figures - most of the family members still speaking to me are in FL or LA. The rest of the family is propbably blaming the hurricanes on that! 
Anybody see that made-for-TV flick "Oil Storm"? Was on FX back in June.
It opened in September 2005 with a major hurricane ripping through the Gulf, knocking over oil rigs AND taking out the big refinery in south Louisiana. After that things got entirely ugly.....
I started out watching the thing for giggles (which it deserved for overall cheesyness and characters for whom cardboard would have been an upgrade) but as it went on there wasn't a single plot element that could be written off as impossible, or even improbable, or for that matter anything less than inevitable. The only thing to quibble about is the likelihood of all of them happening over the next six months or so.
Of course as recently as yesterday morning Katrina was supposed to execute a sharp right turn and curl up through the FL panhandle. This one has been tricky and unpredictable even by standards of this year.
I am not worried about New Orleans.
I grew up there, and weathered, as a thirteen year old, Hurricane Betsy. We slept in the hallway because that was the strongest part of the house. No power for eleven days in my part of the city. The real danger was from Camille, the same time as Woodstock, Aug 18 1969; I was interviewing for college at the U of Chicago and missed it. The then director of the levees, Ed Lennox, said that if Camille had hit New Orleans head-on, a hundred thousand would have drowned. That got people's attention, and they built the Bonne Carré Spillway.
Unless Katrina builds to a Camille-like intensity (and Camille had sustained winds of upwards of 175 mph, and gusts to 225 mph--no joke at all), New Orleans will ride this one out no problem.
Yes, yes, the city is below sea level, and yes, yes, the water could spill into it like coffee into a saucer, but I think the Spillway can handle nearly any of those problems. Not all.
N'ahlins? Is Asscrack still down there looking for whores?
The Spillway has nothing at all to do with hurricane flooding. The Spillway is an overflow valve for the Mississippi River to take pressure levies if the River rises too high in the spring. It dumps river water into the lake.
Hurricanes don't raise river levels but leave everything else dry, they surge everywhere at once, the river, the lake, the Gulf, everything, plus dump shitloads from the sky. You could open the Spillway today and leave it open until Christmas and it wouldn't make a bit of difference for New Orleans. They're looking at a very serious problem if that storm hits the city dead on.
Unless Katrina builds to a Camille-like intensity (and Camille had sustained winds of upwards of 175 mph, and gusts to 225 mph--no joke at all), New Orleans will ride this one out no problem.
Dude, FEMA predicts the results from a category 4 or above Hurricanes eye wall hitting New Orleans to be flooding of the entire city, massive structural damage because of damage due to the storm surge (which is caused by massively low pressure and not an excess of water, so the spillway will make no diffreence) downtown and in the Quarter and anybody left in the city would likely die.
I don't know much about Betsy, but I'm willing to bet that it was either a low category storm or that New Orleans wasn't near the eye wall or both.
Thanks, Atrios, for the show of support--okay, I'm not in NO; I'm in Baton Rouge, but still things could get rough here. However, everybody's right that the Big Easy is the place to worry about. I went through Alicia in Houston back in '83, which was intense, but then Houston's not a bowl, either. I also dealt with the massive flooding from tropical storm Allison there just a few years ago: if NO gets even half the rain that Houston did, it's totally submerged. Keep your fingers crossed.
Here's some NO photoblogging I've done to let everybody see what's on the line.
Called my mom to see if she would evacuate. Nope. She's bought some bourbon and plans to ride it out.
One only hopes that this thing spares my beloved New Orleans.
Betsy was a 3 or 4 I believe, but there was a lot more marsh between NOLA and the Gulf then.
That marsh is almost gone. and in 80 years, NOLA will have an oceanfront view.
Thanks, Atrios.
Storm surge is caused by the increase in friction when the water being driven before the hurricane "feels" the seabed. The water no longer can be driven downward into the ocean and so it piles up above the surface. Pressure difference even in Cat. 5 raises sea level only about one meter. The Present Cat4. surge scenario is +25 ft. in the Bay St. Louis region east of NO. Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles parishes will take some water if Katrina eventuates as forecast.
A scary problem in the NO region is that it is - and has been - subsiding. No one-NO ONE-really knows any more just how high the levees are. The elevation benchmarks are sinking along with everything else.
Another scary bit of knowledge is that the levees are designed to protect for what is called the "Standard Design Storm". That roughly is equivalent to a fast-moving Cat. 2 storm.
Just two of the problems those of us who study storm surge deal with in that region of the coast.
And if you still are reading - the values of surge quoted in official bulletins are with reference to Mean Sea Level - NOT above the terrain.
I hope the Carmelite nuns are working in shifts this weekend. This one is going to be close.
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