It's 10 PM Sunday night and I'm about to shut it down and try to sleep. According to Weather Underground, landfall has been moved up a few hours. Ironically, that's good news. It means that the storm will have less time to build up a storm surge. The storm surge actually causes more damage than the wind in many cases.
We're too far north to have to worry about storm surge. Most of our forecasts are still predicting that the highest winds we can expect here in this area of the parish will be 50-65 miles/hour. Pretty scary to experience, but not generally causing widespread damage.
The recovery concerns me now. Churches have been sending folks to Louisiana for three years, and now there's going to be so much more work to be done. This storm will cause a lot of damage in both the Katrina zone and the Rita zone. This actually has the potential to be worse than Katrina in terms of wind, rain and flooding. Fortunately, we learned from Katrina, and New Orleans has been evacuated, except for law enforcement, OEP personnel, government officials, and first responders. And, of course, the homeless. The ones who are too mentally ill to make good decisions for themselves.
They're letting people bring their pets when they evacuate this time. Too many people refused to leave because their cats and dogs couldn't come with them. It's easy for me to say how dumb I think that is because I have a child and I can't imagine putting her in danger for a cat. I remember a time, though, when my cat Charlie was my child, and I'm not sure I could have left him. I'm glad they're respecting those relationships and letting people bring their animals with them.
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