Gustav, go away!

Well, it looks like my little rhizomes are going to get a trial this summer afterall. Fay only dumped 4+ inches of rain within a few hours the other day (we were VERY lucky!), but Gustav is on her heels coming to give us a harder dose. I'm not too thrilled with the predicted path posted at the National Weather Service. We've got lots of New Orleans friends calling to make evacuation arrangements already... so hopefully if it does end up here, most people will be out of harm's way even if the property (and gardens!) are not. The LSU season opener is the same night that interstate contraflow starts, so with already booked hotels for football and one-way evacuation traffic, this could get VERY stressful around here!

I will keep my fingers crossed for you and the others in his path:(

Oh, no! Not again. My farm really suffered from Katrina and we are just getting most of the wood burned up, and now another. I hope Gustav isn't as bad as Katrina was! It was a direct hit on my place in Lumberton.

Well nuts, now they're predicting Cat 3 by the time it gets here. The New Orleans repairs are only expected to hold at Cat 1 or possibly 2 at this point. They are so definitely not ready for a major event yet.

Pajaritomt, I hope your farm doesn't take as hard a hit this go around.

Of course, it is impossible to predict, but I look at the map with dots you posted and I see that track curling a little more toward the Mississipp Gulf Coast than to New Orleans. The farm is due north and a bit east of Biloxi. I hate to wish trouble on others, but maybe it will miss New Orleans and not hit Lumberton head on. Or maybe it will fizzle and go back down in size. It could happen!

I know. I am dreaming.
New Orleans still hasn't recovered from Katrina. I so hope this thing turns around and heads for the North Atlantic. But we haven't even reached September yet.

Parajitomt, you're right that it's impossible to totally predict. At 2 am, NWS said New Orleans, then mid-morning, it was headed more westerly, then 3 pm, it turned back east/northeast. The problem with it headed on its current predicted path is that if it hits the mouth of the Mississippi, which is exactly where it's headed at the moment, storms historically take that path over water instead of hitting land, and head right up to New Orleans and on to us (the next port up on the Mississippi). I'd prefer that track go either direction just a bit (or a whole, whole lot would be even better!!!) just to avoid catching the mouth of the Ol' Mississip!

We would all prefer that. I don't get as much info on the hurricane here in New Mexico as you do there. I wish I could follow it more closely. Will call the farm tomorrow.

Actually, you can keep up with it the same way we do with the local news stations' websites. Here's the link to the CBS local affiliate's weather section (my preferred source):

http://www.wafb.com/Global/category.asp?C=4181&nav=menu57_3

And here's the link to the NBC local affiliate's weather section:

http://www.2theadvocate.com/weather

Thanks. I will definitely listen to them!

Nice links Blissfulgarden... we don't get that much info in the Dallas/Fort worth area. My favorite local link dropped some of the options, such as the computer projected paths, which was one of my favorites. I see your link still has that option... Thanks for sharing it.

I've been using this one http://www.hurricanetrack.com/ some good info here too.

I feel for you folks on the gulf coast. We're far enough North that we can only hope for some much needed rain, but for some reason the storms seem to turn sharply away from us when they make landfall.

I pray you folks don't suffer the rath of this one.

Dan

Dan, thanks for the link... and for the prayers. =)

I try to stick just to the science-oriented sites for the national end. Places like the Weather Channel don't have my trust anymore. I just posted this a little while ago in the MidSouth forum, but y'all aren't likely to see it there, so I'll post it here. Another member was worried because Jim Cantory showed up in Biloxi tonight. She thought that meant that Gustav must be headed there for sure, so I posted this personal experience:

Don't read too much into Jim Cantory being there. They've been soooo wrong before! I remember for Ivan... all the models showed it coming straight for us with strength. Well, the Weather Channel sent their team over here and were ready to broadcast, but then Ivan had other plans. We basically got a puff of wind. But if you turned on the Weather Channel, you would have thought it was so ominous here! There he was standing under the Acadian Thruway overpass talking about how it was getting "darker and darker" (of course it was, it was becoming NIGHT!!!) and they were switching to interviews with people who definitely could NOT have been here in Baton Rouge... I mean like people in shacks out in the bayou talking about the "h'alimagators comin' up in da haus, cher!" with the by-line underneath reading "Baton Rouge, Louisiana". My husband and I sat there watching this wondering if the Weather Channel was in some alternate universe somewhere, because they certaintly weren't here!!! There are no houses in bayous in Baton Rouge, and there are no alligators threatening us during hurricanes or any other storm!!!



Weather Channel, both on tv and online, lost my trust for good that day. We stick with the National Weather Service, weatherunderground.com and the local channels now, no matter if we're looking up info for weather here, or for my brother in Ohio, or Tom's sister in your area Zac (she's in Plano), or our daughter in Atlanta.


This message was edited Aug 28, 2008 12:24 AM

I, too, gave up on the Weather Channel both on TV and on line. On line, they always project sunshine here. According to them it never rains in New Mexico. Well, I admit we could use more rain, but the truth is that it does rain here from time to time. In fact, they are failing to predict 16 inches per year.
On TV the broadcaster always stands in front of New Mexico because we are lightest populated state that can be covered by the body of a Weather Forecaster.

I, too, use the National Weather Service and Weather Underground. But I appreciate the local links for Louisiana news. I listened to Jindal's talk, or at least one of them. It sounds as if people are more on the ball this time. I certainly hope so. And all of this on the night of LSU's opening game. What a mess!

I was at the farm for Ivan. By the time we realized that we should evacuate, the highways were so jammed with traffic that there was no hope of getting out. So we stayed. We had a little wind, but didn't even lose our electricity which is routed through a pine forest on wire. So things can change, but chances are that this hurricane will hit someone!

Gustav appears to be headed toward Lake Charles, La. not New Orleans, but we all know that can change. I feel sorry for whoever gets it although FEMA seems to be a little bit ahead of where it was in 2001. Let us hope, at least.

Well, it depends on how it hits. If Gustav is a Cat 3 when it hits, and if it hits by Houma, which is the current track, then New Orleans and Baton Rouge are both in the Northeast quadrant of the storm (the worst side to be on intensity wise). Corps of Engineers has said the repairs in New Orleans are only up to Cat 1 right now, but if Gustav hits at Cat 3, the Northeast quadrant will have wind and damage above a Cat 1. Hopefully it drifts even more westerly, but of course, that would be HORRIBLE news for Lake Charles, which was hit quite badly by Rita in a slam dunk right after Katrina. Best case scenario would be if Gustav pulls a "Lily" and dies 20 miles out!!! They studied Lily for 2 years to figure out how and why a Cat 4 storm pulled up and died at the last minute before hitting landfall. As much as we can predict, there is still so much we don't know about the weather.

Yes, I have been thinking about Lake Charles. I will hope for a Lily -- the only good answer to any hurricane, really. Actually Katrina died down to a level 3 before hitting land. So it did a partial Lily. It is incredible to me that the levees in New Orleans are only up to Cat 1 today. When I was a college student I went through Betsy ( now revealing my age). I don't know if they had category levels then, but I would guess that it was a 3 at the minimum. There was damage after Betsy, but nothing like after Katrina. It sounds as if the New Orleans infrastructure has degraded since my college days. How sad!
I wonder how levees for cities along the rest of the Gulf Coast are rated these days. Houma strikes me as being particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. I wonder if its levees are any better than those of New Orleans.

My husband and his family were in New Orleans for Betsy... and he says that the storm was just as bad there as Katrina, but there were also many key factors that you didn't have with Katrina. First, he said they did a LOT more self-help then. Second, the city wasn't nearly as populated. Third, there was a lot less development and more land for runoff. Fourth, the levees were practically new at the time, so they were stronger. Lack of appropriate maintenance contributed to the levee failures, along with a barge hitting the side of the levee! Without the levee failures, the damage in New Orleans would probably have been less than it had been for Betsy, percentage-wise when compared to the amount of development in the city. Fifth, the Gulf Outlet didn't exist during Betsy, and the Gulf Outlet has been blamed for a lot of the water that came into New Orleans post-Katrina from backwash. I could go on and on. Betsy was hard here in Baton Rouge too... I can remember our neighbors standing in the doorway of their house with a shotgun. The water was literally RIGHT at the thresholds of our houses, but it hadn't come in yet. There was some FOOL riding around in a boat on the street creating a wake and causing water to enter people's homes... so our neighbor was trying to intimidate him to not come down our block. It was definitely intense!

Bottom line, as much as I enjoy New Orleans, and with as many friends as I have down there, and as much as I treasure tradition... history has taught us that rebuilding in the exact same fashion as it was before Katrina is just asking for another disaster.

I completely agree with your last statement. Houses in New Orleans and throughout the bayou country used to be built up on brick pilings if not higher. Now they are built on slabs. The levees worked during Betsy. Most of the damage was from wind. And the wind was ferocious. But water that won't go away is worse. And that was the result of the levee failures in Katrina.
I can tell you that I had long ago decided not to live in New Orleans, but to visit it as much as possible. I am still adamant about that. It is so sad to see a great city and culture being wiped out by failure to face reality about the fact that most of New Orleans is below sea level.
The Netherlands had a serious storm/flood in the 50's and built the whole place back with dykes and dams and pumping systems that enable them to live safely below sea level. The US needs to do the same -- or maybe even better. I am very sad to see that we haven't made much progress since Katrina.
Yes, if New Orleans and Baton Rouge are on the NE side of the hurricane things will be pretty bad. I certainly hope FEMA and the National Guard and the buses show up a whole lot earlier this time.

A state of emergency has already been in place for a day or two, so the National Guard is already called up. The busses were ordered two days ago and evacuation of the highest risk people (nursing homes, hospitals, etc.) has already begun in the lowest part of the state. Hotlines were also opened through many South Louisiana parishes two days ago for registration if people felt they would need assistance evacuating. Many of the hotel rooms here in Baton Rouge are already reserved for emergency personnel and first responders (there was a news story about that the other day). In fact, they're trying to get people not to come here for evacuation but to continue further north so that the city can function better for first response staging. That was a problem during Katrina. We had so much air traffic for supplies coming into our airport that we became the second busiest airport in the country... but the personnel who needed access to the materials had a hard time finding someplace in town to stay because of all the evacuees. If people fail to find safety this time, it's definitely not because the government didn't react in time.

I am pleased to hear that. I don't believe that was true during Katrina. Wherever the storm comes ashore, there will be a great need for help. The problem is that no one can tell until the last minute where that will be. I stayed up all night waiting for Ivan to hit Lumberton, as it looked like it would do, but it hit Mobile and environs instead. All we had was a few broken branches. But I didn't know that would be the case until it happened. My heart goes out to anyone who lives where this hurricane comes ashore.
You are right that there weren't so many people in Louisiana at the time. That definitely increases the problem.

It's not looking good for Gustav to pull a "Lily" and die mid-Gulf. It's intensifying rapidly and is currently a Cat 4 hurricane. I-10 and I-12 converge in Baton Rouge but are shockingly not crowded at the moment. I can only hope that means people hit I-55 and headed toward Mississippi and Alabama (which would make more sense as Gustav is pointed right at us at the moment!). I pray that folks are not waiting to evacuate. Here's the latest projection:

At least they seemed to be moving nursing home patients & people without cars.

I am surprised that people aren't leaving already. I guess they figure 1 day ahead is enough! Not if the roads are jam packed with evacuees as they have been in the past. Hattiesburg fills up all its hotels days ahead and so does Jackson, Miss. Are they still planning to have the LSU game on Sunday?

For those of you with loved ones in the path of Gustav, you may want a closer image that will allow you to see how close the storm will come to a particular city. Our local weather station has a tracker that allows you to zoom in where you want to go, with the current projected path charted. Below is the current path zoomed in for New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Gustav is currently predicted to hit at Cat 3 and reduce to Cat 1 inland. Both New Orleans and Baton Rouge will be in the Northeast quadrant... not good news as that is the worst place to be in the storm, but at least it's predicted at a lower category at this point. Here's a link so you can look up any town you want:

http://www.wafb.com/Global/category.asp?C=137830&nav=menu57_3_10

Gustav is being tracked on this thread in the weather forum, in case any of you missed it http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/896132/

Deb

I was pulling a few of my babies out to take pictures for the other thread (about bloomstalks) and thought y'all might like to see their living quarters for the next few days while Gustav comes to visit. This is what 220 little guys look like while hunkering down... standing room only! Most of them are in 4.5" pots, but the ones on the top shelf in the very front are in 6" pots because the rhizomes were too large and had too many nubs to fit in the 4.5" pots (LOVE that grower!). Life certainly would be easier if we had an enclosed garage, but they're not the norm down here because we have no snow. Ev =)

So far, this is the weirdest hurricane I've ever experienced. Typically, a hurricane announces itself with lots of rain and some wind gusts. Gustav apparently doesn't throw his temper tantrums with lots of tears; we're not experiencing heavy rain at all! However, the wind gusts are extremely frequent and strong, so the sustained wind readings and Category are very misleading with this storm. We've already seen quite a bit fly past and the eye is many hours away. Several tornadoes have already spun off in our area as well... which to me are the most frightening part of a hurricane. Everything else you can prepare for, but tornadoes are anybody's guess.

Oh great... news just announced a barge has broken loose in New Orleans' Industrial Canal. WHY didn't they clear them from the canal this time?!?!?!?!

Here's the latest Doppler:

Be safe!!!

Thank goodness your beautiful rhizomes are still in pots. I hear it got pretty bad down there. I hope you are safe and that you suffered no damage to your property.

Checking in from BR... still no power here, and no generator. We're on very slow dial-up with sporadic service, so the photos I keep trying to upload are truncated before they finish. Frustration! We faired very well personally.... just lots of broken limbs on the oak tree, the fence is gone and most of our neighbors' trees are in our pool. But, we're very lucky. Other neighbors, most of whom are elderly, have trees in their homes. I will post pics when I can find a reliable phone line, but it's pretty impossible to upload when each photo takes a recharge of the laptop in the car for 50 minutes, then 20 minutes to get an open phone line, and then after 30 minutes of upload, it truncates before even ONE photo is up. Blah. We spent the day with our three 90+ year old neighbors cutting up trees in their houses. Our one problem seems to be our city parish officials are not on the ball. Other parishes have emergency supplies, but we were reported as the hardest hit, and our supplies are still not being distributed. The local news has reported that the supplies are here, but that they are not being distributed yet because of "communication problems" between our mayor's office and the FEMA officials... which seems very odd since FEMA has headquartered HERE. Since every other parish is already distributing supplies, I have to believe this is a local problem (for those of you who are tempted to blame democrat or republican, we have a democrat mayor but his head of staff handling the distributton is a long-time republican... so not political in my belief).

I tried to upload photos three times to Dave's Garden now, with no luck. It keeps truncating because the phone lines aren't completely working yet... lots of static. Small files of text (like this) get through, but photos get cut off. So, I'll try again tomorrow. We'll all be fine... we will pull together.... and THANKS to all the other parts of the country who have helped. We just got word that Philadelphia sent down 56 ambulances to move our patients from one of the local hospitals with no power to some place further north. THANK YOU!!! God Bless! Ev =)


This message was edited Sep 2, 2008 11:50 PM

Hi Ev Glad to hear that you are all right. Don't worry about photos until situation improves and thanks for checking in & giving us news.

Sorry to hear about your damage, Ev, but glad that you and your 90 year old neighbors are safe. Sorry to hear that FEMA can't get its act together for Baton Rouge. My place in Lumberton only got a few puffs of wind and no damage, but lots of water -- up over the dock on our lake. We were doing some work on the dam and had routed the stream which feeds the lake around it but the water went over the still-under-construction spillway of the dam. We have our fingers crossed that it will be okay when the water goes down. Right now you can't see the part they were working on.
But apparently everything else was okay including my elderly neighbors who take care of the place for me.
Good luck getting power and a decent phone line again. My neighbors in Lumberton said they saw a seemingly endless line of power company trucks pouring down highway 59 yesterday headed south. Help is on the way, it seems.

Ev, I'm glad you're safe. I'm sorry to hear about the damage. It's so good of you to help your elderly neighbors. I wish all of you and them the best.

We can do without the photos -- for now. I'm sure you've got more important things to do!

Well, I've been making waves wherever I go since I last checked in I guess! First I visited my mother-in-law in her Alzheimer's Unit (after being told via multiple news conferences that ALL nursing facilities that received evacuees had also received sufficient generators) to find her dripping in sweat, crammed in a room with all the other Alzheimer's patients in the very back corridor of the facility. The airflow from the pumped in generator-supplied air stopped about 2 corridors up. Needless to say, I was decidedly not happy about this. Lucky for me, the director of the facility was escorting two members of our local newspaper staff out, declining an interview, when I was about to leave to go scream bloody murder at the Governor's OEP. Well... standing policy is that no legitimate visitor is turned away, so that reporter and photographer became my new best friends and accompanied me back to visit with Thelma. Thelma (and the story) made the front page the next morning, and miraculously, the power was restored!

Next I set my sights on trying to get energy to the elderly households in town. Entergy has been working VERY hard... but bottom line was that the restoration estimates they gave put the oldest populations in the city with no power for 21 days. Unacceptable. It's not like the government doesn't KNOW where the elderly live in Baton Rouge... they have tax records with birthdates and addresses. Perhaps the visit I made to our Congressman's mobile office and the long conversation there may have been a coincidence... I really can't say how the miracle happened. But, somehow the three oldest-population neighborhoods that were slated for 21 days out were bumped up the list and are now all restored to power, at only 8 days out. Work in the neighborhoods began on the night of the day I went to visit Cazayoux's office, so he has my gratitude whether he was responsible or not!

Now that my own power is restored, I've uploaded my photos to a webpage. I must say... I'm pretty aggravated at the lack of appropriate news coverage that Gustav has received. I can only hope that once Ike hits, the people in Texas receive the attention they deserve. Recovery post-Katrina came through the efforts of many, many people who offered their time and talents from throughout the country... mainly as a result of the coverage. We could definitely have benefitted from that attention this time here in Louisiana. I'm sure the folks in Texas will too, if Ike packs anything near what they anticipate. Here's the link to my Gustav photos:

http://eveysblissfulgarden.com/Gustav

Haha, had to share this too... I was just checking our local CBS news website about the progress of Ike. The cycling banner ad and storyline popped up in a combination that I just HAD to do a screen save of! I think perhaps the owner of our local McDonald's franchises didn't have this particular combination in mind when he placed his order: Filet-o-Fish sandwich advertised surrounding a photo of the post-Gustav fish kill at Bayou LaFourche.... complete with the byline "Reel It In!" HAHAHAHA!!!

Glad to hear you are alive and well and out stumping for the old people without power and especially, without air condition.

The Fillet-O-Fish add with the fish kill was hysterical. I think the McDonald's owner should ask for his/her money back.

Glad to hear you have your power back, too. There definitely has been a lack of news on Gustav. I only recently heard that most of Baton Rouge was still without electricity.

Congratulations on all your agitation of the authorities. Sometimes they need direction. Great way to spend your time.

Kudos to you BlissfulGarden!!! The world needs more people like you.
Thank you.

Great pictures on your website. I especially like the one where the woman was standing next to the refrigerator with a tree stabbing through it. Who would believe that could happen?

Blessed be the ranters for they will receive action even the reporters are subject to idiotic surperiors.

Ev, that tree trunk could have killed someone! I agree with Sempervi -- the world needs more people like you.

Figaro, you're right. There were 10 deaths due to trees falling on homes and cars. One death is not more tragic than another, but one couple truly wrenched my heart. The first couple lost was an elderly couple from Abbeville (close to the coast) who had evacuated to Baton Rouge to be safe with their daughter. A massive tree fell on the house, killing the elderly couple and injuring both the daughter and her husband (the house is the one on Elmcrest in Pollard). We were truly blessed throughout the state that more lives were not lost. On every street, you find massive trees that fell without physically hurting anyone. In many cases, the residents were home and had moved to central locations of the house (if we didn't flood, storm basements sure would come in handy!!!). The photo on my webpage on Tinley Drive belongs to a couple in their 90's and they were both home when literally half of their house was crushed... both sides at once! They were in the center of the house when it happened and were uninjured physically.