Hurricane Katrina


Hurricane Katrina coverage on the Weather Channel is what I’ve been watching the last few days on and off, I watched it through this past night (when I was awake, as I was and have been the last several days, a pattern that I go through often enough, it’s not unusual) and so I’ve seen it all as it came through and changed into a humoungous hurricane and gained fame as the 4th strongest hurricane in the US ever recorded. Hows that for an introductory runon sentence 😉

Katrina is making her third landfall right now, in Missippippi. Jim Cantori remarked in a phoned in report not long ago that the flooding he saw where he is was “something I’ve never seen” … a big statement coming from him! He reported that they were 27 or so feet above sea level, and thought themselves safe from the surge, but had to suddenly evacuate to higher ground when the water came into the parking lot and was covering the cars in about 20 minutes … three to four feet of water, 27 feet above sea level.

The Weather Channel is remarking too that the surge forcasted is the highest surge ever, wave heights are huge too. Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane yesterday, and weakened to a Cat 4 in the night before landfall, but at landfall she was 140 mph sustained winds and that’s nothing to shirk off. Not as bad as the previous strength of 175 mph, but still … 140 is bad. 100 is bad enough.

We are in NE Georgia, and not in harms way, but will be under a flood watch later, and a wind advisory (25 mph or more sustained winds) and most likely a tornado watch. So that’s not NOT in harms way, really.

Reports of fuel problems are racking up. Gas prices will surely rise, shortages become a problem in The South, maybe nationally, that’s what I heard from Jeb Bush, Gov. of Florida, on TV a bit ago, and that’s also data that’s reported elsewhere.

Jim Cantori was talking in his phone report that I discussed above that all sorts of things were floating around, like a big garbage bin, the sort that looks like a train box, just floating around, that’s a super heavy tonage kind of thing just floating around.

The air around our house changed since yesterday. It was mild feeling yesterday, not too hot nor too humid. I walked outside this morning, and it wasn’t hot, but I could barely breathe, it was so humid, so very tropically humid. Thanks to God that we have A/C window units this part of summer! 🙂

Frank is flying to Florida for a short trip for work. He had to go, this was planned before Katrina was born. He’ll be there overnight and the concern is airport troubles when flying home tomorrow.

Right now, on TWC there’s another phone report coming in from where Jim Cantori is, his producer, and he is talking about the flooding problems, and that they now had to be evacuated to the second floor of the building they are in, he said the water out there earlier was literally a sudden river rushing at them, and they had to flee for their lives, and that NOW there is at least 6 inches of water on the first floor of the hotel …. the worst any of them, the crew that covers these hurricane events, has ever seen. Absolutely the worst ever.

This is a historic storm. I thought as much when I heard that Katrina was named. She lived up to her name. That hard “K” sound is feisty. Camille was feisty too. Katrina wasn’t too nasty her first landfall, but people died. That’s bad. The damage that we’ll see in the coming weeks when crews can get into the areas now under threat will be interesting. This isn’t good, but it’s stuff that I love to see. I’m very weather-fan-storm-chaser oriented. Some people have to be. I didn’t “professionally” go into weather … I could have, but didn’t. I don’t mean I had an opportunity, but I could possibly have, but didn’t pursue it. I’ve been a storm enthusiast since I was very young.

The point of this post is just to record the event, this very historic event, Hurricane Katrina. We are under her cloudy edge, the outer outer clouds associated with the monster storm. We’ll see some wind and rain most likely later, I’ll report back as to what happens.


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