Hurricane

I wasn't worried too much about this one, I mean slightly, but nothing to panic about. Well, now the damn thing, Gustav, which was a mere Tropical Storm though nearly a Category 1 Hurricane, is a Category 3!! (For those of you who don't know 5 is the highest, and while Katrina started out as a 4 or 5, when it made landfall it was a 3). I am personally no where near the storm, being on the opposite side of the country, but my family is there.

According to the weather channel the storm hit a patch of very warm water near Cuba, and went through a period of rapid intensification - i.e. the pressure drops, it gets more organized, and the wind speed goes up. All in the last 24 hrs. Right now, they don't think that New Orleans will be in the direct path, but these storms are so hard to predict, and besides even if N.O doesn't get a direct hit, all the rain and tornadoes spawned by hurricanes can still cause damage to the city and surrounding areas.

Incidentally, yesterday was the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. People are so nervy though. Ray Nagin, the mayor of N.O., has already ordered all the tourists out of the city by noon. When I talked to my parents last week, they said people were already buying up all the water, canned goods, and generators. This was before Gustave was even a serious threat.

The city is definitely on the ball though. No mass shelters in the city (remember the Super Dome), and they are trying to bus as many people out as posssible, although really the public transportation down there sucks. Also, the evacuation of special needs patients started this morning, along with some other people who would have no other way out. Right now it is not a mandatory evacuation, but that will go into effect probably tomorrow. However, in St. Charles Parish and St. Bernard, very near Orleans Parish, a mandatory evacuation will go into effect this afternoon.

updated to add: that now its a Category 4 hurricane. Over the past 3 hours the pressure has dropped by 20 mb, and the wind speed is 145mph. It is expected to increase after passing over (and no doubt destroying) Cuba. Once it hits the Gulf the meteorologists expect it will slow down, to make landfall around Tuesday. Currently they are still expecting it to go more West of New Orleans, but that still puts the city (and my family) on the bad side of the storm - the side with the most rain, and the highest possibility of tornadoes. Talked to my family, they are not evacuating, and have no intentions of doing so, but do report that the major highways are nearly impassable right now b/c of the number of people that have decided to leave the area.