Monday morning...

7:40
Well, I'm awake, we keep getting these little bursts of rain and a steady wind of 20 mph is blowing from the northeast. The forecast has it ranging from passing directly over us to not even making landfall. All of the models take it directly over us, though. The clouds are moving considerably faster than they were yesterday and the hurricane is projected for landfall in about four or five hours. A few of the frogs from last night are still out and seven small birds, not sure of the species, are sitting on the powerline. The birds were flying into the wind from the south, they didn't really have much in the way of ground speed...
Winds are gusting to about 30 mph pretty frequently.
I'm going to see if I can't get any good pictures.
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8:35
Winds are gusting to 30 mph with a constant 22 mph breeze. It feels really nice outside, not too hot, nice wind, it's fairly pleasant with the exception of the sense of impending doom...
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8:55
Clouds are moving pretty rapidly across the sky, not sure at what speed ,but they traverse from directly above me to at 45 degrees in a little under 2 minutes. It's somewhat creepy.
Anyway, the reason I started this post is to bitch and moan about the news agencies constantly talking about "how bad Katrina was" and "how long it took to recover from Katrina." These folks haven't a clue. The parts of New Orleans that you would actually want to go to were fine within a year after that particular storm. What made Katrina so bad wasn't the storm itself, it was the stupidity of our leadership. Thankfully they learned from their mistakes, but that doesn't mean these leaders are intelligent, just means they don't want to commit political suicide. One news guy said that "Baton Rouge will be fine if the levees hold"---WHAT THE FUCK!?!?! The levees of Baton Rouge are for the Mississippi River; now, in the event you are not familiar with storm surge, rainfall, and the size of the river, let me explain why that was a retarded statement.
1) Nearly all of Baton Rouge is located above the water level of the river
2) The only way for the river levees to overtop would require massive amounts of rainfall
3) The levees in New Orleans broke because the water level from the storm surge was way above normal and water began flowing over the top and eroding the dirt on the back side.
4) The Mississippi River in Baton Rouge can be 15 feet above normal and still have ample room to rise.
5) The levee that broke in New Orleans was for a canal, not the river.

OK, enough of my rant, now for photos



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10:15 AM
We're now in the first arms of the hurricane. it's not too bad yet, raining at rate of 1/2 inch per hour, but climbing. Winds are sustained at 25 mph with gusts to 35 mph and higher. All of the computer models have the center of the eye passing 10 miles south of me in 10 hours, which means we will get the weather to the north and east (the worst parts of the storm). It's also beginning to slow, it's currently only moving at 14 mph as opposed to the 19 mph it was moving yesterday.
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11:25
My girlfriend just called to tell me she lost power and they'll be starting up the generator soon (that's one of the generators I set up). She's just south of Baton Rouge. She was going to send me pictures as well, but I suppose I'll have to put them up later. In any event, it's still raining at about the same rate, winds have picked up slightly and the clouds are moving slightly faster. The frogs are still safely tucked into the corners on the porch and no trees have turned into javelins yet. Current relative position of the eye of the storm is due 40 miles south of Baton Rouge which is 60 miles to my east. This means the storm is about 70 miles southeast of me and moving towards me at 14 mph. This means 2 hours or so until it begins getting really nasty.
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My location is centered on this map.
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