Hurricanes, the new baseball...
 

Well for me at least hurricaines have become the new spectator sport. I'm watcing Katrina come in on a live webcam in Boca. Anyone else watching this live?

I'm trying to avoid annoying over-coverage on the news.

I'm with you Moonie. I've always fascinated my "inclimate weather" but I have been hooked oh hurricanes since "experiencing" one or two with HTHBellCaptain last year. The first thing I did after hearing about Katrina was call Matterhorn Fan. I love having hurricane buddies. You can call me when there's an earthquake, ok? ;)

See, the problem is that "a hurricane's heading towards Florida" seems to mean "the entire state will be in the eye" to people not here. Our area's just going to get some rain. And this hurricane isn't a biggie--Katrina's dainty.

I'm very tired of moron-reporter-in-raincoat standing in the rain and wind saying things like "everyone really should be inside!" or "it's really getting wet out here!" or "you can see the trees blowing around behind me!" :rolleyes:

My parents are there right now! As tourists! They had been traveling through Florida stopping at motels until they got to where they were going for some convention and are staying at a fancy hotel.

I was so glad when she called me today and told me that had made it okay. It makes a daughter worry.

The employees are spending the night there so they dont' have to drive home in it and back to work in it.

I REALLY liked what the CBS Radio guy said this morning Katrina was the 'first hurricane to hit Florida this season' or something along those lines. I really wish he would have told the people in Pennsacola and Navarre that Arlene and Dennis were figments of their imagination.

And I haven't looked in the last couple of hours, but the NHC had Katrina headed right toward Pennsacola, with predictions that it might reach Cat 4! Considering how warm the Gulf is right now, and the fact that it didn't drop below hurricane strength when it was over land, really has me worried about those people. (I just hope it makes the 'scheduled' turn tomorrow morning, otherwise I may have to bug out - and I just don't want to after all the fun that was the Ivan evacuation last year.

Cool, we get a hurricane double header! I know I bookmarked a Florida TV station with a live web feed. I'll have to dig it up...

My fav was last year when they announced they had the reporter "via web phone" and then showed broadcast quality footage with sound of her talking into the web phone...

They probably just consider pensacola an extension of Alabama....

In some ways it is, in others, its not.

Ahh, many opportunities for the navy folks to earn a humanitarian medal.

Live streaming local coverage of Katrina

Looks like New Orleans is getting a bit worried. They have activated an anti-price gouging law, closed all schools, lifted tolls and are using the Superdome as a refuge "of last resort".

So, I have the score right, right?
Hurricane - 4
Humans - 0

Damn!

Catagory-5.

Centered on New Orleans. Decades of mismanagement urban sprawl in flood planes, living in a below sea level bowl with insufficient levies.

This is taking all the fun out of hurricane watching. This could cause real damage. Good luck to everyone in that area.

When I said Katrina was dainty, she was a category 1.

Still trying to avoid the ridiculous over-coverage in my area. Surely something else is happening in central Florida. Or not. :rolleyes:

NOLA does NOT need this! Not that any place does.

I've had the live coverage from New Orleans running in the background today. So far the award for best comment goes to:

The news anchors, queuing off a sheet with a fairly monotone read...

Expect flying debris in the metro area tomorrow. These debris could include light pickup's and smaller SUV's.

:eek:

Reports out of New Orleans are spotty and mixed. So far it seems the worst-case scenarios have been avoided. There's still a danger if the winds reach the lake to the north, but with the storm already down to category 4 and still drifting east, it seems unlikely.

But it's sitll not pretty. There are reports of as much as 8 feet or more of water in at least one secion of the city as at least one levy was overwhelmed, plus one of the city's massive pumps designed to keep rain water out went down. Neighborhoods on the south shore of the lake to the north are flooded up to rooflines. Buildings have collapsed, and the roof of the Superdome, the last resort shelter for people who don't have a car or couldn't afford the expense of gas and lodging in order to evacuate, has ripped open. Fortunately, while it's left the field soaked and the emergency power generators can't run the a/c, the stadium remains structurally safe and the people have food, water, and shelter.

Mississippi looks like it's going to get the worst of the storm in terms of force, but that's less of a concern than if low-lying NOLA had gotten hit much worse. The worst-case scneario predictions talked about the entire city being under 6 feet of toxic water that would take up to 6 months to completely drain. Yikes.

Well here we go again....

Gustav is heading into the Gulf as a Cat-2 with models suggesting it could make Cat-5. I hope New Orleans built better Levees this time...

Reports out of New Orleans are spotty and mixed. So far it seems the worst-case scenarios have been avoided. There's still a danger if the winds....oh forget it.

If Gustav does follow the same path of Katrina, I wonder how many folks are going to head for the super dome this time....

Interesting how flippant the original posts were, before "Katrina" came to mean "mass-murdering, major-city-erasing catastrophe".

I wonder how many people are going to ignore evacuation warnings this time.

I'm willing to still be flippant about Katrina.

I assume that in honor of its nature, everybody is pronouncing it with a short u and a softening of the v?

"Now a category three hurricane, Gustav has gusts of..." has a ring to it I like.

Heading out to Florida on Friday, and I am glad to be (hopefully) missing the brunt of it (for my flight).

Okay, first off, I couldn't figure out how people were posting a couple of days into the future. Secondly, I couldn't figure out why the weather service had named another hurricane, "Katrina." Thirdly, and here's your heresy, Katrina did not cause the devastation in N.O. The utter destruction of entire neighborhoods was caused by the failure of the levy walls, built by the Army Corps of Engineers who have admitted as much.

True dat, though Katrina gets catalyst credit at least. You couldn't just push over those walls yourself, you know.

Actually, pretty darn close.

The levee was wearing a low cut dress so it deserved getting anally raped by Katrina.

Damn homonyms, I knew that wasn't spelled the same as my roommate.

The news in New Orleans is starting to pay attention to Gustav. Events are being moved, stories about what should be in a 3-day survival food package, suggestions to use up food in your freezer and one article about how the Corps plan to deal with 20 miles of unfinished levee work.

I'm putting my money on orange, but only because I hate The Bahamas.

How do you feel about Turks and Caicos?

We were visited by the remnants of Hanna here yesterday. Not a lot of wind, but steady rain pretty much all day.

I feel the former should acknowledge what they did to the Armenians and the latter should apologize for what they did to the Shire.

I'm watching live coverage from Houston as Ike marches towards one of my old home towns.

I gotta say, no matter what else you might say about the "good old boy" mentality down in that part of the world, when the wolf comes knocking they pull it together and get s*it done. You just don't see the paralysis or victim mentality I've seen in other disaster areas.

Specifically?

"Other disaster areas." :rolleyes:

Don't have time to get into the massive governmental failure that was Katrina, I'm on my way to work. But, please.

Is Houston in the path?! Crap.

What about Austin?

I was thinking more Gustav, but Katrina works as well. Watching the local coverage in the run up to the storm, The New Orleans media was all about what the officials were not doing. Where the buses were not showing up, footage of people not knowing where to go or what to do, overloaded shelters, etc...

In contrast, The Houston area has their shelters ready, they prioritized the evacuations, they can track who is going where, contraflow traffic lanes are configured, etc... They have moved beyond just plans on paper, they are making it happen. Will there be damage and chaos? Of course but I'd feel a lot better living in Galveston/Houston than New Orleans in terms of preparedness.

The American Eskimo breeder that we got our pup from could face a near direct hit. They live in Port Lavaca which is on the water south of Galveston. Right now they are expecting landfall somewhere between Galveston and Matagorda which is a mere 30 miles from their home.

We've emailed them and haven't heard back. I'm just hoping they along with their family and all of their pups have managed to evacuate safely.

:(

Ya, crap. My friends just bought a house in Houston.

We have an office in Dallas, they should be fine. I'm trying to find Katy on the path map. I hope that's out of the path.

Umm... Katy is out I-10 (west of downtown). Currently that is just east of where the center is expected to pass. "East" being the wrong side to be on.

Katy, according to the news, can expect sustained winds of ~95mph when the storm arrives. On the good side, it not an area prone to flooding. They are NOT in the mandatory evac zone.

I always enjoy looking at the various models.

That orange one is ALWAYS way too far east with its projections. At what point does whoever is running that one just say "hmmm, that's not working." And I like the lime green one that has it going to OKC, apparently getting scared and forgetting which way the wind blows, making a sharp left and heading to New Mexico.

The orange track is known as Cliper5 (for 5-days). It uses the current path of a hurricane and an average of historical paths of similar hurricanes to come up with a track, and is considered a "no-skill" model. Curiously, until the late 1980s, this was actually the most accurate model.

The "Lime Green" is BAM-S. 'S' for shallow. It's ment for tropical storms with a weak center of rotation. As you can see, it's not much good for a well developed storm like Ike.

Ps....

I would also suggest you go today and fill up your gas tank no matter where you live. With the gulf oil rigs cleared out yet again, and two of the largest gas refineries in the country in the possible path of the storm, prices are almost sure to spike soon.

Gasbuddy.com shows gas at an average of $3.729/gal in Anaheim today. Let's see how well my prediction does....

Thanks

Ya, doing that on my lunch. Screw the 10 cents cheaper at Costco which I was going to go to on Friday. That equals $1.20 in my tank.

Ditto. Except not ditto... Took the train today and filling up once I get home. And screw the Sam's Club which is about 8-cents cheaper. Or wait, is that screw the 8 cents? Oh well... Getting gas today.

I know they aren't the same storm, but Gustav had no net increase effect on gas prices at the station across the street from us. It may have slowed their drop (it has been a steady 2 cent drop every other day for a six weeks or so now).

I've seen a couple of articles that give credit to Gustav for lowering prices. However I think things will be different with Ike. Gulf oil workers were just getting back to work after Gustav when the had to shut down again for Ike making the outage of Gulf drilling much longer. Also the refineries along the Texas coast are the largest we have. So shutting them down even for a short period will have a larger emotional effect.

Still it is just my guess. We'll see what happens....

The Shell station by my office was 7 cents more than the Costco by my house. I paid the 70 cents "convenience charge" for being able to go on my lunch instead of down to Costco on my way home. ;)

Holy crap. This thing can take out both our main data center in Dallas and our back up in IL.

By the time it gets to Illinois it will be a basic storm.

No anticipatory gas hike today anyway. The price when I came home was 4 cents lower than when I went to work (biggest single day drop in a couple months).

Looks like it'll soak all my relatives in SW Missouri.

We're supposed to get the remnants here on Sunday night.

Yet another reason for being a bitter east coaster. We get all the sloppy seconds.

Discounting the Houston area where you would expect a spike, nationally the price of gas is up $0.04 from yesterday.

I am under the impression that gas prices in Utah rarely lower themselves. They don't jump up as fast, but boy... they come down even sllloooowwweeerrrr... Meaning I'll still be paying $3.80, even if prices go up or down everywhere else.

I still filled up yesterday. I was more-or-less due for a fill-up. Glad to have a train to ride for the past couple of days (schedule normalized for an impressive TWO DAYS), but I'll be back to driving next week since I'll be working supa-dupa long-assed days (and the extra 2 hours of public trans just won't cut it). Then train again until... who knows?

"Texans told to flee or face certain death"

Anyway, the article says...

Gas in by randomly selected city of Anaheim, CA is now at $3.700.

Down from $3.729 pre-storm.

So much for my prognostication skills.

Speaking of gas, isn't it time to drop the nine tenths off the price (round up)? It made a difference when gas was 30 cents a gallon, but now it's more annoying than anything. $3.74 is really $3.75. So what?!

Yep... WTVT has aerial footage showing one sign, and then the same with a different amount a little later.

It is crazy but slowly coming back down...

According to CNN Money: Gas is up $0.17 over the last three days.

In my randomly selected test city of Anaheim, CA (according to gas buddy) the price has dropped $0.03/gallon to 3.69.

Can I pick them or what....

Gas this monring on my way in, in Lake Elsinore was $3.61 down from $3.63 on Friday.

In my entirely scientific example of one gas station (the Shell across the street from my apartment), no change since Friday morning (which was a downward change).