If you live in Louisiana....
 

OR Mississipi - near the gulf or Lake Ponchartrain ---

RUN! Hurricane Katrina looks very very bad. News reports say that if it hits New Orleans directly, it could be as much as 20 feet under in a worst case scenario.

Get out and take a less fortunate older person who has no other way to evacuate with you. Many of the inner city folks who live in poverty or are elderly have no way to leave.

Prayers and good thoughts for all of the residents of these areas.

Batten down the hatches folks... Katrina is coming... and is she pissed! :D

Seriously... if evacuation is suggested, DO IT NOW!!! Don't wait until Katrina's knocking at the door - it's too late by then!

Katrina's current position (image is dynamic - updated regularly from the National Hurricane Center):

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphi...030419W_sm.gif

Oh my God, we are dealing with a monster.:(

That path tends to indicate to me that the Mississippi will be flooded pretty badly as well. My prayers are with you.

This isht is scary. From NOLA.com on expected devistation:

"The statement says high-rise office and apartment buildings will sway dangerously, “a few to the point of total collapse.” And all their windows will blow out."

wow.

I have some friends that live there and I am hoping that they all got out. They usually evacuate, so I am praying that they did.

If there was a Category 6, she'd be a Category 6.

Stay safe.

I'm thankful that I was able to escape Ivan's wrath, literally hours before he arrived.

I'm even more thankful that I'm not at Keesler, or anywhere on the gulf coast, for Katrina. Nothing is stronger than a woman's scorn...especially if her name is Katrina.

I'll advice everyone to top off their gas tank tonight, no matter where in the country you live. Most of the nation's oil goes through New Orleans...and prices are going to skyrocket (past where they are already) if New Orleans gets hit. $3.50 regular in california is seeming very possible....

I am on my way there now--- news here (in KC) is predicting a 50cent increase over night.

Regarding the storm-- I hope everyone is getting out of there. My husband has family in NO and they left yesterday and are staying with my in laws in Florida.

All those in Katrina's path are in my thoughts,

Evacuation. Wow. Hope no one is still stuck in that mess when the storm hits.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenbove/38064115/


Scary stuff. Up to a million homeless:
From the Houston Chronicle

Aug. 28, 2005, 6:59PM

Experts expect Katrina to turn New Orleans into Atlantis, leaving up to 1 million homeless
By MATT CRENSON
Associated Press

When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans on Monday, it could turn one of America's most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries.

Experts have warned for years that the levees and pumps that usually keep New Orleans dry have no chance against a direct hit by a Category 5 storm.

That's exactly what Katrina was as it churned toward the city. With top winds of 165 mph and the power to lift sea level by as much as 28 feet above normal, the storm threatened an environmental disaster of biblical proportions, one that could leave more than 1 million people homeless.

"All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario," Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said Sunday afternoon.

The center's latest computer simulations indicate that by Tuesday, vast swaths of New Orleans could be under water up to 30 feet deep. In the French Quarter, the water could reach 20 feet, easily submerging the district's iconic cast-iron balconies and bars.

Estimates predict that 60 percent to 80 percent of the city's houses will be destroyed by wind. With the flood damage, most of the people who live in and around New Orleans could be homeless.

"We're talking about in essence having — in the continental United States — having a refugee camp of a million people," van Heerden said.

Aside from Hurricane Andrew, which struck Miami in 1992, forecasters have no experience with Category 5 hurricanes hitting densely populated areas.

"Hurricanes rarely sustain such extreme winds for much time. However we see no obvious large-scale effects to cause a substantial weakening the system and it is expected that the hurricane will be of Category 4 or 5 intensity when it reaches the coast," National Hurricane Center meteorologist Richard Pasch said.

As they raced to put meteorological instruments in Katrina's path Sunday, wind engineers had little idea what their equipment would record.

"We haven't seen something this big since we started the program," said Kurt Gurley, a University of Florida engineering professor. He works for the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program, which is in its seventh year of making detailed measurements of hurricane wind conditions using a set of mobile weather stations.

Experts have warned about New Orleans' vulnerability for years, chiefly because Louisiana has lost more than a million acres of coastal wetlands in the past seven decades. The vast patchwork of swamps and bayous south of the city serves as a buffer, partially absorbing the surge of water that a hurricane pushes ashore.

Experts have also warned that the ring of high levees around New Orleans, designed to protect the city from floodwaters coming down the Mississippi, will only make things worse in a powerful hurricane. Katrina is expected to push a 28-foot storm surge against the levees. Even if they hold, water will pour over their tops and begin filling the city as if it were a sinking canoe.

After the storm passes, the water will have nowhere to go.

In a few days, van Heerden predicts, emergency management officials are going to be wondering how to handle a giant stagnant pond contaminated with building debris, coffins, sewage and other hazardous materials.

"We're talking about an incredible environmental disaster," van Heerden said.

He puts much of the blame for New Orleans' dire situation on the very levee system that is designed to protect southern Louisiana from Mississippi River floods.

Before the levees were built, the river would top its banks during floods and wash through a maze of bayous and swamps, dropping fine-grained silt that nourished plants and kept the land just above sea level.

The levees "have literally starved our wetlands to death" by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gulf of Mexico, van Heerden said.

It has been 40 years since New Orleans faced a hurricane even comparable to Katrina. In 1965, Hurricane Betsy, a Category 3 storm, submerged some parts of the city to a depth of seven feet.

Since then, the Big Easy has had nothing but near misses. In 1998, Hurricane Georges headed straight for New Orleans, then swerved at the last minute to strike Mississippi and Alabama. Hurricane Lili blew herself out at the mouth of the Mississippi in 2002. And last year's Hurricane Ivan obligingly curved to the east as it came ashore, barely grazing a grateful city.

Pretty Much. The letter in the circle in the path of the storm corresponds with the classification of the storm at that time and location. H=Hurricane, S=Tropical Storm, D=Tropical Depression. When it reached your area, it will be a depression. Depressions are storm areas with sustained winds of less than 35 mph. You could most likely expect winds and some heavy rains. The major difference between a regular storm complex and a TD is that theres usually more wind with TD's. Not necessarily stronger winds than with isolated regualr storms, but more consistant winds and winds outside of the rain areas. Again, they are winds less than 35mph.


<---------------------- was once a meterology major.