Sunday, August 31, 2008

Gustav update

Rain has started coming through the Baton Rouge area. No serious wind as of yet. Tornado watches are in effect.


Gustav begins

As you have probably heard, a major hurricane named Gustav is moving towards the south coast of the United States. This will be Megan's and my first hurricane since we moved to Baton Rouge. Now Baton Rouge is about 60 miles from the coast, so storms have usually died down somewhat by the time they get here. As such, we don't expect the effects to be as devastating here as they will probably be in say New Orleans. In other words, Baton Rouge is a place someone might evacuate to, rather than from. But that doesn't mean it's going to be a total picnic either. From other residents, we've heard that power can and probably will go out (how long, though, is anyone's guess. Some people lost power for 3 hours from Katrina, while for others lost it was 12 days). And if there's no power to pump water to the towers, that could go out too. School for me has been canceled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

At any rate, I'm pretty excited. I think extreme weather is fascinating. And there's always the possibility of hurricane induced tornadoes (I've never seen one; I'm hoping this might be my chance). I'll keep this place updated as the storm starts rolling through and I can get some video. Excuse the low quality of this. I snapped it with a phone camera.