Damage assessment at home

Nothing of significance or that will take more than a day or two to clean up. Roof, house, people, chickens, other critters are all fine. Only tree blown down was already dead and didn't smush anything important on its way down.

5.99 inches of rain, too. YeeHaw!

29.05" / 983 mb

Wow, I didn't know my barometer WENT that low! Center of Katrina damn near right on top of us.

Night of bumping and grinding, power out for most of it. Damage assessment awaits daylight, but I doubt it will be that bad. Won't be surprised to see some downed trees though, especially on the ridges.

Beaufort 8

"Tropical Storm Force" winds (or, "Gales" as we used to call them) are here. Rooftop cell phone antenna just went flying...

A little unnerving...

...that the breeze is already almost as strong as it ever got during Arlene and Dennis... but the storm is still 250 miles away.

Just announced: County schools are closed tomorrow.

Am still remembering the experience with Hugo in '89, that afternoon when the tide came in... and it didn't go back out. When you live on the coast that is kind of like the sun failing to set. Then, later that night, the tide came in AGAIN.

We might be screwed

This is damn near the worst case scenario: the strongest storm ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico headed right at the U.S.'s lowest-lying city. After that, Katrina is currently forecast to cross into southern Tennessee with winds still up to 55 m.p.h. and possibly higher gusts. Nothing compared to the coastal onslaught, but the trees here are MUCH more easily blown down, as they don't see high winds anywhere near as often. So this could do tree and power line damage comparable to a very bad winter storm. Inland wind forecasting for hurricanes is iffy at best, and they tend to err on the side of severity. BUT, I still remember vividly the swath of flattened inland forests that Hugo left, spanning hundreds of miles and two States. Plus the complete collapse of the power grid Statewide, requiring a black restart and most of a week to get ANYONE back in the lights.

If the storm actually follows the forecast track (which has happened once or twice in history) it puts us right in the thick of the winds and rain. A deviation to the west leaves us with the rain but not as much wind; which would be better for us but worse for someone else. A deviation to the east leaves us out of both the wind and the rain. With the drought we've been having, I think I'd prefer both rather than neither.

Battening down...

Category five. Remnants expected to head right up this way...

The word "Camille" comes to mine.

chills...

NPR Morning edition today played a clip of one of the audio recordings from Arkansas that "might" be the voice of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. It caused shivers down my spine. For nearly my entire life that old recording, the only known record of the creature's voice, the voice of the phantom, has been imprinted in my brain. Hearing that voice again, in a new recording, here and now... impossible to explain...