I live in central Louisiana, so tomorrow late or early Tuesday Gustav will reach us. We are pretty far inland, so it will most likely be a tropical storm by then. We will most likely lose electricity for 12-36 hours and get mucho rain. For us it will be more of a major inconvenience than a threat. Some of my wife's relatives from the New Orleans area have evacuated to here, as have many others. If you are so inclined, keep us in your prayers. Peace and goodwill.

I hear ya, Mark. We're expecting plenty from the "outer rain bands" and possibly some tornados. It's going to be an interesting next few days.

Here, we're getting enough breeze to make the lakes choppy, and the rain just started - mostly a light drizzle, which is normal for this area when a hurricane or tropical storm passes. We do have some thunderstorm warnings for later, and tornados are possible.
I talked to some families from the New Orleans and Houma areas. The N.O. family said they've heard their house is flooded, but they're happy anyway because they all got out in plenty of time, and the mom was able to convince police to free some trapped pets that the family was able to bring with them. They're in shelters now. The Houma family didn't know anything because everyone they knew evacuated.
The mood is quiet. Things were chaotic after Katrina, but the people don't seem as angry or frustrated this time.

Hey Woody,

I hope the weather isn't hitting you too bad. It looks like we're going to get a whole bunch of rain here in Arkansas the next few days courtesy of Gustav.

I just got back home tonight from a 4-day trip. I worked two flights to New Orleans on Saturday... stayed over night after the second one and took the 6am flight back to ATL yesterday. Leaving the Radisson by the airport at 4:45am, the cars were lined up for miles trying to get onto the highways. The airport terminal was packed. The people I ran across at the hotel and airport and my passengers all seemed to be in pretty good spirits. Everyone seemed to be taking the evacuation seriously and were just doing what was necessary to get out. When we got there Saturday night, pretty much everything except our hotel was closed and they were running on a "skeleton crew".

We were designated as an "evacuation flight" and got some special handling from Air Traffic Control leaving New Orleans yesterday morning. I saw a lot of Navy C-9's (the Navy version of the DC-9) there to evacuate hospital patients. We had a little hitch with our flight because someone dropped the ball and forgot to fuel the airplane Saturday night. All of the fuelers apparently evacuated early Sunday morning and there was no one to fuel our airplane. We didn't have quite enough to go to ATL, so we had to fly to Birmingham, AL to get fuel and then continue on to ATL. Our passengers didn't seem to be too upset about that. I think they were just glad to be getting out of New Orleans.

One of the really eerie things was when I went to set my alarm clock radio Saturday night. I usually try to find a station that plays smooth jazz or soft rock to wake up to. (I don't like to wake up to rap or hard rock, etc.) All of the radio stations had the press conference from the mayor talking about how this was going to be the "storm of the century" and that everyone should take the evacuation seriously and get out. He said that anyone staying behind shouldn't bother to call for help because there wouldn't be anyone to help them. It was just kind of surreal hearing that broadcast live on a local radio station...

Fay cut quite a path up the Fla coast. One of my friends, Randy Bennett, who is the PD at The Groove, one of the last indie SJ stations left. was one of the many people who pretty much lost everything as the area flooded. A lot of artists have reached out and offered to play for a benefit for the people in that area. Many did not have flood insurance and are not covered by their homeowners policies because it was not classified as an actual Hurricane.

The "Jazz Cares" fundraisering will be Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 25 & 26 at the Wickham Park Amphitheater in Melbourne. To find out more check out The WGRV website

Here's my back yard after 4 days of wind and rain:

That sucks, Shannon. That's some of the same BS Mississippi and Louisiana went through after Katrina.
The situation here has changed, Rick. It's raining steadily now, and several counties in the region are under tornado watches, and a few neighboring counties had warnings this morning. We'll probably get some flash flooding, for sure. As for tornados, we'll see.
Shows how much I know about hurricanes.
Past experience has been that when one hits the Gulf Coast to either side of Mississippi, my area gets some steady wind or some light rain. Katrina packed so much punch after landfall that we got some weather nasty enough to knock out power in some areas and force some schools to close, and Rita spawned a tornado that touched down just outside of town.
We're on the back side of Gustav, but things are actually worse today than they were yesterday. Other than the threat of tornados, the wind isn't so bad, but the rain is going to cause problems that go beyond the flash flooding.
August was an abnormally wet month for this area, and just when we got a break in the rain that was long enough for farmers to get back into their fields, we get Gustav. It's too early to tell if the unharvested crops have been damaged. Cotton is fine, since it hasn't bloomed yet, but I think there's still some mature corn and wheat that are waiting.

Send some rain up here since it hasn't rained for about a month. Everything is all ugly brown, hard and dry.

Thanks for the update, Woody. Stay safe and dry!

It's raining "cats and dogs" here in Arkansas today. A little wind but not too bad.

Take care.

You're welcome, Rick.
I'd love to, Steve. A few more hours of this, and the ground will be saturated, at which point we're going to be looking at backed up sewers.
So far, no damage in the area that I know of, and I haven't heard any more about the tornado warnings south of here. We're in the clear as far as that goes, but the rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling ... down, down.

(Please accept my apologies for the Simple Minds reference, it just sort of came to me as I was typing.)

A few breaks in the clouds, signalling the beginning of the end. Across the river in Eudora, Ark., one low-lying neighborhood had some streets closed and several houses were surrounded by water, prompting the owners to ask for sandbags.
Quite a few isolated power outages, mostly caused by limbs falling onto power lines.
In my neighborhood, some of the streets were curb to curb with water, but it continued to flow, so the sewers are still holding up.
In mid-Greenville, a large tree fell and part of it landed on a car that was carrying at least two people. Neither was injured, but a foot one way or the other could have been fatal.
And there's the usual menu of motor vehicle collisions. More and more evacuees are loading up and heading home.

Spoke too soon again.
Major storms came through area this evening, dumping about 4 inches of rain per hour. We've had tornado warnings left and right for the last hour and a half. National Weather Service reports are saying we've had two touch down in the region, but so far, no visual sightings. It's dark now, so if any more activity comes this way, nobody's going to see a thing until it's right on top of them.
I have been in near-zero visibility rain before, but I don't think I've ever seen it sustained for so long, and on the heels of two days of steady rainfall.
Our staff meteorologist says a cold front just north of us will push it out, but that's not going to happen until tomorrow.
I had a spare shirt and pair of pants at work, but a nice, thick pair of socks would really come in handy right about now.

I feel ya! We've had a few of those here in Virginia. I get worried because I can see my back yard getting flooded and the water starts creeping toward my house. Fortunately my yard is huge so it takes a good while and a whole lotta rain to make the water come all the way to the house. The closest it's come is within aprox. 20ft. I live on a slight hill though so I'm thinking the water will just sorta go around the house and onto the street in front and run off.

Well, around here last week, we got a ton of rain from Fay. Amazing that these storms affect such a huge area of the country, from the tip of the Florida Keys to Arkansas, eastward to NC and VA...and depending on which side of it you're on, it can wreak you or just get you wet.

Lots of flooding here in low lying areas, even had to evacuate some areas. Last I saw on the news, somethin like 400 homes with flood damage.
This one apartment complex, the whole first floor is now condemned as inhabitable. Sadly, it's landlord is the county, I think it's either public housing or subsidized rent, it was knowingly in a flood plain, and naturally all the residents have no place to go AND no belongings other than what little they could salvage. Of course there's no flood insurance, so they are out of luck all around. You'd hope the county would help with relocation at least. It's a hot button here, there was a swarm of folks at the county commissioner's meeting last night.
Unfortunately the wheels of government turn way too slowly at times like this.

Anyway- our coastline is bracing for Hanna, and Ike is up to 145 mph....that's a serious storm. We'll be watching that one to see where it goes.

Glad to hear you've weathered the weather, Woody...

Later
TY

Thanks.
It all stopped around midnight.
So far, I haven't heard of any major problems in Chicot County, Ark. Washington County, where I live, is mostly okay. Some county roads are under water here and there, and I passed a couple of places where canals were full up to where they almost touched the bridges that pass over them.
Greenville, however, is a mess. Lots of streets are still under water, and several houses are flooded. The storm dumped an easy 10 inches of rain in about 4 hours, not counting what was already on the ground from the two days previous.
To the east, the clouds are breaking up and I can see sunlight for the first time since Monday. But dark clouds are still hanging over the city. We don't expect much more from that, but you never know.

Hey folks. This is my first post since coming back among the living.

Steve I know you're getting your wish for rain because it started raining here early this morning and has done nothing but rain harder as the day went on. It's still raining now and it's suppose to rain even harder later.

True that we too have brown lawns and such, too much at once will cause a run-off rather than soaking in. That run-off will help raise the level at all the marina's that aren't on the big lake. What ever the result, it's nice to see and hear the rain come down today; remnants of Gustav. Surprisingly my daughter in Gulf Shores said all they got was wind and rain with a few tornado warnings. No big deal there.

Gustav was a very strange animal.
Landfall on Monday. Here it is Thursday and not only is it just now breaking up in my area, but still causing problems north of us. We're almost 300 miles from the Gulf Coast. Before Katrina, NO hurricane caused major problems for this area. Katrina caused power outages and knocked down some trees, but all that was the day after it swept into New Orleans. By day 3 - after landfall - our weather was sunny and dry.
It started raining here the same day of Gustav's landfall, and it kept raining - lightly - until day 2 after landfall, when the bottom fell out and in a big way.
Our problems were worsened by the fact that the ground was already saturated.
August was an unusually wet month for us anyway, and then Fay brought a few days of rain, and we'd barely gotten over that when Gustav hit.
Anybody got a sponge?

My electricity just came back on after three days of being off. Gustav hit this area harder than any other storm. On Tuesday over 60% of the homes in Louisiana had no electric power. New Orleans came through it OK, but the most of the rest of the state is a huge mess. On Tuesday night there was an all-night heavy rain storm that caused wide-spread fooding on top off all the damage done the day before.

My old house has no damage, but a tree in my backyard uprooted and fell. My next-door neighbor lost part of his roof. The schools are closed until Monday, but some will not be able to open either because of damage or no electric power restored to that town. Peace and goodwill.

Wow...you all have had it tough. Now it's our turn here in VA. We are looking at a weekend of heavy ran and wind thanks to Hanna.

Its not just an American thang ! We have had rain in England now for the last 30 days and this weekend expect to get a whole months worth over 48 hours . Im expecting a plague of locust any day now !!
StewartAA

Interesting you say that, Stewart. When some of our residents complained about drainage ditches and culverts being clogged - it's true that some have mud and debris in the way - the mayor said there was nothing anybody could have done to prevent flooding with a storm of this magnitude: "It was an act of God."
She's right. Considering all the water that was on and in the ground from rain over the past month, we're lucky it wasn't much worse. About 300 families have either had to move out of their houses or suffered some interior damage. That's 300 households out of about 40,000 residents - not bad for a Storm of the Century.
Yes, by several official accounts, this was a 100-year event. Most people here have never seen anything like it, and few will ever see it agani.
And yet today, all is clear but a few low-lying areas and some neighborhoods where the water really has no place to go.

Stewart; locust; too funny. Rain for the last 30 days not funny at all. Only 10 more to go.

Looks like we're done here. Most everything soaked right in around our place. Not that much run-off and the dirt and gravel roads are not muddy in the least.

Good luck this weekend Bonnie.

If only I could remember what a " cubit" was I would have started the Ark this morning. 65 mm of the wet stuff overnight and its still raining !!Keep getting this wierd thought that God has realised im a " Manager " and is punishing me !!
StewartAA

Finally, we have sun.
For some interesting video of what happened here, go to WXVT.com. The first six clips show part of our coverage.
A little comic relief is in the second one, "Rowing Across Cypress Lane."
The street is in the middle of a cypress preserve. The area is almost prehistoric. I like to call it "The Swamp." The view is from U.S. Highway 82. Off screen to the right are some homes, one with a pond out front. Off screen to the left is the preserve that has a kiosk, a walking trail and signs describing some of the plants and animals there.
I was driving around the south part of town, shooting random video of anything I thought was interesting. This part of Cypress Lane dips about 6-8 feet as it passes between the preserve and the house owner's pond. Normally, it's well above water. In fact, consecutive summers of drought have left The Swamp dry for months at a time.
Anyway, I'm watching these pickups slosh through the water and one guy in a small car stop, think about it and back up until he can see somebody else go ahead of him. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw some movement off to the right so, without taking the camera off the road, I glanced over and saw a boat.
I'll let the video describe what happens next.


Note: If you do watch any of the videos, you might see an ad for a local doctor. Let it run. The flood video will immediately follow.

Stewart, you crack me up! Well, our town of Centreville, VA (about 20 miles west of Washington, DC) got 6 inches of rain on Saturday. The creek that runs behind my neighborhood completely overflowed its banks and flooded the street.

This storm made me realize why I like cats instead of dogs (no, not because it was raining cats & dogs). I am not happy walking our 74 pound, 8 month old Golden Retriever in a tropical storm. He needs to be litter trained!

*sigh*
Now we have Ike to worry about.
Is it just me or is this the first time we've had 4 consecutive named storms hit the states?
I know there have been years when 3 or more struck, but they're usually spread out over the alphabet. But we've had F, G and H, with I on the way. Has this ever happened before that anybody knows of?

Woody- I think I saw something about that on Weather channel, but wasn't paying close attention....it is the first time there were four named storms in the Atlantic basin at once in a long time.
Will have to look it up. Couldn't find it on weather channel.
Did stumble across this, tons of info but no record info.
Wiki hurricanes Atlantic page

Looks like Ike will be slamming into Texas, then turning northeast fairly soon, so being on the east side of the storm means more rain and tornadoes for LA, ARK, amd MISS....let us know how it goes there.

As the topic says: Here we go again.
Maybe this one will weaken (like they're supposed to) before it reaches us. Our streets and roads are dry, and the drainage canals are near normal level, but the streams they feed into are still swollen.

We've been preparing for a hurricane over and over again here in orlando, but it never gets here, thankfully -- not since we got hit 3 times a row with Charlie, Jeanne and Ivan back in 2004.

In my church, I spent a lot of time dividing up our whole geographical area into about 10 emergency preparedness areas. Each area has a captain and an assistant. Each person in the area is supposed to call in to their captain before the storm and tell where they will be staying. After the storm, they are to report damage, power outages, medical needs, water shortages, flooding etcetera, and each area has an equipment list. Plus we have the headquarters standing by ready to usher in trucks of food, water, equipment and volunteers in case anything goes wrong.

We actually tested the emergency reponse plan during Tropical Storm Faye because all the schools shut down, and it went OK. My hope is I never have to actually use it and make it work.

In Orlando, I understand that if you want to replace your roof, you have to do all this extra work -- including fastening the roof to the walls somehow, and a lot of other structural improvements to make it withstand heavy winds....

Well, Ike gave us a couple of days of good, strong breezes. We were under tornado watches one night, but thankfully didn't get any rain.
Things are starting to dry up after Gustav, but the flooding we got from it has caused another problem: sewer line breaks. In a few spots in town, sewage has backed up into the streets, but the city is working on it.

We still have many piles of fallen tree parts, and some of those piles are huge. They may be with us for many months because I do not see how some of them can be picked up. As always, time will tell. Peace and goodwill.