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.