Traveling Through Hurricane Issac

For those of you who have commented to me about never having been in a hurricane, I will tell you what we are doing and how things are looking by making a series of posts.  I don't think this Isaac will be bad, just wind and rain much like a heavy storm

9 AM Tuesday - Sunny

But one never knows.  Especially if your house is damaged by flying debris.  The danger is not the wind, but what the wind carries.  So the first thing we do is to go around the yard and collect anything we think will move in the wind.  We trim low hanging trees, but that should be done well before the storm is near because branches in your trash pile can be picked up and tossed into a window.

Here is the yard today.  This morning.  Sunny and calm.

When I was a kid in New Orleans, we would tape our windows with masking tape.  It would not keep the window safe but it may prevent the glass from flying all over the house if it were held together.  But now they are saying, don't even tape your windows because it gives a false sense of security.

2 PM Tuesday First Bands

And in all houses in New Orleans, we would have a hatchet in the attic.  This would be used to chop through the wood roof if you had to get into the attic when the water rose.  You could get rescued from the top of your roof, but not from inside.

I forgot to get cat litter yesterday during a run to the overcrowded and understocked grocery store.  So I got a bag of cat food and litter.

At home I cleaned the tubs.  We fill the tubs with water, this is a holdover from living in New Orleans when flooding contaminated the water supply and there was no electricity to run the pumps.  And also from when we lived in Hammond, LA, just north of New Orleans, and had our own pump that used electricity.  When electricity went out, we had no water.  In fact Carrie called me yesterday and said, tell me again why we can't flush the toilets in a storm!

It is Tuesday and 2 PM.  The winds are probably about 20 mph or so.  Steady.  So far no rain and the day has gone from sunny to heavy clouds back to sunny then heavy clouds.  These are the outermost bands of the storm   You can actually see the edge of the fronts as they pass overhead.  During the storm the direction of the winds will change.  The clouds and winds go in a counterclockwise direction so at the top of the storm we hope to be in the west quadrant. That means the winds will have gone over land before they get to us and will have slowed considerably.

We are under the very first band

The problem in the outer bands like that is tornadoes.  They are quick to spawn and quick to die.  But they can cause damage in between.  We had lunch with Carrie, the restaurants are all closing around 2 PM.  She works in an Architect's office and would be involved in any repair and stopgap work any clients needed.  She is also responsible for jobsites.  So she is working.  I went and got her dog to spend the time with ours.  The bassets are calm and Hugeaux is terrified.  He takes a cue from the Bassets and is not as frantic with us as he is with Carrie.

Over lunch we found out that Isaac had just tipped over to hurricane strength at 75 mph winds.  And it looks to me like it is consolidating.  That could be bad, because it is also slowing.  Slowing means it will have the opportunity to increase in strength.  Also, slowing means it will be over us longer and can dump more rain over us.  Neither is a good thing.

This is a picture of the tracks of all storms recorded in August since 1951.  I guess we can be assured of having a hurricane in August!  So I wonder why people are still surprised and unprepared.

glen:  more later.....until the lights go out!