I heard a few minutes ago that there was not any flooding in the french quarter. There was some debris being tossed around, but as of now the drains are still functioning and not allowing any water to gather in that area.
I think the French Quarter is actually one of the higher points in NO. I'd expect some pumps to fail and parts of the city to flood. If only parts flood with 5-7 feet of water, then things aren't as bad as they could have been. NO got hit by the bullet, but it appears to only be a flesh wound. Now for the casinos in Mississippi, I hope they have insurance because they might not be their come tomorrow.
The worst flooding will come when the storm passes new orleans (like it has right now) and it hits the Lake, which will probably do the most flood damage. But the storm is weakening, so It looks like it won't be as bad as everyone thought. Man - we got really lucky on this one considering the storm weakened at the very last second before hitting land and then completely shifted north instead of northeast.
I'm stunned ~ everything i'm seeing and hearing NO has dodged doomsday - the damage doesn't look that bad at all (considering what could have happened).
ehh, you knew new orleans wasn't going to get wiped off the map (despite my previous post). too much had to go right (well, actually, wrong) for it to get to that point. Cat 5, where the eye goes just to the west of NO, that doesn't weaken at all and somehow stays right on path even with all the wobbling hurricanes do and their seeming tendency to head back north. it's pretty hard to line all of that up and that's why it didn't happen again. not that i think they were oversensationalizing it, b/c it looked possible and it would've been really bad, but it had so much time to move the little it needed that you figured it wouldn't happen. i didn't stay up much after the fact, but what was the deal with the whole western side of katrina suddenly weakening (seems like it was about 2 a.m. when it happened). on the map it was red and purple for a good distance around the eye and suddenly the red and purple just turned to green almost up to the eye on the west, which is what was headed to NO. the only problem with this is that now if they ever predict the end of NO again, no one's gonna heed the advice to evacuate b/c that's 2 straight bullets it's dodged.
to my knowledge, we've never had a cat 5 hit here. if it did...and it hit just right...it would be very, very bad.
Oh, not too bad... Actually since Houston is not right on the coast, it fares better than places like Galveston, which was the site of the deadliest hurricane ever to hit the US in 1900.
[take w/ a grain of salt] In the crude futures world there is talk that the western quadrant was 'seeded' or 'dynogelled' and thus halted on its northwesterly path in order to save the refineries infrastructure just south of NO......but believe what you will..
