Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gatsby]

Three years ago today, on Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Southeast Louisiana. Today, hurricane forecasters say Hurricane Gustav is on a track that could bring landfall at about the same location and about at the same strength - a Category 3.

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200807_5day.html#a_topad

Is New Orleans ready?

Has the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bush Administration, done what it promised in the aftermath of Katrina?

Or, put another way, would you move to New Orleans?

[Milwaukiedave]

It sounds like they will be better prepared this time. I am still hoping the storm turns south and misses NO and hits toward the lower end of Texas and Northern part of Mexico. The people of NO do not deserve to live through another horrific experience as they did 3 years ago.

Bush/McCain are going to benefit from the whole thing by Bush's speech getting canceled. I still think the convention is going to happen, but maybe be shortened a bit.

[mises]

They are better prepared and Jindal is a better manager. His 5 years at Mckinsey and Kennedy School training will come in very handy. The problem is that many people in NO are horribly poor and backwards and can't be "helped" without driving around to every home and dragging them to Baton Rouge.

Michael Moore is keeping it classy:

[Gatsby]

Yeah, I saw Moore. But his comment is taken out of context.

Moore was commenting on the odd coincidence of timing of the Gustav threat.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#26462689

The rest of the story:

"... That it would be on its way to New Orleans for Day 1 of the Republican convention, at the top of the Mississippi River. Certainly, I hope no one gets hurt, and everyone is taking cover."

He then talked about what McCain and Bush were doing as Katrina tore through New Orleans: eating McCain's birthday cake.

Moore is potentially right, this could be a very odd coincidence.

But Gustav hasn't hit New Orleans yet, and if it does, New Orleans could turn out to be prepared well enough to survive, after all. It's downfall was a levy that failed after the hurricane had moved on.

[mises]

One would hope the levey's (sp?) have been repaired with extra caution and over-engineering. The timing of the storm is crazy, and I know that is what Moore was referring to. Still a classless asshole, in my books.

However, it is hard not to consider, tastefully (if that is possible) the potential political outcomes of poor blacks being left to their own means during a major storm. I doubt this is Katrina 2, but if it were, and the images were similar, then the repubs are in serious trouble.


Kinda related, one of the best pieces of journalism during the Katrina crises was from Matt Taibbi.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7661196/apocalypse_there/

[Kikomom]

Here's a good storm tracker...

http://www.stormpulse.com/tropical-storm-gustav-2008

You can drag the map around and click on Hanna too (Bahamas), for those wx stats. Drag it even further east to two more disturbances. This is the time of year that the Cape Verde storms come rolling off the coast of Africa like a string of pearls.

[krats1976]

I'm watching this one closely. Even the stalwarts in my area are making evacuation plans. We're on the extreme west side of the cone, but a direct hit at a Cat 3 would mean my neighborhood could very well be thoroughly flooded.

Fun times.

[Kikomom]

Gustav hit Cuba as a cat 4 Saturday afternoon. Still a cat 4 coming off the other side:

[Kikomom]

If you're running Google Earth, click on the Weather layer and you can see the outer bands have already hit the tip of LA. Florida is fully under cloud cover.

Or click here to see another radar shot

[Kikomom]

NOLA is already under evacuation orders.

[Gatsby]

If Gustav stays on track, Gulfport should not get the brunt of the storm, though it would not be unscathed, either. And so far, the tracking has stayed true.

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200807_5day.html#a_topad

Hurricane predictions have improved enormously in the past 10 years, and sometimes are on the mark seven days in advance. But cyclone and storm predictions in the Korean region seem to be worthless more than 12 hours in advance.

At any rate, it is interesting comparing the predictions and outcome for the hurricane tracks. Strength is the other part of the equation. As I recall, Katrina weakened a little by the time of landfall, compared to the earlier predictions.

The current prediction for Gustav is to make landfall as a Category 4 storm. That means winds of 131 to 155 mph. That's a brutal storm. There are few structures that can survive this without damage. Katrina landed as a Cat 3, and its devastation covered a wide area of the Gulf Coast.

Winds and flooding are always worse on the northeast quadrant of a hurricane because of the direction of rotation. That's where New Orleans is projected to be. It is probably worse that being hit by the eye.

Mayor Nagin is calling Gustav "the storm of the century." If global warming does, as predicted, lead to more and stronger hurricanes, he will be lucky if it is the storm of the decade.

I hope people there stay safe and all have homes to return to.

[ReeseDog]

[Gatsby]

It's beginning to look a lot like Michael Moore was right.

What are the odds of two hurricanes hitting almost the same spot at the same strength on almost the same day, during the Republican convention????

Eerie.

[chris_J2]

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5694124

[Gatsby]

Notch up another one for God.

Bush has been knocked off the Republican convention's opening day schedule, for the reasons Michael Moore predicted, as has Cheney.

Apparently the GOP did not like the idea of a split screen of Bush giving a speech, alongside images of a hurricane cutting through Louisiana, so he was politely told to get lost.

But then again, organizers were not entirely unhappy with this turn of events. Many were heard to say: "Thank God!"