Wow. What a mess. Unbelieveable.
I'm reading some info on CNN and MSN and Yahoo and I see the city of New Orleans just sunk like Atlantis. It's very very surreal looking. And Biloxi seems to have been just wiped clean off the face of the earth.
The saddest part of all is that some morons are shooting at their rescuers. I can't understand why they didn't get out of town in the first place but to shoot at people who are trying to help you is beyond incomprehensible.
Before you accuse me of being unsympathetic read some of the latest stories. The National Guard won't move in because they are being shot at. By who no one seems to know but they can't HELP the people who NEED help because of the violence. It just brings out the worst in some people.
Of course, there are other people who have opened their homes and wallets and headed south to help. These things tend to bring out the best in others, too.
Since I personally have never been in a hurricane, typhoon, cyclone or whatever you want to call it I couldn't really relate to what it would be like. Tornadoes, yeah, sure. Been there, done that but it's not quite the same.
However, once upon a time there was a blizzard in January of 1978 that I remember. And I remember a weather person said "it was like someone froze a hurricane". So I thought I'd do a little looking because I wanted a frame of reference for what happened in MS, LA and AL.
Sure, it would be like comparing apples to oranges but they DO have some things in common - not like comparing an apple to a telephone, for example.
The first thing I remember about that infernal blizzard (or frozen hurricane) was it was fucking cold. No two ways about it, it was fucking cold as hell. The wind chill was at -60F - yeah, you read that correctly - MINUS 60 DEGREES FARENHEIT.
The next thing I remember was the snow. It was like the sky just opened up and dumped snow on us. There was over a foot of snow in ONE 12 hour period and it kept coming. What if that had been rain? We would have been flooded out for sure. It snowed for like, 2 days. I mean, the blizzard LASTED for two days and it freakin' blanketed Indy, OH, MI and everything east. It was a massive path of snow.
One "good thing" about the hurricane is once it hits land, it loses it's energy force and eventually dies. Katrina lasted about 4 -6 hours from what the news outlets are saying. Still, that's one hell of a long time to be pounded with winds at 80 some MPH and rain coming down in sheets.
The most eye-opening fact to me as I was trying to "get a handle" on the fury of the storm was how it compared to the Blizzard of '78.
Katrina had winds of 131 - 155 mph gusting up to 175mph. The highest winds for The Blizzard was 100 mph. That's enough to rip the hair right off your head if you're dumb enough (or unfortunate enough) to be caught out in it! O-O Yikes!
The weirdest thing to me, tho, is the fact that the barometric pressure for Katrina was about 27.5 (more or less). The barometric pressure for The Blizzard was 28.3. Now, I don't know if anyone can quite grasp how LOW that really is but NORMALLY it's about 29 or 30 around here. A barometric pressure of 27.9 - 28.5 and winds of 111-130mph will give you a Category 3 hurricane (Think Ivan from the mid 90's).
So, really, the weather person was right in a sense - someone DID freeze a hurricane and tossed it into the midwest in the winter of 1978. A frozen hurricane that lasted for two damn days.
Whoa. I remember how bad it was being snowed in and not able to get food (fortunately we had chickens, a wood burning stove and had canned all summer so it was no big deal to us but others weren't so fortunate). I can't imagine how devistating it must be for the people living in Katrina's aftermath.
The only thing I can say is it will get better. When you're so far down, there really isn't any place to go but up.
The Rogue Goddess saw shadows dancing at 3:39 PM
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