Ahhhh...

Just a quick post to note that it is almost 9 AM and 65 degrees with 77% humidity outside! It's going to warm up, of course, but we should not have a heat index over 100 and we should also get some breeze today. Thank God! I know that summer is not over, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's SO nice to get a break.

Summer...be gone!!!

Right now the temperature is 97.9 with a heat index of 113. Ok, that's too hot. Just. Too. Hot. This morning I woke up, looked out at a nice, fresh-looking day with a breeze, and sitting in an air-conditioned house thought, "My, what a lovely fall day it looks!" On examination, the temperature was already over 80 and the air was soggy.

Enough already!!

It looks as if there's supposed to be a cold cool front coming in on Saturday and from Sunday on (at least as far as the forecast goes) the temperature should be much more moderate: highs from 75 to 81 and lows from 59 to the mid 60's. There's also supposed to be a breeze with that, mostly out of the north.

Oh, please...let it be true!!!

"Inside the Sun" [The Far Side - Gary Larson]

Local Aftermath

We seem to be among the very lucky people because we only lost power for a few hours last night, still have power, water and internet...and an intact roof. The other side of our street doesn't have power and indeed, most of our town doesn't have power. In fact, I can hear the generator running at the ATT building on the opposite corner of our block. Our house is fine; we mostly have small debris covering everything. The church and hall are fine except for the same small debris. I went out to see what was going on (which you're not supposed to do) and took some pictures. I did pass one house partly smashed by a large tree, but I didn't take a picture; it seemed heartless.

This is at the end of our street, a block and a house away. 

Looking through the blocked intersection.

Another view. You can see it came down right across the power lines.

Three blocks from our house.

About ten blocks from our house.

About five blocks away on the main road. The signals are out.

And in one case...missing.

About eight blocks from our house in another direction.

About four blocks away.

And, a little closer to home, the zinnias survived.

And we wound up with just a light covering of small debris.

Interestingly, I found this graphic:

 

Our little town has achieved notoriety. Also, it explains why the dam at Percy Quin State Park is full and about to go. They are evacuating 50,000 people below the dam in Tangipahoa Parish, LA. Let's hope it holds.

Watch Isaac Pass

It's neat to look at our local stats for the week and see Isaac pass. Of note: The humidity was very high (duh!) so you see the temperature and dewpoint right up next to each other. Notice that the temperature remained fairly constant once the heavy cloud cover and rain started. Looking at the pressure you can see that just after midnight the center of the storm passed. Even though I don't exactly remember it, apparently we had gusts to just over 40 mph but our steady winds never really got out of the 20's. MUCH lower than forecasted. Also interesting, you can see the wind direction changing from the north to the east and now to the south as the storm passed by.

Videos of the storm

Frankly it has been a rather boring day. It has rained, more or less continuously, and we've officially had just under 2 1/2 inches of rain. The wind started out just a bit squally but graaaaadually increased to gusts of 20-30 mph. We haven't lost power and the weather has generally not lived up to the forecast, but then it rarely does. Isaac, now back to a tropical storm, is nowhere near gone though: It was moving at about 7 mph this morning and now it's moving about 5 mph to the NW. We've got a loooong way to go. In fact, Pickles remarked on how long the storm was lasting while I was out on the porch taking a video of the winds. As usual, a child steals the show.

Wednesday

I woke up this morning to squally conditions but nothing impressive. Isaac is still moseying along at 6 mph. It's basically going to keep raining for the next 24 hours or so.

The cat, who is well on his way to being named Isaac, is still with us. He's chasing a moth in the window of the porch as I type. I think he spent the night under the house.

I'll update as soon as there's anything worth updating. Ho hum.

(Finally!) "Hurricane" Isaac [With updates]

Well, it's about time! I missed the advisory 30 minutes ago (wasn't expecting it and you have to clean the kitchen sometime) so my sister had the joy of texting me to tell me that Isaac had finally attained hurricane status.

It's gotten rather pretty too... (But notice the blurb at the top left still says "tropical storm")




Tuesday afternoon (28th): The last update showed steady winds of 80 mph with gusts to 95 mph so there is some slow strengthening going on. I'm not sure how much stronger it will get before interaction with the coast starts bleeding out the energy. We've had one rain band go through, not much more impressive than a garden-variety rain shower. At the moment the sky is streaked with clouds with plenty of blue sky showing. The next band looks bigger and stronger but it's still a ways off. Because we're between bands, the breeze is light, there's the lack of rain and the bits of blue sky, and all in all it makes one feel foolish about cancelling Vespers. However, several hours ago we really didn't know what conditions would be and it seemed better to be safe than sorry.

Always like watching this...

Isaac *still* a tropical storm

Tuesday morning (28th): I got up this morning and the first thing I did was check the weather. The much anticipated strengthening of Isaac to hurricane status did NOT happen overnight as was expected. It's still right on the edge with winds of 70 mph and gusts to 85 mph. The forward speed has also slowed to 7 mph. As landfall is supposed to happen overnight tonight it has one more day to pull its act together and tighten up an eye. For once, the computer models are all in agreement about landfall which should happen around the toe of LA. It looks like landfall will be after midnight, putting it on the 29th and the 7th anniversary of Katrina. I'm sure there will not be fireworks in the streets of New Orleans.

Is it opening its eye??

This morning it's a little breezy with winds out of the NE. There are some upper-level clouds advancing out of the SE, precursors of the rain bands to come later today. Interestingly, the vast majority of the thunderstorm activity seems to be on the S and SW sides of Isaac, quite unusual. Usually you would have very heavy bands raking the coast to the E and NE of the center. I'm not sure if this will change as it moves ashore.

The slow movement is the worrisome thing here:

We're not in a low area, near a river, etc. I think we can expect our back yard to turn into a lake though.

Cirrocumulus Clouds in Advance of Isaac