Ahira's Hangar

This one looks like the real thing - a frightening monster of a storm that can do billions of dollars in damage - possibly as bad or even worse (hard as that is to imagine) than Rita and Katrina of three years ago.

Thankfully, it looks like huge numbers of the people in the areas where this huge and powerful storm are expected to hit have fled for their lives.

Should hit land sometime in the coming morning - looks right now that it will hit a bit west of New Orleans, which actually means the most dangerous part of the storm (which is usually to the east of the eye) should strike the city.

May we be spared the human damage this time around. Homes and businesses can be rebuilt. The human lives can never be replaced, and the misery and suffering of a disaster like Katrina can never be forgotten.

The National Guard (those who are not overseas) have been called up in the possibly affected states. CNN just said that the Canadian armed forces are also standing by to help if necessary.

So far it looks like the flood walls and levees are holding. Let us hope that they continue to do so!

Tropical storm Hannah is now strengthening, and might be a hurricane by the time it hits Florida (as if Florida needs anymore rain! ) or Georgia and/or the Carolinas.

At least two more possible nasty storms lined up behind Hannah.

This could be turning into a really ugly hurricane season.

I hope for New Orleans's sake that the levees hold. Did they ever improve the levees after the Katrina disaster or did they just rebuild them to the way they were before Katrina?

Supposedly some have been rebuilt and approved; some have not. The whole system is supposed to be in the midst of being upgraded to withstand a century storm and be done by around 2011.

The news is now saying that a private levee 20 miles to the south of New Orleans will fail at any time. That area was under mandatory evacuation, so hopefully no one will be trapped.

Hanna is now a hurricane over the Bahamas. The next storm in line behind it is now officially a tropical storm named Ike and is expected to be another hurricane by the time it hits the Bahamas. And there is another storm behind that one which is also getting stronger. They are lined up across he Atlantic like jets lining up to land at an airport.

Wow.

--A

Having been in drought conditions for the past five years, Florida's aquifer can use the rain.
But, places like the St. Charles River and the lakes along it are already cresting, with downtown areas in places like Sanford already flooded with standing water. Even with just a glancing blow from these storms, there's going to be severe problems...

Didn't you guys recently get some twenty inches of rain from Tropical Storm Fay? I would think that if the same areas get hit again by Hurricanes Hanna (back to to a tropical storm, but expected to once again strengthen to a hurricane by the time it hits the mainland US), Ike (expected to hit land as a category two), or Josephine (the one behind Ike, now strong enough to get a name) there will be some pretty bad flooding? I mean, there is only so much the lakes and rivers can take in in a short period of time.

Gustav is not doing what the forecasters expected - stalling out over Texas - and doing what everyone around here expected it to do - heading up the Mississippi River system, as landfalls in Louisiana always seem to do. Which means it is eventually on its way here via Illinois.

We actually desperately need a good rain. As my son said this morning - winter was a frozen wet swamp with record levels of snowfall. Spring was a nasty wet swamp with near daily rains. The last month has been near desert levels of drought, and the trees and crops are badly hurting. It looks like the remains of Gustav, combined with a low coming at us from the plains, will give us several days of rain in a row. And we really need that right now.

The remnants of hurricane Gustav are moving through today, and should give us some much needed rain in the Great Lakes area.

Hanna killed a bunch more people in Haiti (which has been hit by every storm lately) and some cities in Haiti are under twelve feet of water. It should hit the Carolinas tomorrow and then scoot up the coast, giving much needed rain to the mid-Atlantic states.

Ike is a frightening category four storm approaching the Carribean. They are thinking a south Florida direct hit might be in its future.

The governor of Virginia has declared a state of emergency due to Hanna.

Here's hoping all these storms take a lovely u-turn and go back out to sea.

Hanna should make landfall somewhere in the Carolinas tonight, then bounce along the coast all the way up to the Maritimes. While all toipical storms and hurricanes are dangerous, this one is rather weak in comparison to monsters like Andrew or Katrina or Rita or Gustav, so hopefully all will be as well as possible when dealing with something that potentially dangerous.

Ike, on the other hand, looks like a monster of a storm. Looks like it will either go through the straight between Florida and Cuba and head into the Gulf, or hit the millions of people in southeast Florida head on. As at least a strong category three, if not more than that.

I am hoping that Haiti will be spared this time. They have been nuked with rain by Fay, Gustav, and Hanna, and there is terrible suffering there, with pleny of people still up on rooftops waiting to be saved from the flooding. Last thing they need is a category three or four storm roaring through.

The news from Haiti following these storms was truly awful. While I was relieved that Ike didn't come to south Florida (where it almost certainly would have hit as a cat 4 if it hadn't been slowed down by the mountains of Cuba), the truth is that we have the services and infrastructure to deal with a storm like this and places like Haiti and Cuba do not.

Very true, MsMary. Doesn't Haiti have the (sad) distinction of being the poorest country in the world? Or something like that? What with all the internal strife and poverty plus the natural disasters, I sometimes wonder how Haiti manages to hold itself together and endure as a nation. I can't begin to imagine what the Haitian people must suffer through on a daily basis.