Gustav's landfall could be anywhere from the Florida panhandle to Texas, but forecasters believe it is headed toward New Orleans, which is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Officials in New Orleans said it is still too early to call for evacuations of the city but issued a statement saying that residents should have an evacuation plan in place.

The city is prepared to move 30,000 residents by train and bus, said Col. Jerry Sneed, who runs the city's office of emergency preparedness. The city expects an evacuation to take 24 to 36 hours.

Even though Gustav was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm, New Orleans residents remain on edge today as forecasters warn the storm will likely regroup and could be a powerful Category 3 hurricane by this weekend -- the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

So there isn't much printed news on the web yet (this is the best I could find: http://abcnews.go.com/US/...3&page=1), but the national news just announced that Hurrican Gustav, which has already killed 22 in Haiti and the DR is now expected to go over the Gulf of Mexico and gain strength. Right now its projected path is New Orleans, at a level 3, and expected to hit in a few days.

(from the link I posted above)


I hope they are wrong.

.
[Edited 8/27/08 15:48pm]

New Orleans Braces for Tropical Storm
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Tropical storm Gustav began pounding Jamaica Thursday, prompting evacuations and relief efforts as the strengthening storm continued a collision course with the Gulf of Mexico, where officials in Mississippi and Louisiana were already on high alert..

After barreling through Haiti and the Dominican Republic with hurricane-force winds and rain earlier in the week, Gustav was somewhere shy of 80 miles off the coast of east Jamaica on Thursday and gaining steam. Heavy rains that signaled its arrival led Jamaican officials to open shelters and warn residents to seek cover.

Forecasters said the storm had winds of roughly 70 miles per hour, but would accelerate toward Category 3 speeds of 111 mph as it continued west toward the Gulf. Hurricanes are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with Category 1 storms reaching winds of 74 mph and Category 5 storms exceeding speeds of 155 mph. Forecasters said Gustav would grow to a hurricane by the end of the day.

Emergency preparations for the storm along the Gulf Coast come almost three years to the day that Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans, destroying levees, flooding 80 percent of the city, and killing nearly 1,500 people. If Gustav were to strike the region, it would be the first major hurricane to threaten the Gulf since 2005.

“There are a lot of things that are different between now and what we faced in 2005 when Katrina came ashore,” Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, told the Assocated Press before flying to Louisiana to meet with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Bobby Jindal. “We’ve had three years to put together a plan that never existed before.”

Emergency officials in Mississippi warned of evacuations, as residents flocked to stores to stock up on gas, power generators and other supplies. Gov. Jindal declared a state of emergency and prepared hundreds of buses and emergency shelters to help residents flee should Gustav strike as expected on Tuesday.

Mayor Nagin has already returned from the Democratic Convention in Denver to help his city prepare. And Mr. Jindal said he was ready to cancel his upcoming plans to attend the Republican Convention in Minnesota, where he is scheduled to speak on Tuesday night, immediately after Sen. John McCain’s wife, Cindy, and just before the vice presidential nominee.

“My first responsibility is here in Louisiana,” he said at a news conference on Wednesday. “As long as the hurricane has Louisiana in its sights, this is where I’ll be. We’re still hopeful that the storm will miss us, but we’ve got to prepare as if it’s coming our way.”

Concern that the storm might wreak havoc in the Gulf prompted the evacuation of oil platforms and sent oil prices higher. One of the world’s largest offshore drillers, Transocean, evacuated 1,600 workers from its rigs in the Gulf, while Royal Dutch Shell PLC pulled nearly 400 people from its rigs. Petrobras, ConocoPhillips, and other energy companies said they were paying close attention to Gustav’s movements and were debating when to begin evacuating.

As fears spread early Thursday, oil prices climbed past $120 a barrel, and were expected to rise higher, after having sunk as low as $113 a barrel earlier in the week. The Gulf accounts for about 25 percent of the United States’ domestic crude oil production and about 15 percent of the nation’s natural gas output.

Gustav began its path of destruction on Tuesday, when it hit Haiti with hurricane force. Flooding and landslides killed at least 15 people there and another eight in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, is particularly vulnerable to storm-related disasters because much of its forests have been chopped down and used for fuel, leaving the country with very little tree cover.

From there, the system moved west, cutting a path across the northeast coast of Jamaica, where it now inches along at a pace of about 8 miles an hour. Forecasters say Gustav could enter the Gulf late Saturday or early Sunday, and will feed off the warm water and moist air as it grows in might, slowly building as it careers toward Louisiana.

New Orleans and the surrounding areas are under mandatory evacuations and the traffic on the highway heading away from New Orleans is pretty heavy and slow going.

Tomorrow they're changing to counterflow traffic on the highway so that all of the major highways will be going north.

I'm in Baton Rouge right now and we're not being evacuated.

JasmineFire said:

At least Baton Rouge will still exist, since the city isn't below sea level. But that city can still suffer serious wind & tornado damages. Flash flooding will still happen.

Again, you're better off in Monroe.

TonyVanDam said:

i'm not from LA so i don't even know where monroe is.

a friend of mine is in alexandria and he said i could come up there.

the veterinary school is allowing the students to stay there with their pets.

JasmineFire said:

Monroe is farther north, next to Grambling. Good luck and stay safe.
[Edited 8/30/08 20:52pm]

Gustav slams Cuba as Cat 4 storm; many evacuated


HAVANA – Gustav slammed into Cuba's tobacco-growing western tip as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane Saturday while both Cubans and Americans scrambled to flee the storm as it roared toward the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.

Forecasters said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane as it hit Cuba's mainland after passing over its Isla de la Juventud province, where shrieking 150 mph (240 kph) winds toppled telephone poles, mango and almond trees and peeled back the tin roofs of homes.

Isla de la Juventud civil defense chief Ana Isla said there were "many people injured" on the island south of mainland Cuba, but no reports of deaths. She said nearly all its roads were washed out and that some regions were heavily flooded.

"It's been very difficult here," she said on state television.

Authorities evacuated at least 250,000 people from western Cuba, including Isla de la Juventud.
[Edited 8/30/08 17:25pm]

when is it likely to hit?

cborgman said:

last i heard it was supposed to hit on monday evening but the rain will start today.

SCNDLS said:

i've never even heard of grambling. thank you for the well wishes, though. i want to go back to Massachusetts right now, for real.

The veterinary school is built like a bunker or some other indestructable thing and I think that I'm going to go there tomorrow morning. The dean sent out a campus-wide email saying that students can always stay at the school with thier pets. I figure that I'll do that and then I can also help out in the ICU if any emergencies come in.

JasmineFire said:

Grambling is the town where Grambling University is and Monroe is next to that. It's maybe an hour outside of Shreveport so it's way north of where you are.

SCNDLS said:

oh man...shreveport is like 4 hours away. I just went out real quick to grab some cash from the ATM and top off my gas tank and people are starting to get a little crazy. I tried to go to walmart to buy an air mattress bu they were closing down as i was trying to walk in. I'll just bring my foam mattress pad to school, i guess.