the coming storm
It is amazing to realize that I am two days from a watery Armageddon, and that it is also an amazingly nice day outside. What is more amazing has been the further fallout from Katrina: nearly two million or more people are filtering North, evacuating the presumed landfall of lovely Rita. All of these people are leaving at once, and the road home from work has been clogged.
Oddly enough, I found myself in traffic behind a young blonde woman whom I did not recognize driving a dark-painted late-model Corolla. Rather, my inability to recognize her was only odd or significant because of all the people I could get stuck behind in traffic, it appears I got stuck behind a fellow Grinnellian. I'm still not sure she understood why I waved and flashed my lights and then gave her the thumbs-up just before I cut her off while pointing to the sticker on the back of my own car, but should the alumni network point her here, hello!
Can't buy ice, or candles, or bottled water, or an ice-chest, or a small portable parrafin or propane camp-stove to save my life. There has been a run on WalMart for ammunition. Every gas station for miles is out of gasoline, and I am down to an eighth of a tank. I may not be able to make it in to work tomorrow.
I am expected to lose power at some point for at least two days, and possibly seven.
I am sure that folks are overexaggerating the danger and all... but it really seems impractical, and I mostly suspect that Entergy is just going to slack off again and allow localized brownouts to go countywide again.
All this for what is probably going to be under fourteen inches of rain.