Hurricane Season

Hoping for the best for Corpus Christi to Houston tomorrow.

It's been almost twelve years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29 of 2005. The Saturday before it hit, I wrote, "I think this is going to be bad." Although I am often wrong, that time I wasn't. So here we are looking at another rapidly intensifying hurricane, this time farther to the west of us, that the models are having a hard time dealing with beyond tomorrow. Despite the uncertainty, however, there seems to be an increasing possibility that it could back up into the Gulf a bit and drift farther in our direction before heading inland again. That could be bad, especially if it brings a big tidal surge and long and heavy rainfall. Of course, in the midst of it, we are holding our LAMBRA road race championship on Sunday over in Jackson MS. By all indications, there shouldn't be any severe weather for that. It's looking like it would be Tuesday before that's a real possibility. Even so, it's definitely something to monitor.

This is a little concerning for us.

It's an interesting coincidence that this week I have been working on summarizing some of the history about Tulane's rebuilding efforts and the federal funding and reimbursements that the university received to cover a lot of that. Even this far out, it seems that the Katrina story still isn't finished. As the years have gone by, some have forgotten, and others never even knew, the extreme sense of urgency and extraordinary efforts that allowed the university to re-open that January. For a while, there was the very real possibility that it wouldn't happen, that the medical school and hospital would be shut down permanently, and that there would be even more massive layoffs than there were. Since the university was at the time, and still is, the largest private employer in the city, it would have been a major blow. Now, many years afterward, that doesn't seem to matter much to some federal bureaucrats who probably watched it on TV from their dorm rooms as if it was all just some reality show.  Just a few weeks ago they quietly removed Kenny Bellau's Katrina boat display from under the Cabildo in Jackson Square. So a lot of hurricane-related things seem to have come together recently - the flooding a few weeks ago and the broken pumping system, lingering Katrina federal funding issues, Hurricane Harvey, Kenny's boat, etc.  But I digress.....

Quietly removed from the Cabildo recently

Actually, I'm not too worried about this one, at least not yet. Despite all of the gloom and doom surrounding the New Orleans drainage pumps and the Sewerage and Water Board, the city is probably in far better shape to handle storm surge and heavy rainfall than it was twelve years ago, or ever. There are massive new levees and gigantic floodgates and pumping systems and generators and stockpiled fuel to get rainwater over closed floodgates, none of which existed in '05. On the plus side, I'm looking at the weather out in the Atlantic and not seeing anything that's a threat. If we can get through the next three weeks or so, the chances of a major hurricane making it here start to go down dramatically.

This morning I did the first Tulane coffee ride of the semester with Grayson and Elliot. It was actually a little premature since most students will be moving in today and over the weekend, so it wasn't surprising that there were just the three of us. As I rode past the stadiums and athletic facilities there were lots of student athletes around. They are usually required to help with move-in day, so I guess that had something to do with it. There was a pretty good northeast wind blowing on the lakefront today and it felt just a tiny bit like Fall weather. Of course we won't see anything remotely like cool temperatures for another couple of months, but one thing about early morning rides is that you always seem to get a few of these early seasonal premonitions.