We're on the western edge of the storm and it's dumping rain on us. I'm not complaining, we need the rain. We're not getting any wind to speak of, small gusts, but we're getting drenched. I had planned to take the grandkids to the deer lease this morning, but I think we'll cancel the trip.
The upside of this whole exercise is that the marsh fire in New Orleans will be extinguished. A marsh fire is a stinky, smoky mess. Dead grass atop the marsh starts burning and it smells like you're burning an outhouse. The Guard has been trying to put it out with helicopters, but that effort was doomed from the start. I feel that the effort was calculated to show the residents that "WE'RE DOING SOMETHING" rather than actually extinguishing the fire.
We're listening to the Weather Channel and they're in full panic mode. It's another disaster, which is the weather-weenies stock-in-trade. I hope that Mayor Landrieu of New Orleans has the pumps working. He's going to need them, but this is only a rainstorm, and we need the rain.
3 comments:
Yep,just perfect. Slow, soaking rain, 20 minute break, then more slow soaking rain. I'd be willing to grill out indoors on Monday if it'd just keep on like this.
Hizzoner will be working with pumps that are not built to handle this level of rain, so there will be some lowland flooding. I suppose it's st00pid to ask, but in the sub-tropics, why were pumps installed that could handle only a brief surge of 1"/hr rainfall? Maybe those were what was available way back then, but turbo-pump technology is so advanced now, twice the water can be moved for half the horsepower. This upgrade should have been made years ago.
Yeah, even up here, the weather guys, who should be focusing on our increasingly-bad fire danger and fire-weather conditions, are hooting and hollering about Lee.
Nother question, PawPaw, why did the Gulf Rigs abandon ship in the face of a modest gale and cut the production in half? Seems to me that THEY are over-hyped about storms, and THEY have a very good commercial reason to do that. Their correspondence bears examination.
That's New Orleans, Rivrdog. Everything they do is half-assed. Except the cooking. New Orleans knows how to throw a party, but otherwise it's simply a third-world hellhole.
I know nothing about the oil patch. I have a brother who worked out there for many years and was once abandoned on an oil rig. He had been working the night shift (with the position of Driller) and told his relief that he was going to crash in his bunk for a couple of hours until the crew boats came to evac them. He woke later to a quiet rig and realized that no one had wakened him when they evacuated and he was alone on the rig. He cranked up some generators, go the lights on, then went to the galley and found some steaks. He called the main office and they told him "oh-crap, but you're going to have to ride it out." He spent three days out there, burning diesel and eating like a king. He made double-time the whole time, and when the crew came back, he worked a week at time-and-a-half during his regular shift.
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