From the fringes of Katrina...

[CPMcGraw]

Monday, 6:45 AM CDT...

The rain has been coming down since about midnight continuously here in downtown Tillman's Corner, Alabama, now in sheets but off-and-on from about 4 pm yesterday. The winds are gusting fairly strong, coming in waves...

Power here is relatively stable, but flickering occasionally. It usually comes back up after about 15 seconds. The battery backup on the main computer has been jumping in to keep me active quite a bit. My new BellSouth DSL service is so far unaffected (except during the power glitches -- no battery backup on that part of the network yet), and we're still locked onto the DirecTV satellites...

The conditions in Gulfport, MS are much worse than they are in NOLA; The MS Gulf Coast is going to get the spanking initially.

I've been cat-napping between Weather Channel updates, which have been often, so I've been up most of the night... :(

I can only take just so much coffee... :p

More from the storm later...

[Tweener]

Sorry to see that you're having to deal with this again. Hope all goes well. I'm looking at radar right now, and it appears Mobile is getting some of the stronger winds and heavier rains. :eek: Hunker down and stay safe, okay?

[CPMcGraw]

Wednesday, August 31...

First thing to say, we survived. Katrina was far worse here in Mobile, 90+ miles from the eye as it passed through Bay St. Louis, than Ivan was when it passed through Mobile Bay and Baldwin County.

I was here in Mobile 36 years ago, too, when Camille did her damage. No question, Katrina was much worse.

You're all probably seeing the videos on the news. I'm located roughly 15 miles north of Dauphin Island and Bayou la Batre.

Our power (and thus, internet access) dropped out about 6:45 AM Monday morning, just minutes after I posted the first message to this forum. It stayed off until 7:45 Tuesday morning, or just 25 hours of continuous stickiness and mosquito misery. The power dropped out Tuesday night about 11 PM, but came back on this morning about 6 AM.

My DSL is still out, but my local dial-up account just came back itself this evening. I'm back on a modem for now. It's better than nothing!

I haven't driven around town yet, as there are still a lot of places where power is out and there are no traffic signals working. Gas stations are still not fully stocked or pumping. Those stations which do have power and gas have lines that are literally miles long. Remember the '70s and the "gas shortages"? No comparison!

Just saw a story from Atlanta showing gas prices there at $6 a gallon. Which is worse: The looting in New Orleans or the price gouging everywhere else?

Those of you with memories of the Gulf Coast, treasure them. It's all there is left. The Gulf Coast doesn't exist anymore, except as just spots (smears, now...) on a map.

More later as I can...

[stefanj]

Glad to hear you made it through without serious trouble.

To help those less lucky:

http://www.redcross.org

Take care everybody!

[Tweener]

Whew, glad to see that post Craig :D .

[CPMcGraw]

Glad to hear you made it through without serious trouble.

Whew, glad to see that post Craig :D

I'm still a little shell-shocked from the aftermath, what I've seen on the TV. I have some friends and aquaintances down around Fowl River, Coden, and Bayou la Batre that I hope took the advice to "bug out". It wasn't the wind and rain that caused all the major problems, but the storm surge. Tillman's Corner is about 40-60 feet ASL, so the surge wasn't an issue at my house. But along the coast, and up in Mobile, which are both near or just a few feet above sea level, we had 12' of storm surge together with the wave height -- high enough to reach the traffic lights. Down at the coast in BLB, it was enough to drive a 100' cargo tug loaded with containers as much as 1000' inland, and if you saw the casino barges in Biloxi, try to understand just how large they are -- as long as a city block, with a large building on top -- and how easily they were lifted up and parked 900' or more across the road. The power of water...

Not that the wind was a slouch, either...

If you saw the picture of the oil rig along the edge of Dauphin Island, know that it travelled 70 miles from where it was originally anchored...

If you saw the picture of the "floatel" that jammed itself under the Africatown-Cochrane Bridge, that thing travelled from Binder Shipyard on the south side of the Mobile River up the river, passing the Holiday Cruise Lines Terminal, crossing over both the Wallace and Bankhead Tunnels, past the new Waterfront Convention Center, past Siebert Yard (CSX) and the old GM&O Terminal, and past the remainder of the Alabama State Docks, until it hit the bridge. Not looking at a map right now, but that's at least 3-5 miles pushed only by the wind...

We also have a few old friends in the greater NOLA-Slidell-Metarie area, as well as the families of local friends who live between here and there, and we're hoping to hear from them before long. Some of them we know "bugged out" and are OK, but for others we're in a wait-and-see mode.

[A Fish Named Wallyum]

I'm still a little shell-shocked from the aftermath, what I've seen on the TV. I have some friends and aquaintances down around Fowl River, Coden, and Bayou la Batre that I hope took the advice to "bug out". It wasn't the wind and rain that caused all the major problems, but the storm surge. Tillman's Corner is about 40-60 feet ASL, so the surge wasn't an issue at my house. But along the coast, and up in Mobile, which are both near or just a few feet above sea level, we had 12' of storm surge together with the wave height -- high enough to reach the traffic lights. Down at the coast in BLB, it was enough to drive a 100' cargo tug loaded with containers as much as 1000' inland, and if you saw the casino barges in Biloxi, try to understand just how large they are -- as long as a city block, with a large building on top -- and how easily they were lifted up and parked 900' or more across the road. The power of water...

Not that the wind was a slouch, either...

If you saw the picture of the oil rig along the edge of Dauphin Island, know that it travelled 70 miles from where it was originally anchored...

If you saw the picture of the "floatel" that jammed itself under the Africatown-Cochrane Bridge, that thing travelled from Binder Shipyard on the south side of the Mobile River up the river, passing the Holiday Cruise Lines Terminal, crossing over both the Wallace and Bankhead Tunnels, past the new Waterfront Convention Center, past Siebert Yard (CSX) and the old GM&O Terminal, and past the remainder of the Alabama State Docks, until it hit the bridge. Not looking at a map right now, but that's at least 3-5 miles pushed only by the wind...

We also have a few old friends in the greater NOLA-Slidell-Metarie area, as well as the families of local friends who live between here and there, and we're hoping to hear from them before long. Some of them we know "bugged out" and are OK, but for others we're in a wait-and-see mode.

No updates for a while. What are things like down there at this point, Craig?