[cross posted -- with 4x updates -- at E Pluribus Unum]
In an earlier diary, I shot some video of Baton Rouge pre-Gustav. Today, I've got video of the storm entering the Baton Rouge area (below the fold).
After I shot that first video, and late yesterday afternoon, I went around the side of the house where I had stacked the patio furniture — away from the patio doorwall — and tied everything to some concrete pylons. then I tied down the patio table underneath the magnolia tree ("that way, it’ll be safe from anything that might fall on it." I told Miss Julie. " Like the magnolia tree.")
I had put everything else movable that was in the yard into the shed, except for one of the garbage cans which was too big to fit through the door. Probably a good thing as it had a couple pounds of shrimp shells in it from the party we had the night before. The smell from that would blot out the sun. So, instead, I tied the can to the seesaw and another piece of patio furniture.
8:30pm: The rain starts. Local weather reports say that tornadoes were spotted east and south of here in East Baton Rouge Parish. The wind wasn’t blowing too hard here — yet.
3:30 am: The rain had stopped and what little wind there was has died down. Oh, and I found a dead rat in the hallway — no doubt a present from one of our cats, Itchy.
7:00 am: When daylight came, we still had power. The wind had picked up again from last night and it was raining again. The day Katrina hit, we lost power around 8am when one of the trees in the neighbor’s yard snapped in two (I’ll never forget that sound) and fell on another tree which then toppled over onto the power lines. We didn’t have power again for 8 days.
I’ll keep going unless (or until) that happens again.
Here's what it looked like around here at 8am.
All in all, not as bad as it might have been -- so far. Weather reports suggest Gustav might make landfall as a Cat 2 storm, turning west and south from earlier tracking estimates. Stay tuned.
P.S. The storm winds have not deterred the hummingbirds that continue to dart in and out of the trees, coming toward the house to drink from our feeder.