Southern Byways

 
Although hurricane season while living in or traveling to the south is part of life, no one likes to hear that a storm is coming their way. People rush to the nearest store to stock their homes with water, flashlights and the typical hurricane supplies (and yes, that includes supplies for that ever famous hurricane party) and the shelves are often bare. As word was out that there was no way to avoid Ike, I managed to remain calm and keep my plans for the week, yet remained glued to the TV hoping to catch word of any changes that …read more

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I just finished saying that we have managed to dodge the bullet on the Hurricane Dean situation, but I was just reading that Texas isn’t taking any chances…
Louisiana has scaled back its emergency operations center as Hurricane Dean appears on a track to miss the state.
Mark Smith says the state is keeping a “crisis action team” at its operations center to continue monitoring Dean. At one point, he says the number of personnel at the center was close to 100. Officials began sending personnel home Sunday morning.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami projected Dean would become …read more

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I’m keeping my eye on this one. We still have 105 days left until the end of the hurricane season, and this tropical storm isn’t looking so good at the moment.
“Tropical Storm Dean, continues to move quickly west in the Atlantic.
Dean is forecast to become a hurricane by Thursday night or early Friday, and should be threatening the Lesser Antilles by early Saturday.
This system could threaten some parts of the U.S. mainland by the middle of next week.”
And obviously, everyone is hoping that this tropical storm will fizzle out, but everything that I have been reading this …read more

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“Cities simmered with triple-digit temperatures Monday, toppling records in a heat wave blamed for deaths in at least five states.Thermometers hit over 100 degrees in parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Nebraska, Kansas and the western tip of Tennessee, where Memphis hit a record 105 degrees, the National Weather Service said.”
And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. It’s Elvis Week in Memphis and zillions of fans are visiting from around the world to to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. Here’s hoping that everyone down there is finding ways to stay …read more

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“Although it was over a thousand miles away, the tornados that destroyed Greensburg Kansas reminded us that there is a chance that global warming is playing havoc with our lives.  Regardless, it was disheartening and sobering to see a town demolished.
On Friday, New Orleans had a wake up call of our own with massive street flooding after a torrential rain.  “
Having lived through a tornado that wiped out an entire street in a nearby town and then a few years later watching a funnel cloud heading straight for us, I can honestly understand what these people are going through. It takes …read more

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“Victimized by Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, Watson and other longtime residents here admit they’ve given up on rebuilding in this low-lying neighborhood bordered by the powerful waters of Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi River.
The reasons are understandable: Too much reliance on man-made structures that might collapse again in the next big storm; the forces of nature are just too risky. ”
A sad, sad story for the long time residends and the wildlife that also called the area home.
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“RIEGELWOOD, N.C. – Survivors picked through the rubble of their flattened homes Friday after a tornado killed eight people in this riverside town, the area hardest hit by a devastating storm system that later swept through the Northeast.
Gov. Mike Easley toured the devastated area as disaster assessment teams surveyed what was left of a mobile home park and several brick homes that were flattened by the storm.
More than half of the 20 people injured when the tornado struck Riegelwood remained hospitalized Friday, including four children Easley said were in “very, very critical condition.”
Having experienced two tornados over the past …read more

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This looks as if it will be the last update that you will get on Ernesto. It has moved out of the south and headed north. It has definitely ruined our weekend, and that just plain sucks!

“Over in the Atlantic Basin, the remains of Ernesto continue to spread heavy rain across parts of the Middle Atlantic States this morning, which will spread north into southern New England. Gusty winds and flash flooding will continue to be an issue across these areas, with conditions slowly improving toward the later part of the weekend.”
For those of you who live in this region, …read more

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“Mandatory hurricane evacuation orders prompt such a low percentage of residents of vulnerable areas to leave, some are suggesting emergency officials should try to scare people into leaving.
“One thing we can do is to make them appreciate what storms can do to their homes,” said Dr. Jay Baker, a sociologist at Florida State University and one of the nation’s ranking experts on emergency response. “Telling people specific results is better than simple evacuation orders. We need to make them understand how horrible it will be to be in their house with the water at a certain height. People need to …read more

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“The man with his finger on the thunderstorm warning button for the National Weather Service had a brother killed by lightning. That changed his life and set his career direction.
A few miles south of metropolitan Tampa, in a tomato-growing community named Ruskin, there’s a building down a two-lane road that is nondescript except for one thing.
It bristles with satellite dishes and domed radars.
Inside that building, workers watch computer screens feed information from the spy equipment outside. Those radars and satellite dishes are tracking an enemy known to kill Floridians.
And that would be… lightning!
We were just out for a walk …read more

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