[trip report] Hurricane Katrina at Mississippi State University

[AtmaWeapon]

Guys, even though I'm way up in central Mississippi, Katrina just started hitting us and she's still pretty strong. I figured some of you who are way too North to see a hurricane would love to read posts on the internet about them so I will do a trip report. I'll update the post whenever I take a stroll outside (or venture to the balcony if walking is too dangerous) until the power goes out and I need someone to reply or I'll get banned for double-posting :D Feel free to share hurricane stories.

Also, I'm fairly certain we won't hear from anyone that was actually near coastal regions for quite some time, as my hometown is about 120 miles from the coast and they went without power pretty much within 10 minutes of the wind kicking up.

This witch knows how to blow.

When I started walking around the winds weren't all that strong and I figured I'd be disappointed by the hurricane's weakened state. I made it all the way to the drill field (about 1,000 yards from my dorm) and stood around watching people play football and frisbee for a while. The trip back was much more fun, as about halfway back the wind was strong enough to actually make me start planning my angle while walking. Also, I wish I had a long sleeve shirt because rain HURTS when the wind is blowing hard.

I wanted to continue my stroll and go back towards the drill field but right about then some kind of pinecone or big acorn hit me in the ear and I decided it was about time to head back.

My hurricane suit (T-shirt and jean shorts) is sopping wet, and I think I will switch to a long pair of jeans on my next excursion so at least some of my body isn't getting stabbed by water. At the moment wind gusts are kind of weak, though about every 5-10 minutes a really strong one blows through. So far the wind is pushing the rain to make about a 30 degree angle with respect to the ground, though the strongest gusts do produce near-horizontal angles.

I plan on taking another walk within 45 minutes, I hope the wind is stronger then so I have some wacky tales about getting blown into the next county to tell!

[deathbyhokie]

Also, I wish I had a long sleeve shirt because rain HURTS when the wind is blowing hard.


no kidding. i can remeber times i developed red marks from rain being blown into me.

keep safe atma. hurricanes aren't something to mess around with

[Machiavelli]

Sucks to be you. Up here, It's nice and sunny out. There is a nice breeze blowing. Kids playing at the park. People riding their bikes. Couples and old people taking strolls. People chillin at the pier. Nice day.

Hurricanes aren't fun. I'd stay inside if I were you.

[AtmaWeapon]

OK, I'm back from my latest expedition.

It was hard to get going. I was halfway through getting my soaking wet, freezing cold shirt back on when the power flickered for about 20 seconds. I didn't want to go too far with the power out since I like to take a hot shower after my walks, so I was going to give up. However, the power came back on so I ventured out.

There's not much new to report except that the strong gusts are much more frequent. Adding long pants to my hurricane suit was not a good idea as my pants were baggy and kind of acted like having parachutes on my legs. I managed to make it about twice as far across the campus as before, but my trip was cut short when a policeman caught me taking some pictures and he told me to return to the dorm. He started to drive away but then properly evaluated my plans and told me he'd give me a ride.

He claims the worst is about 2 hours away and headed straight for us :) I wish it were happening in daylight so I could get some good pictures.

In the future, both due to the news of worse headed this way and my own observations of the storm, I will restrict my walks to the grounds of my dorm. I can hear the wind and it would definitely be a good idea for me to stick closer to the dorm, particularly as darkness approaches.

Should the power go out I have some juice in my laptop; I'm not certain if I'll have internet service though.

[Machiavelli]

Mississippi and Louisiana have beed declared disaster zones.
There have been 3 deaths in Mississippi caused by Katrina so far.

Just stay indoors.

[deathbyhokie]

Mississippi and Louisiana have beed declared disaster zones.
There have been 3 deaths in Mississippi caused by Katrina so far.

Just stay indoors.

http://www.sunherald.com/images/sunherald/sunherald/12507/156432602228.jpg

that's in mississippi, btw. stay inside atma.

[Prrkitty]

Stay safe and take care Atma. Hurricanes aren't anything to take lightly. I was in several of them when I lived in South Carolina... last one was Hugo. I never want to experience that again.

God bless...

[theplustwo]

Well, Big Joe is currently in Louisianna (http://zangla.ytmnd.com/), so we'll have to see what he has to say about this mother when he gets power and internet service back. Assuming he's still alive.

Atma you'd better have some sweet pictures of ladies with their clothes blowing off. :naughty:

[JayeM]

I was in a fairly bad hurricane about 30 miles from the Gulf Coast many years ago. We camped out in the central hallway of our house for safety. We could tell when the eye of the hurricane passed over us, because everything got really quiet and the wind stopped. When it started up again the wind was coming from the other direction. The house next door got a tree through its roof. After it was over, we drove around...there were lots of road-like swaths cut through the woods by the tornados.

I hope you're safe, Atma.

[AtmaWeapon]

Well I didn't reply because the power started flickering more frequently and I didn't feel like getting halfway through a post and then lose power and internet service.

About 6:30 or so when I was going to post again I think the worst hit us. There was no way on Earth I was going to walk down to the first floor and go play in it, though some people were sliding in the mud on the hill across the street. The power lines were sparking a lot over there so I sure as heck didn't want to be swimming in puddles under swaying power poles.

Several cars across the street lost windows in the storm. It was kind of strange too, because when I got on campus Monday I was parked in the same spot as a Mustang that lost its driver side windows, and earlier yesterday I tried to move my car to a spot where the white car that beat me to it lost its rear windshield and rear driver side window. Now I'm not so angry about being parked farther away.

Anyway, we pretty much sat on the dorm's balcony (it's a 9-story dorm, 4 rooms form a hall, and all the halls are connected to balconies that run the length of the front of the building. When we wanted a good dose of how powerful the storm was, we'd walk to the corner where the wind was blowing from. I don't know how fast the gusts were, but there were a few times where I did have to hold on to things to keep my balance. It was fast enough that if I'd open my mouth to talk I'd feel my cheeks expand as air flew in.

Over the course of a few hours we watched the drama unfold as the police blocked off our street with a road sign that quickly blew away, then was replaced with a heavier sign. We watched the sparking power pole and tried to determine if it would fall over or not. We watched people return from who knows where and run through the storm trying to stay dry (they didn't).

I went inside at about 7:30 PM and ate from emergency supplies (a large pizza I ordered) while playing Nintendogs and Advance Wars 2. I believe I went inside during the eye because the wind got boring for a little while (though it was still stronger than normal) and then got strong again, though the second part of the storm was much drier than the first.

I woke up and the power had returned, but first I went outside to survey the damage. The owners of the damaged cars are busy trying to set up plastic/tarp substitutes for their ruined windows, but really that's about the worst damage I see here. There are a lot of leaves everywhere. I found the lid to a garbage can in the middle of nowhere and I found a globe to a street light that had been blown off, but really those are the worst pieces of debris I have found.

Really I didn't expect much out of this hurricane, since I'm over 200 miles from the coast, but we still got impressive winds and a month's worth of rain in a few hours. I'll try and get some pictures up if I have a cable my camera can use handy, but I'm afraid the only one with any dramatic effect is a picture of the power pole where I managed to get a spark as it was fading away.

In 3-5 days I hope some people from LA or perhaps coastal MS can come to this thread and share some stories about going through a REAL hurricane.

[carrot red]

The way the water has been rising and flooding everywhere in the aftermath of Katrina, I think it'll take them a lot more than 3 to 5 days. I'm glad you weren't caught in the eye of it, Atma.

On a side note, I am getting a really bad feeling about this storm as far as a death toll. (The 3 deaths are now more than 80.). It looks like Mississippi and Alabama got caught with their pants down and many people got trapped with nowhere to go. They are going to have to search the attics of every house there. I can't imagine those poor people getting drowned in their attics.

[AtmaWeapon]

New Orleans is going to be entirely different the next time I visit. I said before the storm that if the levee broke they'd have no place to stay [Led Zeppelin Moblins] and sure enough, the levee broke.

The death toll in N.O. is small right now because they can't do much counting until the water recedes, and the water won't go away until they fix the levee.

The people in MS and AL had no excuse this time. When Camille came no one understood how strong the storm really was, so I can let stupidity slide. However, there was no question about the power of this storm, so anyone who stayed was insane. I imagine the death count will be fairly high though, since I know a thing or two about the average intellect in my state. Plenty of people were having hurricane parties on the coast and are probably floating in the next county as I type.

Now I can't imagine the power of the storm on the coast. The strength pretty much drops exponentially, but we still have significant damage over 300 miles from the coast (classes are cancelled until Wednesday now). I talked to my parents in Laurel (about maybe 100-150 miles from the coast) and they said our house is pretty much the only one that still has trees outside of the house. The shed where we were letting our dog stay was hit by a branch, though he is fine (he's skittish to begin with -- Dad said he was scared to death) the shed is not OK. A neighbor had a tree fall into their house, and one of its roots was under their driveway so it flipped their car when it tipped.

To give you an idea of the power of the storm, these are not little pine trees you see along the interstate that were tipped. My neighborhood is full of oak trees that were old in the picture of my house we have from 1930, so we're talking 90 year old oak trees. When one of them falls, it destroys what it hits.

I'm glad I'm in an area relatively unaffected, but I still kind of wish I had been in Laurel to see it. I have never seen power of such magnitude before.

Sounds like I'll have a lot of yardwork this weekend (if I-59 is clear enough for me to get home.)

Still no word from my fiance who was working in a hurricane shelter; the building pretty much makes cell phones unusable and I think the landline phone is down :/ Last I heard they had no power and were running out of food because it was impossible to deliver food to the shelter. I hope they are OK, though they probably are since there weren't any trees near the building.

[Monica]

I live in Northeast Louisiana and we got it yesterday. Not horrible, but our electricity went out twice, cable went out, and I think my computer got fried because it can't boot Windows, it just stays on the Dell screen. The other two computers survived though. I'm just grateful that that's all we got. People were fleeing to my town for shelter.

[Machiavelli]

(The 3 deaths are now more than 80.)

It was 100, last I heard. At least 50 of them in Mississippi.

[DsS Game]

my fried from New Orleans said she had a miracle. Since New Orleans had declared a manditory evacuation, everything was just crazy. I'm just glad she is ok. She said that 80% of NO is underwater. That is just crazy....

Here is a link to her blog with her story.

http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Shizocrown90

[Machiavelli]

Here is a link to her blog with her story.

http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Shizocrown90

She's lucky. The guy on the news said that it could be one of the worst hurricanes. I't been downgraded to a tropical storm or something now.

[theplustwo]

Guys, we have to keep smiling and going about our normal lives or else the hurricanes will have truly won. http://images.theplustwo.com/emotes/patriot.gif

[Shadowblazer]

I think that it may be time to declare war on weather.

(Actually, I'm only half joking. They tried in the early 70's to come up with a way to dissipate hurricanes before they could do any real damage. Nothing came of it, but it's quite possible that they're still doing research into the idea.)

[AtmaWeapon]

I think that it may be time to declare war on weather.

(Actually, I'm only half joking. They tried in the early 70's to come up with a way to dissipate hurricanes before they could do any real damage. Nothing came of it, but it's quite possible that they're still doing research into the idea.)

To me that is a really foolish idea given how little we really know about how individial climates interact with each other on a global scale. I know the butterfly effect is cliched, but no one knows if there would be dire consequences when we fiddle with large storm systems.

I wanted to go home this weekend to help clean up but I am hearing reports that home is running out of gas. I might get stuck so I'm waiting for a status report since apparently no one can receive my calls :/

[DsS Game]

I doubt anything can really be truly done to a force like that. Its mother nature.

[zelda777]

it will take a long time to rebuild the city :(

[Beldaran]

Atma, are you ok? Where are you?

[AtmaWeapon]

I returned a little while ago.

On my supply trip to the city, I was assigned to escort a tanker and things went fairly well until we ran into a big ambush. I was really glad I had my crossbow because I had to shoot several peo--

Wait, I think I'm getting life confused with something else again.

Laurel took a lot of damage but it was not as bad as I had heard through the grapevine. However, that's not as good as it sounds because it is kind of like saying "I was brutally raped but I didn't get AIDS."-

I arrived after work crews had spent 3 days or so clearing roads, so the city was not as bad when I arrived as it was after the storm. Crews are working at an amazing rate though I hear they have more workers than they expected and more arrive every day. We are fortunate enough to have a house that sits on one of the lines that feeds power to the entire city, so we got our power back late last night (so my house went without power for 5 days). We have plenty of supplies (thanks to my Mad Max-style run this weekend) and my dad works at a refinery so we were able to keep emergency gas on hand.

The rest of the city itself should have power by the end of the week. However, we have a little suburb (where my fiance lives) that is on a different power company (for reasons that I am diplomatically not mentioning -- me and the missus disagree on the issue) and they haven't seen a single power truck yet. That is most likely because the company serves a moderately large city and they are probably focusing on that city at the moment. If they had any trucks there at all I could come up with an ETA for power for them, but right now it looks like a few hundred people are going to be another two weeks without power.

As I had heard, trees everywhere are down. Our house is one of the few in the neighborhood that was not hit by a tree. My high school's gym was torn open; the building at my church that served as a hurricane shelter was torn open; traffic lights were blown off of the wires by the wind. This storm did not play.

I spent Saturday playing lumberjack in the yard. We had a lot of branches to clean up but we made pretty quick work of them. A neighbor had a decent generator that we shared since they didn't have gas and we did, so we weren't completely without power.

So we aren't the hardest hit city in MS, but in general we are the northernmost city that sustained significant damage. I've been through Meridian 3 times this weekend and the damage was trivial there compared to in Laurel.

I have pictures but I haven't had time to sift through them and properly present them yet. Maybe later tonight they will be up but it is more likely they will surface sometime tomorrow.

[theplustwo]

Man, what with all your karmic lightning rod type powers you sure must hate your home town.