By dropping an end-quote, you appear to have conflated the links to Jeff Masters's and Steve Gregory's Weather Underground pages.

Posted August 29, 2005 1:45 AM by Richard Parker

There seems to be some kind of markup error with this post on your Live Journal feed, btw. (Could be a temp glitch, but thought you should know.)

Posted August 29, 2005 2:53 AM by PiscusFiche

Whoops. Hadn't seen Richard Parker's comment--it's probably caused by the same thing.

Posted August 29, 2005 2:54 AM by PiscusFiche

Also, the satelite image site doesn't allow image linking. You can go to the satelite image page and then pick New Orleans.

Posted August 29, 2005 4:01 AM by Alan Hamilton

There is an interesting occasional blurriness to the French Quarter cam that I think translates to when gusts hit.

Posted August 29, 2005 6:35 AM by Kathryn Cramer

Markup error fixed.

Posted August 29, 2005 6:38 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I've received my travelling orders, fly to Houston today, then overland to Points South and East by available transportation. The Red Cross has a partnership with HumVee owners, this will probably be useful over the next couple of weeks. I've been recruited for Response Technology, so I'll have some computer access and may have some sitting-around time for updates. Don't count on it, though.
The sun is coming up, time to get packing. And return 13 library books.
Someone keep an eye on Tropical Depression 13 for me?

Posted August 29, 2005 6:58 AM by John Houghton

High tide on the Louisiana coast seems to have been in the 4:30 - 6:30 AM range. According to Weatherunderground.com, New Orleans is reporting 68 mph winds with much higher gusts, whereas Empire, LA (on the coast), seems to be reporting 12 mph winds. I wonder if thet is because the reporting equipment is knocked out or whether Empire is in the rather big eye now.

Posted August 29, 2005 7:08 AM by Kathryn Cramer

I talked to my aunt last night. She lives in a small town in eastern Mississippi, about 190 miles from the coast; they were anticipating the storm to still be a category 1 hurricane when it reached them. Here in Nashville, we have tropical storm warnings for tomorrow. We agreed we were grateful all the same; after all, we weren't stuck in New Orleans. She did her medical training at Charity Hospital there, and was contemplating, with horror, what working there this week was going to be like.

Posted August 29, 2005 7:33 AM by fidelio

I hear from David in the other room that Bill Senior in Ft. Lauderdale reports that his house has not had electricity since last Thursday. The heat index is going up to 106 there today.

Posted August 29, 2005 7:37 AM by Kathryn Cramer

The NO web cams seem to have gone down about 6:19 local time in a bunch, suggesting that the power went out.

Posted August 29, 2005 8:09 AM by Kathryn Cramer

Sorry about the glitches. That's what I get for posting quickly that late at night.

Posted August 29, 2005 8:33 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The Houston alt/rock station is taking calls from people who've been on cell phones with relatives who're holed up in NO. The owner of the Crowne Plaza on Bourbon and Canal says he just lost power a little while ago and is now running on generators, but there's no flooding yet. He has some minor roof damage right now. People in the Superdome say the same thing... small roof leaks, no flooding yet.

Posted August 29, 2005 9:07 AM by Stephanie

It looks as though the centre will pass east of New Orleans and be somewhere close to the border with Mississippi.

And a levee breach on the Industrial Canal at Tennessee Street.

Posted August 29, 2005 9:30 AM by Dave Bell

The TV feed over the internet has broken up badly. I've found Tennessee Street on Google Earth, and it's on the east side of a canal linking the river and the lake, the wrong side for a breach to affect central New Orleans.

Posted August 29, 2005 9:42 AM by Dave Bell

Reports now from the Hyatt Regency -- lots of windows breaking and showering glass into the atrium.

Lost power about 06:30.

No mention of casualties.

Posted August 29, 2005 9:57 AM by Dave Bell

It would be a good idea to mention that if you want to volunteer DO NOT pack up and head south! If you have the skills and/or experience needed, contact your local Red Cross or other relief agencies to join a coordinated team. If you don’t have the skills and/or experience, your showing up causes MANY more problems than it can solve. The area has plenty of willing bodies available already, homeless ones that have to be fed, etc. Don’t add to bad logistics for good reasons.

If you CAN volunteer but don’t have the skills and/or experience and/or can’t go there, call your local relief agencies anyway. Those that are sending teams will have some staffing shortages for their local operations, jobs that don’t require S&R or disaster relief experience.

Posted August 31, 2005 12:09 PM by Tully

Josh Benton has created a check-in site at http://www.katrinacheckin.org.

Posted August 31, 2005 1:41 PM by Bill Shunn

Via a discussion at Peg Kerr's blog:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
A little article discussing how money for finishing and fitting the levees was filtered away to the war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, he who is oft quoted in the prescient articles, has a few quotes in there as well.

Posted August 31, 2005 2:04 PM by PiscusFiche

I hope, when this all ends, I have a chance to buy Walter Maestri a beer. He sounds like a remarkable individual. From a few hours ago:

The normally unflappable Jefferson Parish Emergency Management Director Walter Maestri broke into tears as he broadcast a call to help for anyone who could offer food or water to officials at the parish's emergency operations center in Marrero.

Posted August 31, 2005 2:41 PM by Lis Riba

Have y'all seen this map yet? It's a super cool use of the Google Maps technology--you can add markers to the map of New Orleans to report on the status of various areas of the city.

Posted August 31, 2005 4:59 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

From today's Times-Picayune:

"New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Wednesday there are likely thousands dead in the city from Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flood.
[snip]
"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
[snip]
Nagin estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained in New Orleans, a city of nearly half a million people. He said 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated."

There's another check-in forum at nolarefugees.com

An estimate somewhere between 50 and 100 thousand people leaves an awfully big margin of error.

Posted August 31, 2005 5:17 PM by Mac

Moveon has set up a system for folks to offer free housing to katrina refugees, folks in the southeast are most urgently needed:

http://www.hurricanehousing.org/

Posted September 1, 2005 2:13 PM by d

In the NOLA Craigslist personal ads, altruistic men are offering shelter to hot refugees (well, those of whom have computers, power, Internet access and the free time to cruise Craigslist.) Many of the ads in the linked MeFi post have been deleted, but there are new ones.

Posted September 1, 2005 5:00 PM by Zed

Via Caitlin R Kiernan's blog, this article? op/ed? about the possible death toll, tough choices, and the uselesness of pointing fingers:
Pompeii on Ole Miss: Facing Katrina's Toll, Fully

Posted September 1, 2005 5:10 PM by Charity

A couple of rather demonstrative photographs, from the USAF via Usenet:

Satellite photograph, night of 27 Sept 2003
versus
Satellite photograph, night of 31 Aug 2005

(accompanying story; yellow is city lights and fires)

Posted September 2, 2005 1:05 PM by Andrew Gray

Better than satellite photos:

Google Earth users:

NOAA Cessna aircraft have taken hi-res photos of NOLA and nearby coastal areas.

Go to http://earth.google.com/katrina.html for links to the .kmz placemark files. Open the placemarks, and click on the placemark nearest your particular area of interest. The popup will then display a link to download the 4k x 4k overlay image files.

These are very LARGE files. Don't try to open too many of them at once.

The alignment of the overlays is a bit rough. You may want to right-click the overlay and select "edit" so you can tweak the alignment yourself.

These are very high-res images, capable of determining extent-of-damage for individual addresses.

I'm a moderately experienced aerial-recon interpreter - if anyone has any particular questions about what they're seeing in these photos, let me know.

Posted September 3, 2005 6:29 PM by Glen Blankenship

Also, Google Maps online has added a DigitalGlobe post-flood satellite-image layer. Just zoom in on the NOLA area, and click the red "Katrina" button that appears.

Posted September 3, 2005 6:30 PM by Glen Blankenship

Discussion of hurricane intensity and global climate change, from experts, along with appallingly insensitive comments.

Posted September 4, 2005 2:08 AM by Randolph Fritz

Spam? (Being cautious about saying so after last goofup.)

Posted January 11, 2007 4:17 AM by Serge is pretty sure there is spam