One year Post Isaac. Part 1 of 3. Preparing for a small storm.

Hurricane Isaac

It's Monday the 27th of August.  Tropical Storm Isaac is wobbling across the Gulf of Mexico.  He's not that strong of a storm but models put it on a bee line to Louisiana and it has to cross some of the warmest parts of the Gulf.  It will strengthen before it gets here.  We've survived Katrina, and more recently Gustav but the slow moving, heavy rain forecast has everyone on edge.  It's time to start prepping for a hurricane. The kids are excused from school so we stay busy by securing the house and property.

It's a standard routine.  We've prepped for many storms in the past.  We take all the plants, chairs, and other things off the back porch and pack them into the garage.  All my wife's bird feeders have to come down and put away.  By noon the garage is overloaded and I have to go to school to secure the concession stand.  Everything is put indoors.  Doesn't matter if the garbage cans stink, they have to be put away.  What doesn't fit is tied down.  With that done I head back to the house.  Take a little time to check the updated models.  Still a Tropical Storm but they have it as "near stationary".  This is not good.  Memories of Hurricane Juan enter my mind.  It was 1985, and Hurricane Juan parked off the coast for five days.  Barely a Hurricane, Juan dumps more that thirty inches over Louisiana.  I remember seeing deer, rabbits, and other wild life standing in the middle of the Interstate because there was no other dry land.  This storm needs to move faster.  I'm wore out from all the work of the day. We devise a plan to move the vehicles in the morning and get some sleep.

Lights and lanterns.

Tuesday morning comes and they upgrade Isaac to a Hurricane.  The outer feeder bands are starting to pass over every so often.  There's not a lot left to do. I take my tractor out of barn and park it on the back porch. The boys help me put small 110 window unit in and set up generator. We gather flashlights and other things to prepare for when the electricity gets knocked out.  It's a long, slow day.  Endless updates are coming over the news channel.  They keep slowing down the storm.  The storm will make land fall over night. They always do.  We get comfortable for the night when the electricity starts to flicker on and off. We already ran the A/C hard so the house is cool and we get some rest. Surely everything will be fine.  We've lived through much worse.  Tomorrow we will get up and be busy keeping the ditches clear and dealing with debris, but this is just life in Louisiana.  The thinking is this storm will pass, threaten, then leave like all the others.  But Isaac has other plans.  By midnight He stalls again.  Being on the western shore of Lake Pontchartrain is about to but us in the bulls eye of this storm.  Isaac is about to teach us some hard lessons of storm surge that the meteorologists on TV can't explain. Wednesday will be a punishing day.