And Now, Ike

Thursday, September 11, 2008.

Starts windy and rainy and does this, back and forth with muggy partly-cloudiness all day, until late afternoon when the weather settled down for good into wind and rain and the occasional flash of lightning. Looks like we're getting the bands of Hurricane Ike sooner than expected, but then it's a big storm.

Lots of feeling with folks here towards the folks of Texas -- people say things like, "Well, I'm sorry for Texas, but at least it's not us." In what feels like an ironic twist, my church and our co-religionists have offered evacuation space to our congregations in South Texas. Ike is predicted to make landfall early Saturday morning, so it looks like another 2 days of this weather.

Big Man and I told ourselves there was no point in putting the outdoor furniture back in the courtyard, and so there's nothing else to batten down for this storm. We'll just wait and see what happens...

Friday, September 12, 2008

A crazy day, with intermittent sun and white clouds alternating with dark clouds and spates of rain, wind the whole time. Gusts of over 40 miles-per-hour, with steady winds over 20. Everything not nailed down or tied down is blowing like crazy -- and now it's clear there should have been an accelerated clean-up after Gustav. Stuff piled up helpfully after the last storm is now shifting with the winds; lines not yet repaired whipping like lassos. Kids in schoolyards laughing with the power of the wind, letting themselves lean into it.

Even driving is a chore, the car physically pushed around by the wind gust. Big Man and I run a couple of errands, amazed at the trees bending over and the way he has to work to keep the van straight on the road. He's also nonplussed at how we can have this much wind and clouds, and it's still HOT. He says, "Up north, weather like this would cool everything down." I explain that the wind is coming straight off the Gulf, and that hot wind is why there's so many storms right now.

I'm glad it's a sermon preparation day -- a good excuse to stay indoors the rest of the day. Of course, I have a Board meeting tonight, and one can only hope things won't be any worse. The forecasts are for the storm to make landfall to the west of us late tonight/very early Saturday, and so, once again, it's wait and see...

Saturday, September 13, 2008

A rainy day, of course, with times that the sun tries to break through. No real impact here in NOLA, just the bamboo screening on the fence in my back courtyard ripped free and blowing like a sail. Driving around, we see more "tree trimmings" and other debris, a few more houses and buildings with some roof damage. More houses that were badly wrecked by Katrina but still (somehow) standing have collapsed, one 2 blocks or so from the church I serve.

By afternoon and early evening, it's not even raining any more, just muggy and warm and a bit more windy than usual.

Let's hope and pray that that "conga line" of storms in the Atlantic is done and we won't have any more unwelcome visitors.