#37817: coturnix — 08/28  at  01:01 PM
Another way to track Katrina:
http://ibiblio.org/pjones/wordpress/?p=708

#37827: — 08/28  at  02:22 PM
That would include an awful lot of
politicians, Professor, most of them
Democrats. See John Barry, 'Rising Tide,'
which is the history of the 1927 flood, which
was not caused by a hurricane but was
considerably worse since it lasted for months
and months.

In fact, politicans tried to stop people
building in harm's way by making it
impossible to get federal flood insurance
in the most dangerous areas. That famously
corrupt Republican Richard Nixon signed
that law.

Government is limited by the willingness of
the governed to be governed. Nobody, but
nobody, was willing to adhere to that law.

You should drive down to Sioux City, Iowa,
and look at its riverside industrial district,
all built since the Nixon flood law and
all on the river side of the breakwater.

#37828: Arun — 08/28  at  02:23 PM
http://www.geocities.com/hurricanene/hurricanecamille.htm

The aftermath of the previous big one.

#37846: — 08/28  at  05:26 PM
Minnesota, schminnesota: According to the the National Hurricane Center, Katrina's effects will reach up a bit north of the 50th parallel. (Okay, so they say it'll veer east and will be more of a problem for coastal Quebec, PEI, Nova Scotia, etc - but be aware, your Yankeeness will no longer protect you!)

#37858: decrepitoldfool — 08/28  at  07:52 PM
Mostly Cajun lives 200 mi from New Orleans. He works with high-voltage industrial equipment all over the area.

... If the levees are breached, though, New Orleans will become a series of structures sticking up out of a lake with a depth of fifteen feet. Second story of surviving buildings won’t be safe. And it won’t be nice, clean water, either. That storm will bring in debris from the marshes and the river that surround the city.

That water can potentially carry a rude mixture of wildlife and biological debris, as well as the detritus of destroyed petrochemical infrastructure ranging from plain ol’ crude oil to dozens of different chemicals manufactured in the industrial corridor up and down the Mississippi River...

#37949: jay denari — 08/29  at  03:43 PM
And the local toxic contamination is only part of the problem. Katrina's economic dangers could have a much greater effect on you in MN, me in MA, and everyone else, than post-landfall rain ever could...