Well, I knew it was too good to be true. A whole hurricane season last year and no tropical depressions, tropical storms or hurricanes with which to deal. Hmmm...2008 seemed like it was doing okay until Hurricane Fay threatened Florida. I noticed that it was headed in an apparent northward trajectory. That seemed okay to me as far as Louisiana was concerned, although I did have a lot of empathy for the entire state of Florida that stood in the oncoming path of the storm. Then Fay did a curious thing. It hovered over Florida like a hungry pet that wants its food, unleashing a torrent of badly needed rain over Florida and Georgia. But, drought aside, sometimes too much of a good thing is not good. Fay kept sucking up just a bit more of the energy from the warm Gulf of Mexico waters to fuel it and to draw it ever slowly into a path away from Florida and more towards the coastline of Mississippi. It is amazing that the coastline of Mississippi is only 40 miles wide, but it has seen more than its share of hurricanes including, of course, Camille in 1969 and Katrina in 2005. Fay seemed drawn to Mississippi as if it were on a mission and the only good thing about its short sally in the gulf was that it had no time to strengthen into a full blown hurricane. So, here I am watching band after band of driving rain and the heavy winds that are emblematic of tropical storm activity. It seems that we in New Orleans will escape most of the brunt of the storm, but for those northeast of the city, like Baton Rouge, there will be a greater risk of flash flooding than we will have here. Superstitious fellow that I am, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And, just in case, my toes too.
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