A Dixie Carpetbagger

Robb and Miguel are carping about the weather.  I have something to say about that, but give me a second, I need some props.

Dixie drags out a soap box and stands on it, insulated socks poking out from under the bottom of his flannel pants and housecoat.

It was 31 degrees last night.  Without the wind chill.  Humans aren’t well adapted to living where water freezes.  That goes double if you have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee.  (Because you were drinking coffee and hot cocoa all day, natch.)

The worst of it is the fact that this winter, I’ll go out into this weather for fun.  I’ll wake up pre-dawn, climb into a blind, pray Bambi (or one of his relations) shows up, then hope I can feel my fingers to shoot.

29 August 2005– Hurricane Katrina makes landfall as a Category 3 hurricane near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana.  Death totals in coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are lower than expected, for two reasons.  One, Katrina came ashore as a Category (Cat) 3 storm with sustained winds of 125 miles and hour, not a Cat 5 with 175 mph winds.*  Two, the local Weather Forecast Office of the National Weather Service issued this bulletin the day before.  When a weather bulletin contains words such as “devastating,” “most powerful,” and “will make human suffering incredible by modern standards,” it’s advisable for those in the path of said storm to get the blazes away from the damned thing.

I remember Katrina because I was, indeed, getting the blazes away from said storm– in the form of going to Lakeland for an engineer’s seminar.  One of the other groups was from Pensacola, and they were getting reports that even that far away, the storm was doing some decent damage.  Even before the news began covering it, everyone at the conference (all of us civil and structural engineers) knew that New Orleans would flood.  We also knew that N’Awlins was going to suffer great loss of life, due to the lack of evacuations.  (The highest estimate was around 5% of the population– 15,000 or more.)

We all shook our heads– didn’t these people understand what was coming for them?  I had Opal pass right over my head in ’95– along with close hits from Georges in ’98, Allison in ’01, and Frances and Ivan in ’04.  Heck, Cindy in ’04 went into almost the same area…

(H/T Linoge for reminding me… like the news coverage hasn’t…)

* Doing the math, a 125 MPH wind produces 40 (125^2 * .00256) pounds a square foot of pressure, but a 175 MPH wind creates 78.4 (175^2 * .00256) PSF.  (What’s sad is that I had to look this up– I used to have to know these calculations by heart.)  At some point below 175 MPH, the wind would have turned the low-pitched roofs on the coat into wings, and ripped them from the buildings.  Notice that in footage and photos from hurricane zones, the roofs that survive have a moderate pitch– usually around 45 degrees.  This allows the wind to blow over them, but not so quickly as to produce lift… like a spoiler on an aircraft’s wing.  Sorry, I worked as a structural engineer, this is fascinating to me….

Forgive, dear readers, my poor showing
My absence you might pin on snowing
Not here in Florida
That’s for the rest of ya-
Down here the wind insists on blowing!

Now, we certainly don’t raise a fuss,
Much less yammer like a stupid cuss
Like the dolts on the TV
Who’ve let loose their wee-wee-
They insist that we leave on a bus!

This truly is extraordinary
They think us quite daft to tarry
But they should know by now
That ’til it kills a cow
The wind can be drowned with Chuck Berry!

Me, dear readers, don’t be quick to judge
No need to fill your drawers with fudge
As a matter of fact,
You’re seen as shy of tact
If from the hurricane bash you budge!

But now that will be enough of that-
I must continue our little chat
About things various
Challenges before us
Like how we must stop the Congress stat.

On second thought, let’s not go there now,
I’d rather behind a old mule plow-
Least then I could harass
Or even command the ass!
But I feel my blood boiling, so chao!

The Democrat disaster preparedness plan:

1. Don’t have a disaster.

2.  And if you do have a disaster…

3.  DIE QUICKLY.

“George Bush Barack Obama doesn’t care about black disabled people.”

I spent Hurricane Opal in a shelter with my disabled grandmother– so this upsets me a bit.  No plans… whatsoever?  Not even having the Social Security and Medicare offices fax the local Emergency Operation Centers a list of people who might need help?

(H/T Hope n’ Change)

It seems as if I haven’t posted anything today.  I blame the weather… first all stormy and stuff, then all hot and stuff, and then all so hot all you can do is odd stuff.  (Really, Faulkner was right about hot weather driving Southern writers.  Spend a few hours trying to do something outside, and the desire to be in front of a typewriter or keyboard shoots up drastically.)

Tam has tips on preparing for emergencies.  It’s something I’ve always done.  (Not so surprising, being the kid of a Depression era child and a kid raised on a farm before rationing was phased out… )  To these tips, I have some to add:

• Your house is bigger than it looks.  You have dead space– behind furniture, unused rooms, crawlspaces, the attic (but please watch the weight), unused cabinets.  Heck, if you have a garage workbench with cabinets underneath you never use, you have tens of cubic feet of storage.  You can put stuff away, just be creative and the space can be found.
• Organize.  Tip 1 doesn’t help if you can’t find anything.  In my house, everything is sorted by type– canned foods, dry foods, liquids, supplies, clothing, etc.
• Hunt around.  There are companies out there that make food designed for long term storage.  There are also companies that make good, cheap water filtration units.  Here’s the UGA guide to what you need.

Now, you don’t have to prepare for Armageddon… but preparing for say, a month without power is a good point to start.  Here is a kit that will feed one person for 60 days.  Two should feed four people for a month, and take up a mere 7 cubic feet of space.  That’s 3.5′ x 2′ x 1′… which is the dead space under a bed.

Having successfully weathered an ear infection, a sinus infection, bronchitis, and what felt like Rocky Balboa in flu form, I now get to deal with springtime.

Everything’s in bloom– azaleas, pine trees, roses… and my allergies just remembered that they haven’t beat me up this winter.  They are in the process of correcting that oversight.

Have I mentioned I hate Florida weather?

It’s now snowing.  In the Florida Panhandle.  I have food and water, spare propane, and I have chosen which of my housemates I will eat if the canned ham doesn’t hold out until spring next week.  Our Sheriff even called an let us know that we needed to make our peace, because most of us won’t make it.  If this place goes silent, you know that even cannibalism wasn’t enough.

Our only hope now is that Al Gore repents– otherwise, we’re doomed.

(Yes, this is entirely sarcastic.  Except for the phone call, he actually did call and say that nobody needed to be on the roads.  And that we needed to stock up on food.  Which would require us to drive to the store.)

Per Uncle, Hell has frozen over.  Chuckle all you want, but don’t try to explain any of this with your fancy “science.”  You know that nothin’ normal and of this world could explain all of this weather.  The press gettin’ uppity with Obama, zombie iguanas, Chris Dodd retiring… truly, the end is nigh.

Next thing you know, really weird stuff will be happening.  Al gore will stop trying to peddle global warm… err, climate change, cats and dogs living together… mass hysteria!

Or, weather that reminds me of a Robert W. Service poem.  It’s now to the point that it’s sleeting (no snow… yet), and fish are freezing.  I don’t see how northerners deal with this year in and year out.

As it is, I’m about ready to find a spot on the Equator to call home.