I don’t know how many of you have links with Louisiana but I hope and pray that the people and places in Hurricane Ida’s path can weather the storm. Being a far distant observer I know little about what lies in her path but I’ve searched online and scanned for links on twitter, and I’ll share some of those links below.
Update: Hurricane Ida is now Category 4 !!!
~I’d just uploaded this post, and then saw the tweet with the 4.
Last Twitter-Update before I go to bed (11.25pm Sun in NZ):
“#Ida 6AM – on its way to becoming a Cat. 5 – winds now at 150mph (Cat. 5 is 156+mph) – pressure dropped 11mb in 1 hour!” ~tweet via @TimPandajisKHOU
First, a photo to complement my post, this eye-catching image was in the first folder I clicked on! I took the photo in the rock garden at Dunedin Botanic Garden on 28 April. If you’d like to know more about the plant, there’s an article about these very plants in the Otago Daily Times 21 May 2019, from which I found that “This is the hardiest bromeliad in the world, growing happily outside in light frost.” The name is Fascicularia bicolor.
Click on photo to enlarge.
Hurricane Ida information
~all three articles cover a lot of ground and discuss a range of issues
~from my reading I now know that Friday marked one year since Hurricane Laura
~and Sunday when Ida makes landfall marks 16 years since Hurricane Katrina
Almost 600 Louisiana sites with toxic chemicals lie in Hurricane Ida’s path.
~Hurricanes Laura, Harvey and Katrina triggered oil and chemical releases
~Aug 28, 2021 – 4:17 pm
“About two thirds of Louisiana industrial sites with toxic chemicals lie in the path of Hurricane Ida..”
Intensifying Hurricane Ida a significant threat to key infrastructure
~Ida is forecast to hit the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, site of three key ports, petrochemical sites, and a nuclear power plant.
~August 28, 2021
“Ida is predicted to track over one of the most critical industrial areas in the U.S.: the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Not only is the region home to dozens of key petrochemical sites, and crisscrossed by important pipelines, it also has three of the fifteen largest ports in America:…”
Hurricane Ida strengthens, Louisiana braces for severe blow
Aug 29, 2021 – 01:18am
“We’re not the same state we were 16 years ago,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Saturday, pointing to a federal levee system that’s seen major improvements since Katrina swamped New Orleans in 2005.
“This system is going to be tested,” Edwards said. “The people of Louisiana are going to be tested. But we are resilient and tough people. And we’re going to get through this.”
Here’s my first effort to embed a ‘live’ tweet at my blog. Earlier today I retweeted photos shared by ‘David Nola’, these stunning shots were taken in New Orleans on 24 Aug. If you click on a photo, twitter will load the tweet for you and you can see them bigger.
[If you’re using the WP Reader, I think you just get some text and a link to click]
By the way, completely unrelated:
Ann Mackay shared 3 photos of glorious red echinacea flowers today, and I love them! If you enjoy wonderful, vibrant red COLOUR you should really check them out! At: A Splash of Red
Text and bromeliad photo by Liz; Exploring Colour (2021)
Exploring Colour 
I hope that these hurricanes will help spur greater efforts to rebuild the Delta. Those wetlands can absorb a tremendous amount of storm surges. I think everyone is slowly grasping that putting all your faith in levees is not going to work. Fingers crossed for the folks there.
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Right! I’m watching and learning. Hurricanes are far outside of anything I experience.
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I just stopped by with a little tidbit. At this very moment, the eye of Ida is over exactly the spot where my friend and I had our encounter with the alligator — outside Chauvin. I suspect Mr. Gator is hunkered down!
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Oh how nice you stopped by! Well, fancy that. He’ll be lying very low 🙂
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One of our more dependable (i.e., non-hysterical) chasering teams is live-streaming from Lockport, Louisiana. You can find them here. There’s no telling how long the stream will stay up, but it’s a good addition to more major media.
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Speaking of links, a site called Fishweather provides a good real-time view of windflow.
Another note about categories. To say a hurricane is a Category 3, or 4 or 5, only accounts for wind speed. A category 2 or 3 can do as much damage as a 4 because of storm surge. When Ike flattened us, it was the dual surge (first from the Gulf, then from the bays) that got us. Yes, the wind was bad, but it wasn’t the wind that put all the boats on land. After Ike, new categories for storm surge were developed, and added to the predictions, although simply saying “Cat 4” is easier for the goofballs on tv.
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I’m thinking and worrying about the people in the wider path of Ida too. Many of the communities along the Mississippi coast were devastated by Katrina but they are rarely mentioned because people largely evacuated and we naturally focus on the most heavily populated areas where people were not able to get out in time. My sweetheart is in Jackson many miles from the coast and has stocked up on water etc. They were without power for some time following Katrina.
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I’m glad your sweetheart is well away from the coast Susan and sure hope he escapes the worst of it. The uncertainty about what’ll happen makes things hard. On twitter today I saw photos of the New Orleans Katrina Memorial (aerial, looking down) and it’s a simple but striking memorial that I didn’t know anything about. The twitter link to the pics, if you’re interested, is: https://twitter.com/marcorasi1960/status/1431729541974740992
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Very striking image, Liz! Thank you for the mention! 🙂 It’s horrifying to see what the people in the path of Ida face – I can’t even imagine what such a hurricane must be like. I hope that all those who were fleeing got far enough away and that those who remain are well prepared and protected.
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A tweet an hour ago: “Short-term track wobbles now become very important for storm surge and wind impacts in the various towns and cities across SE LA. A subtle eastward shift in the track has persisted all day, and #Ida could now pass very close to New Orleans.” ~via Dr. Levi Cowan @TropicalTidbits whom Linda Leinen recommended to me.
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It must be an extremely anxious time as they track Ida’s path! Hope it veers away.
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Yes, I do too. It’s weird because I’ll go to bed soon and snooze through developments, and then in the morning I’m not really going to be looking forward to catching up on the news 😦
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New Orleans is in a very vulnerable location and their geography is not good for receiving hurricanes or tropical storms. They are resilient but take a terrible beating from this weather. We hope their preparations since Katrina will hold up and keep the damage and loss to a minimum.
The flower looks like it should be F. quadricolor. 🙂 We have one bromeliad and are waiting for it to flower its one time.
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Still looking good in New Orleans right now but all hell’s going to break loose when the Ida horror arrives, I’ll be nervous about cranking up my laptop in the morning! I was attracted to the bright red on this plant and then found the lovely flower, a lovely bonus. It was quite low down and awkward to photo so I was pretty pleased with this particular shot 😀
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