PrairiePundit

This rig is south of Vermilion Bay off of Louisiana. A sister rig has disappeared completely. If you look closely in the middle you see pipes that would normally be laying horizontally all askew. You can also see where the supporting pipes on the right have been bent from the vertical as if hit by a ship. It is possible that this damage may have been from Gustav, but the width of Ike was such that it probably covered this area too. I am still trying to get more info on rig damage so if you know of any please send it to me.

thetowntalk.com: ... About 1.5 million people are without electricity, Jindal said, and power companies estimated that about half would be restored within 10 days but the others could take up to six weeks. “I told them that was absolutely not acceptable,” he said. Jindal said he was asking the federal government for assistance is speeding up that timeline and utility companies said they would try to do better. “Restoring power would move our recovery forward more than anything else we could do,” Jindal said. “The lack of power for our communities is a huge obstacle for people to get back to their lives.” ... Jindal is a can do kind of guy who demands more of people and finds a way to get it. His leadership qualities are being exposed and Louisiana is better for it. The Houston Chronicle has more on the problems with getting the power back on.

Click on the image for a larger view. It is a hot link so it should reflect changes if updated. You can find the legend for the symbols here . Basically the circles with the horizontal lines indicate closures and the triangles withe ! marks indicate caution and problems. It looks like the best route across Louisiana is the northern one on I-20.

thetowntalk.com: Water has become a precious commodity in both the cities of Pineville and Alexandria after Hurricane Gustav on Monday knocked out water wells as it roared through Cenla as a Category One hurricane. Gustav late Monday was downgraded to a tropical storm, but it left plenty of damage in its wake in Central Louisiana, knocking down power lines, toppling trees and generating flooding. There were no reports of serious injuries in Central Louisiana related to Gustav as of late Monday night. The storm blew through Cenla in a northwesterly direction from Opelousas. The city of Alexandria was covered by floodwaters in the Monroe Street underpass as of late Monday night. The pumps lost power, and the underpass filled up with water. Rapides and Avoyelles parishes were under a tornado warning Monday night, and the rest of Cenla was under a tornado watch. There was an unconfirmed report of two tornadoes in the air in the Deville area. Major cleanup and repair efforts are expected to...

NY Times: Waves of relief rather than water washed over the oil patch after Hurricane Gustav ’s punch appeared to be much less powerful than those of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina three years ago. “I don’t know if there was a cheer, but there were plenty of smiles,” Don Pirolo, a ConocoPhillips refinery manager, said of the employees gathered at the company’s emergency operations center here. The crackers, fruit and soft drinks served at the center “taste a lot better today.” From initial reports, the storm appeared to leave production platforms and refineries essentially unharmed, meaning that oil and gas supplies would not be disrupted and prices at the pump may continue to ease in the days ahead. At the least, oil experts said the risk of a sharp price spike appeared to have faded, unless flooding or power failures have a lasting impact on refineries and port facilities over the coming days. “We dodged the bullet,” said Darron Granger, a senior vice president at Cheniere Energy , a H...

This is a recent report from my sister. Gustav made landfall at Cocodrie in Terrebonne parish - http://www.cocodriela.com/ mapofarea.asp beautiful pictures on this site. The eye is over Morgan City http://www.cityofmc.com/ - should be over New Iberia (home of James Lee Burke, author of the great Dave Robichaux novels which feature a New Iberia detective http://www. iberiatravel.com/jame.php 2:00 and over Lafayette about 3:30. Winds are picking up - power outages starting to pop up over Lafayette now. The map of the area where the hurricane made landfall is pretty interesting. Also the Morgan city Mayor's report on the storm is understated but appears to be accurate. The preparations for this storm demonstrate the benefit of having a competent governor in Baton Rouge who is willing to work with other governors and the federal officials. I have been very impressed with Gov. Jindal and the McCain campaign needs to find a way to hook him up for a report at the conv...

NOLA has a dedicated section to news about the storm that is worth checking form time to time. Current concerns are the over topping of some levees and flood walls caused by a combination of the heavy rains and the storm surge. A canal dug to give straighter access to the Gulf is also giving the surge waters greater access to the city at this point. The storm is expected to decrease to a category 1 hurricane when it goes through are near Lafayette this afternoon. It is still expected to get into East Texas on Tuesday. The current track looks like it will be north of Washington and the biggest concern is the amount of rain it is packing. Currently it is sunny and calm here.

Rich Lowry: IT'S certainly not the most important thing about the storm that could wreak havoc on the Gulf Coast, but Gustav is an irresistible metaphor for all that John McCain has to overcome this convention week. McCain has to transcend: * A president of his own party who was decisively tuned out by the public after his botched response to Hurricane Katrina. * His party's loss of its reputation for competence, shredded by Katrina and mistakes in the Iraq war. * And the sourness of a public that, partly in light of all of the above, thinks in huge numbers that the country is on the wrong track. And he has to do it while splitting the screen with a monster hurricane and its aftermath. The McCain team has scrapped everything except the formalities for today and may do the same for tomorrow. By any reasonable standard, this is an over-reaction: Political conventions are the very stuff of our democracy, and the glory of democracy is that - through wars, civil st...

I have been watching Gov. Bobby Jindal in a news briefing on Fox News and have to say, wow. This guy is super competent and informative. I just hope that the people listening to him can comprehend what he is saying so fast. The level of detail is impressive. What a difference from three years ago.

As you can see the hurricane is well past Cuba and is still tracking for the central Louisiana coast. Landfall is now expected Monday afternoon which puts it about 12 hours earlier than previous predictions. It could still hit anywhere between Mississippi and East Texas, but the steering currents have not developed and its rapid movement suggest it will stay on its present course. This site has a round up of news on the hurricane. Click on the image above for a larger view. It is a hot link so it should be updated throughout the day. A tracking map of the storm is here . My relatives in Lafayette plan to ride it out so I may have more reports as long as their power stays on. CNN covers the storm and the evacuation process which includes chartered flights out of the area into Tennessee. Louisiana has a very proactive governor this time in Jindal and even Nagin is showing a sense of urgency in evacuating the population of New Orleans.