It's Monday morning in Baton Rouge and I'm sitting in Cathie's house listening to the wind and rain from the leading edge of Hurricane Gustav, which is making landfall in south Louisiana as a Category 2 storm. The main worry this far inland is that we'll lose power as the wind starts downing tree limbs, so Cathie and I are plugging away on our laptops while we can.
I left New Orleans on Saturday night to avoid traffic (the city issued a mandatory evacuation order on Sunday morning) and arrived in Baton Rouge with no difficulties. Most New Orleanians were either on the road or finishing final preparations by that point, so most everyone I saw was packing their car or putting plywood over their windows. By way of contrast, preparations here in Baton Rouge seem pretty minimal - biking around Cathie's old neighborhood I didn't see a single house with boarded windows! Cathie's house is a mid-1930's Arts & Crafts bungalow and should be able to withstand the storm with no problems; hopefully the nearby trees will do the same.
So we're here working until the lights go out, and then we'll probably crack a book or two, open a bottle of wine and wait for the storm to blow over. We have plenty of supplies and are about as prepared as we can be. I'll probably try to get back to New Orleans in the next day or two - security there is very high (the LA National Guard is out in force) so I'm not worried about looters. I'll post an update if anything noteworthy happens.
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