Prayers for Louisiana

The US national Hurricane Center have an excellent site. I use it frequently as I have a friend on Florida's coast. By my reading of the maps, Hurricane Gustav is going to hit the coast of Louisiana about 30 miles west of New Orleans at 1pm tomorrow GMT (7am CDT). This is possibly the worst scenario for New Orleans as hurricanes travelling north often inflict their worst hit on northeastern areas. Gustav is currently category 3 and forecast to upgrade to category 5.

Sky News reports:

Hurricane Gustav is strong, packing winds of up to 150 mph. It is huge, with storm force winds extending out 175 miles from the eye of the storm and it also threatens frightening storm surges, the like of which will obliterate even the rebuilt levees of the bruised and battered New Orleans.

So, once again, it appears that the people of the Gulf coast, Louisiana and New Orleans in particular, need our prayers.

I note that George Bush and Dick Cheney have cancelled visits to the Republican National Convention in St Paul, Minnesota, which is scheduled to start tomorrow.

I would have thought that the start will be delayed for at least a day, if not more.

You can hardly have political festivities at the time of such danger for a large part of the USA.

It's good to see the preparations which have been put in place for this Hurricane. I have just watched Mayor Ray Nagin talking. He surprised me at one point when he said, very forthrightly, that any looters would be sent "directly to Angola". This seemed a bit drastic - a return to transportation for looters. Has the African state of Angola agreed to this? It turns out that he meant "Angola Prison", which is the Louisiana state penitentiary.

Summer lifts the soul

Yesterday seemed like the first proper day of summer. You could actually feel the warm, balmy air. You can feel your soul, locked up for months in winter, coming out of its prison and jumping for joy!

Today seems similar.

It made me think this: We spend most of the year actually rather down in the dumps. Then we become really human when the proper summer comes. One conclusion that could be drawn from that, is that we are insane to live in a place with a climate like Britain.

I prefer to draw another conclusion. When you get hot summery days virtually all the year round you get inured to the summery weather. Bored with it. So, having cold winters means that we leap for joy when the summer comes round. Well, that's how I console myself anyway.

Bank Holiday Britain was colder than Lapland

If you thought it was cold yesterday (we had to turn the central heating back on) you may be alarmed to know that it was colder in Britain than it was in Lapland and Siberia.

Having been to Lapland when it was -20 degrees centigrade, I find this mind-blowing.

The BBC do an excellent report on past days' weather. Here is yesterday's.