Hello Edouard

Exactly one TV truck on the Seawall this morning. Which suggests to me that the Houston media haven't gone on full alert about this yet. But....

Our forecast takes the center of the storm about 50 miles south of the Louisiana coast today, then inland into the upper Texas coast near Galveston mid morning on Tuesday. Squalls are beginning to affect the southeast Louisiana coast this morning, and will spread westward along the Louisiana coast during the day, reaching the upper Texas coast tonight.

That sounds, um, kind of ominous. We haven't decided whether to do the wait-and-see thing or whether to preemptively get the hell out (at least as far as Houston). Stay tuned.

Waiting for a storm like you

(Sorry, I can never resist being silly.)

Three TV trucks this afternoon (one said CBS News Dallas, and one was the Houston CBS affiliate, which seems sort of redundant) - that's still not very many. I have the local CBS station on though (aka Channel 11) and they are in full-court press mode about the storm - I've been home almost an hour and it's all they've talked about. Also they said they've gotten a million hits on their website, which is interesting. They usually are known locally for having the best hurricane coverage - they are the station that hired away the director of the National Hurricane Center 20 years or so ago to work for them, just for moments like this. He is semi-retired now but he's been on the air today just the same.

Rob is calling this "Hurricane Smitty" which is an old Gaido's joke that nobody else will get, but basically it means it's a little piddly thing. (I thought about trying to explain this expression but it's much too complicated.) We don't live in a spot that should flood from a weak Category 1 storm, and it doesn't sound like the wind will be that bad, so we are staying put unless things change. We don't have to work tomorrow, for sure, and if we get up in the morning and it looks like it's going to be worse than we thought, we should still have time to get out.