Insert Wizard of Oz Cliche Here

Sometimes, you just have to pull the blankets over your head and pretend that you're safe as houses.

I haven't been sleeping well lately, so it was no surprise when a clap of thunder woke me last night around 2am. Jason was still up, reading in bed. Before I'd gone to bed more than two hours earlier, he'd warned me that there were angry red blotches on the doppler radar heading in our direction. Last weekend, we lost power for close to eight hours during a rain storm with barely any wind, so as the storm got closer and louder and windier, we both remarked how odd it was that the power was still on.

Around 2:30am, the wind started to scream and at least three or four bolts of lightning hit in the immediate neighborhood within the span of ten seconds. A few seconds later, the power went out.

Jason jumped up and found the crank radio we bought in Florida the day after Katrina hit. He wound it up and the Emergency Broadcast System warned of a funnel cloud approaching the Carrollton area in just a few minutes.

Honestly, I can't remember there being a tornado in New Orleans. A few years ago, there was a rumor of one-- but I don't know if the damage was every really determined to be tornado, wind, or hail-related.

The picture above is a house in Lakeview, already damaged by Katrina, destroyed by last night's tornados. The person on the left is a colleague of mine whose house in Lakeview was flooded during Katrina. According to the news, the Airport sustained more damage last night than in the hurricane.

The power is back up now, but it wasn't when I left for work at 7am. Rumor has it that the New Orleans power grid is shot-- hence all the recent outages. Even though only a fraction of the residents are back, the system is overloaded from the new influx of people since the universities reopened.

Just another unsubstantiated rumor, I suppose. And there's enough to be concerned about without worrying about rumors. To whit, the Gulf temperatures are currently five degrees warmer than average off the coast of Louisiana. Where'd these tornadoes come from? The Gulf.

Update on first week of grad school to come soon.