It. Don’t. End.

Weather boy reporting here, blogging the obvious. Our metroblogging pals in New Orleans, in my opinion, need to be out of the city or praying. Ivan is a category 4 storm, has not weakened a notch. Sustained winds of 140 m.p.h.

The Mayor of New Orleans, bless his pea-pickin’ heart, (y’all know what a southerner is about to say when we preface it with that,) was just on the TV giving the got-danged dumbest advice I’ve heard yet…if you can’t get out of downtown N’awlins, then evacuate vertically.

There’s a little problem with that…I now quote from the most recent bulletin for you;

…IVAN IS
EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL AS A MAJOR HURRICANE…CATEGORY
THREE OR HIGHER. OCCUPANTS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WITHIN THE
HURRICANE WARNING AREA CAN EXPECT HIGHER WINDS THAN THOSE
EXPERIENCED AT THE SURFACE…ABOUT ONE SAFFIR-SIMPSON CATEGORY
HIGHER AT THE TOP OF A 30-STORY BUILDING.

Yeah, I bolded that part for emphasis. Mayor say evacuate up, y’know. Damn.

I have rarely seriously recommended a body pray about something…I’m usually a backsliding heathen. But this one merits prayer y’all. It’s personal for me as well…my folks have evacuated from Foley Alabama, terribly close to the current projected landfall, and they are at the moment in a hotel in Birmingham.

Also, Atlanta already knows it will get slapped around by the remnants of Ivan, and that will include torrential rain and wind, even the possibility of tornadoes. However to me that is a minor concern when you consider the plight of someone still stuck in Mobile or New Orleans, told to evacuate vertically to get away from the flooding only to be stuck in a taller building being buffeted by CATEGORY 5 winds – see that bulletin quote above. That’s not a win-win situation, now is it?

Of note, was anyone watching local news this morning, WXIA, I believe, when they aired a story telling about how the recent hurricane party on the southeast’s coastlines has pumped new money into Georgia’s economy?

Yeah, if I was riding out Ivan in Atlanta that’s what I’d love to see, local news talking about my money being a boon to Georgia while a hurricane is ripping my home apart like a god-like pissed-off toddler.