Gustav down, Ike to go

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Gustav down, Ike to go

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Phrases deserving junking include "dodging a bullet."  Taking metaphorical liberty, does anybody assume a shooter has a single-shot gun?  At least three more Atlantic storms are either near the Gulf Coast or headed that way, including Hanna, Ike, and Josephine.  Hanna, the closest, is wiggling south, yet the meteorologists say it's set to move north and landfall on the northwest Florida coast in a few days.  Ike is on a dead-on (i.e., straight as an arrow) course to the Gulf and Josephine is in its infancy.  Ike is set to arrive in the Caribbean Sunday, a week later than Gustav.  I think the relative success of New Orleans vis a vis Gustav will cause evacuation fatigue and few will leave for Ike or the others.  New Orleans is closed down at least through Wednesday night, nearby Slidell (which did not have a mandatory evacuation) has ordered its residents to not flush their toilets as the wastewater system is down; neither has 911 service; returning residents to New Orleans are being turned away.  I don't think the bullet has been dodged until after the hurricane season ends in December, but certainly not until all of us New Orleanians are back home cleaning up whatever has dumped on us.  Maybe the hurricane center can designate Fat Lady Singing as the last storm of the season.

Now I'm in a quandary, no "between a rock and a hard place."  Should we be among the first to stream back to New Orleans?  I doubt that they will implement contra-contra flow, whereby all traffic heads into town, so traffic jams will likely be massive.  Might as well chill out in the motel with the others from Louisiana.  More than half of the 7 deaths in Louisiana related to Gustav (4) were caused by one traffic accident in Georgia, so nobody is "out of the woods" yet.