Waiting for Isaac

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you some moderately interesting information about Hurricane Isaac, which is apparently on its way towards our general area. According to this Google map on the Huffington Post, Vicksburg is in the predicted path of the hurricane. We're not going to get hit full force unless the storm completely changes direction, but we're definitely going to get heavy rainfall. The reports are that Isaac will be a Category 1 or Category 2 hurricane when it makes landfall in a few hours; it is, however, moving very slowly--FOX News says 10 MPH. So it'll likely have some time to dissipate before it reaches us.

This is going to be my first-ever hurricane, Wisconsinite that I am. I was in Wooster, OH when the remains of Hurricane Ike came through in '08; it knocked out power to the campus and toppled a few trees, but Ike had long since been downgraded to a meaner-than-average storm by then. This is going to be my first real Gulf Coast (ish; we're pretty far inland) hurricane experience.

The good news is that we're prepared. The TLs went out today and stocked up on bottled water and foodstuffs for the next few days, just in case. During our lunch break, we Corps members formed a human chain and moved hundreds of cases of water into a storage room in Green Hall. According to a note on one pile, we have 84 twenty-four-packs of water for Bayou unit alone (roughly 1/3 of the Corps). Extrapolating for Summit and Ocean units, at that rate, that's 6048 individual bottles of water... plus several dozen gallon jugs of water that we've also stockpiled... plus whatever provisions we've made for the staff members... PLUS whatever water we can get and stockpile in water bottles before the storm arrives. What I'm trying to say is that we're pretty well fixed for water. Food, too. Everyone has supplies for at least two more days, and the TLs just went and bought even more this afternoon.

So that's where we stand. Isaac is supposed to make landfall sometime tonight, and we should feel its wrath at some point in the next couple of days. I'm going to get in my outside time while I can with Frisbee and friends, and then we'll ride out the edges of the storm.