It strikes me as ironic that weather people now have names for every weather phenomenon that comes along — the full moon during July was a “thunder moon”— and yet the low pressure system that has brought such widespread flooding to south Louisiana is yet unnamed.
Flood victims here just refer to it as “the second 500-year storm in six months.”
Reports of the number of victims rescued from the storms flood waters went from 1,000 on Saturday morning to 7,000 by Sunday morning and had risen to 20,000 and counting by Monday morning as crests on small rivers moved downstream. First, second and third responders of every stripe have joined in the rescues, but most are carried out by neighbors. It is a land where many people have flat-bottom fishing boats. They are now navigating public streets, ferrying flood victims and their dogs to shelters.
New Orleans was spared, receiving about two inches over two days while areas of the Florida parishes and Baton Rouge received 20-plus inches as the weather system slowly twisted its rain bands over unlucky locations.
The low pressure had formed just off Florida’s Gulf shore about a week earlier and moved slowly inland. Had it formed further out into the Gulf, it probably would have been named, but this system was soon inland. For a week it brought rain to areas of Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi before it bore down on Louisiana last Thursday.
On Friday I left Batesville early, planning to drive back to New Orleans. I knew there would be heavy rains ahead, but by the time I got to Canton, Rosemary was watching television coverage of the flooding and learned that I-55 had been closed where it lies low between Independence and Hammond. That section of the interstate runs parallel to the Tangipahoa River as it winds toward Lake Pontchartrain.
On Saturday, I tried again, this time leaving I-55 at Jackson. I drove to Hattiesburg on Highway 49 and then to New Orleans on I-59 with no problems. The alternate route is about 30 miles more distant according to the odometer.
By Monday, remnants of the system had blended with another front that was pushing its moisture through the Midwest. I read a description of how energy had been created in the system over land much as a hurricane gains its energy from the warm ocean water underneath. I didn’t understand it. It reminded me of a climate statement I read somewhere: “I’m may not believe in global warming, but I sure believe in global weirding.”