Context for the Rest of You

When I lived in the Midwest, I really had no good idea of how large hurricanes were. So, for those of you trying to understand the monstrousness of Katrina, here's some observations. Nashville is about eight hours from the Gulf. Lots of people from this area go down there on vacation, hence its nickname, The Redneck Riviera. We're also about ten hours by car from New Orleans. If you look at a weather map, you'll see that the outer clouds associated with Katrina have already reached us and the eye is not yet on land. It will be a tropical storm by the time it reaches us on Tuesday, but still, here we are, eight hours inland and we're being warned about sustained winds of 30-49 miles an hour with gusts up to 64. Most of our weather comes in from the west or the southwest, so it's always weird when Mrs. Wigglebottom and I are out walking to watch the clouds roll in from the southeast, as they're doing today. It's just a visual warning that things in the atmosphere are not normal. And, of course, things continue to go from bad to worse all along the gulf coast, from New Orleans east and it's going to be very bad for folks down there for a long time. I wish I had something witty to say about the whole situation, but there's really nothing to be said about it at all, except that it doesn't seem like there's any way this isn't going to be an unimaginable nightmare and I'm glued to the coverage, like a gaper at a car wreck.