Do you have hurricanes where you live? Let me tell you a little bit about this last week. Isaac started as a tropical depression off the coast of Africa two weeks ago and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf forms the southern border of Louisiana. As he got closer to us, he became a tropical storm. The weather forecasters predicted he would become a category 1 hurricane and was headed directly for the mouth of the Mississippi River and New Orleans. We have a system of levees which were built to keep flood waters from the storm surge out of most of the city and surrounding suburbs. But there are many low lying areas which are not protected by the levee system. People in the low areas were told to evacuate because the flood waters could be as high as 15 feet.
Several of my students evacuated to Texas because they did not want to be here after the hurricane blew through because we would probably be without electricity for several days due to the high winds knocking down power lines. Isaac came onshore late Tuesday night and continued to have strong wind gusts and rain until late Wednesday.
I lost my electricity at my house at 1:11am on Wednesday morning. It is very scary to hear the wind gusting up to 100 miles per hour and not have any lights. Luckily my house was cool through Wednesday because the temperature outside didn't get too high. We were also lucky that Hurricane Isaac didn't dump too much rain on us, so it did not flood where I live. The worst damage at my house was part of my backyard fence was blown down.
My electricity was not restored until late in the afternoon on Saturday. Living in a house with no air conditioning when the temperatures outside get over 90 degrees is not a pleasant experience. Luckily we were able to plug our refrigerator into a generator one of my neighbors had, so we did not lose all of our food. Close to 600,000 people lost electricity during Hurricane Isaac. Homes in some of the unprotected areas got as much as twelve feet of water in them.
Slowly our area is returning to normal. School is due to reopen tomorrow and I hope all of my students have returned safe and sound. We'll write more about their experiences next time. By the way hurricane season is not over until November 1. I hope we don't get another one this year.
What is the longest amount of time you ever had to go without electricity? What is the worst kind of weather your area experiences?
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