text: The following are blog entries from "Between the 5 & the 6" which is a personal blog from Ryan Burchett. During hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Ryan was the Chief Meteorologist at KLFY-TV Channel 10, the CBS affiliate in Lafayette, Louisiana. Ryan had the unique perspective of covering both storms extensively as both impacted the KLFY viewing area. The blogs were written mainly for the consumption of family and friends and not as a public forum, but offer a unique perspective of both storms. 8/25/05 take me out to the ballgame…NOT As you will recall, I was scheduled to go to Dallas this weekend for to see the Twins play the Rangers. My friend Troy had arranged for 4th row seats in the section you see here for us. Unfortunately, I won't be going because of a certain hurricane Katrina that is threatening Louisiana. The National Hurricane Center revised their forecast track significantly west today and Louisiana looks to catch some if not the worst of this huge storm. Right now, the forecast takes it just east of New Orleans as a category 4 storm. I'm afraid that looking at the current models, this storm could end up significantly farther west than that, and likely affect a good part of Louisiana. It may be a while before I get to blog again as I will be working a lot. Say a prayer for the Burchetts and the rest of us on the coast. Whoever gets this storm is going to have a very bad day. Incidentally, today is the 13th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew making landfall in Central Louisiana. The storm tracks are eerily similar. Well, back to work! 8/26/05 go away katrina… It's 5 AM and I can't sleep. My mind is racing too fast thinking about this hurricane. First, there's all of the work related things I am thinking about. How we will handle coverage… what bases do I need to cover… how can we best keep people informed… More importantly, I have a wife, a dog and a house to account for. When do we pull the trigger and say it is time to go? We have arrangements for Monica and Buster to go to Dallas and stay with Garrett. But it won't be easy either way. The forecast isn't looking good. The National Hurricane Center is holding onto their forecast track towards New Orleans. Even in that scenario, we'd likely see minimal tropical storm strength winds here. However, models still want to push that storm farther west. The image below is a composite of all of the model projections. It gives you an idea of what we look at when forming forecasts. Each line represents a different model solution. The official forecast track is on the eastern end of that envelope, so New Orleans may be optimistic for us. The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center is forecasting for landfall just west of Lafayette between here and Jennings. It seems a more plausible scenario as the storm has yet to show any signs of turning right. If it doesn't start turning north by this afternoon, it will mean bad news for us. I just called Home Depot and they open at 6 AM. I'll get there before the rush to buy supplies and a generator. I already have the boards ready for the windows. All I have to do is slap them up. I'll probably wait until tomorrow morning to decide what to do there. Wish us luck! 8/30/05 Katrina Log Katrina spared the Lafayette area for the most part. The outer rain bands ended right about here. We did see winds up to about 40 mph, but aside from some superficial tree damage, we are fine. Our power is on, the water is fine and the city is housing many people from the SE side of the state. The phone operation is about the only problem we are having here. There are so many people from SE Louisiana who are displaced here that the cell towers are overloaded and even the land lines are having some trouble because about 1/3 of the state's telecommunications network is down. The news coming from SE Louisiana and Mississippi is grave at best. Please keep this part of the world in your prayers. The recovery from this storm will not be measured in days or weeks, but rather months and years. It was Friday afternoon when my weekend meteorologist and I were in the office going over the latest computer model runs. The current forecast from the National Hurricane Center was calling for landfall near Destin, Florida on the panhandle earlier in the day. However, each model run was pushing the storm farther west and the high pressure steering it west was showing no signs of breaking. So we were getting concerned. At 3:15 I got a call from the National Weather Service office in Lake Charles, LA. They had just been part of a conference call with the National Hurricane Center in Miami who was announcing that they would be shifting their official forecast track about 150 miles to the west. That put the storm just east of New Orleans into Biloxi and Mobile. We gathered as much info as we could and at 3:40 when the official forecast came into our office we cut into programming to announce the latest. We started procedures in the newsroom should the worst happen and began to make arrangements for our coverage. That night I got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep as I wondered about all of the things we would need to do in the next 24 hours to make sure we were ready, not just at work, but at home too. I really should have slept. I went to Home Depot when they opened at 6 AM and bought necessary supplies including a generator. We started doing regular cut-ins at the station following our 6 AM newscast. I went in around 11:30 to relieve the morning guy. Computer models were still showing the storm hitting somewhere between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. When the 12:30 update came from the Hurricane Center, it was clear that the state of Louisiana had little hope of being spared and the time had arrived to start implementing our coverage plans. We began cutting into programming every 30 minutes with the latest information and running crawls at the bottom of the screen every 15 minutes. We stayed with that all day Saturday and all night Saturday night. When I left the station that night, the storm had jumped to Category 4 strength about 12 hours earlier than anticipated. That was not good news. I got home on Saturday night at about 3:30 AM. I was awake again Sunday at 7 AM and Monica and I got busy putting boards on our windows. At that time, it still looked like we would only receive tropical storm strength winds here. However, I knew I would not be returning from work for some time and if an unexpected shift came in that storm, there would be no opportunity to make arrangements for the house. I'm sure we scared the neighbors, but it had to be done. My neighbor across the street came over to help and then the phone rang at about 10:00. The newest advisory for Katrina had upped the winds to 175 mph. The threshold that constitutes a category 5 storm is 155 mph. This storm was off the charts. I held a conference call with my news director and general manager. We decided the three of us would meet at the station around noon and wait for the latest NHC update which was expected around 12:30. The 12:30 update provided no change in the forecast path or strength and moved up the timing of landfall to early Monday morning. So we began making arrangements for continuous coverage. Looking back, this was a critical point in the weekend. There was no resistance from management. No questions as to whether or not we were making the right decisions. The attitude was what can we do and how fast can we make it happen. I have to give great credit to my news director and my GM for that. We had already arranged to have our main anchors on set for the evening newscasts, but we called them in early to anchor the coverage. Then we got extra reporters out to gather the news we would need to sustain our coverage. The cut-ins continued every 30 minutes as the newsroom organized their efforts. At 3:00 the management team met again and decided that the newsroom didn't have enough content to go wall to wall just yet. We decided that it was important to make sure that we had the content to drive the coverage before we went on continuously. So we made the decision that we would go on at 5 pm and stay on through the duration of the storm. We counted them up last night and by 5 pm when we went to continuous coverage, the weather team had done 54 cut-ins so far. The continuous coverage was a combination of news and weather. I put one meteorologist at the radar computer as outer bands were already feeding into Louisiana. I stayed at the weather wall with graphics behind me and when I needed to change things up in my show I'd throw to the radar desk or to the news desk. The newsroom was coordinating live reports from reporters and the weather channel. We did live shots with Jeff Morrow, Jim Cantore and Mike Zeidel at different points of the broadcast. We also did live phone interviews with many of the area Emergency Management Coordinators. We did take occasional commercial breaks to give us some opportunities to quickly regroup our coverage and catch our breath. This also helped to lessen the stress on our station's pocketbook as we were blowing by paid commercial breaks like mad. I would say that whoever the lucky guys were who had their spots actually run during that coverage got their money's worth! The main anchors stayed on the set with us until 12:30 am at which time they turned the coverage over to me and our weekend meteorologist. With landfall expected at around 6 AM, things were starting to get pretty nasty in SE Louisiana. The news anchors were pulled from the desk at that point and we turned to just weather coverage. In retrospect, this was probably the only mistake we made in all of our hours of continuous coverage. From 12:30 to almost three, it was solely weather driving the coverage. We had plenty to talk about, but without being able to have news give us even short spells, it was tough to keep the coverage going without being somewhat repetitive at times. Since I couldn't get away from the wall to reorganize very often, it slowed us from getting as much fresh info aside from what we could gather from the images behind us. The storm was really rocking at that point at around 2 AM, our morning meteorologist returned and his fresh brain was greatly appreciated. Working on about 3 hours of sleep at this point and having been on my feet in front of the wall for now almost 10 hours, I did step away for about 45 minutes. My legs were aching from standing so long and I was able to take a quick power nap on the couch at our morning show set. A funny aside for people in the studio was that both Ben and I were in full suits, but both wearing flip-flop sandals without socks. As soon as thing went wall to wall, I knew I'd need comfort for my feet. So I packed up my sandals and brought them along. Looking back, we were well prepared in the weather office as far as bringing the things we'd need for the long run. We have a small fridge in the weather office and we stocked it with bottled water and sodas. We also had a stock of munchies so we could snack quickly in between reports. At one point a bunch of Chinese food showed up in the studio. I didn't know until Tuesday that it was a viewer who was so worried that we were not taking a break that they drove out and picked up Chinese food to go and brought it to the station so we would get some dinner! By 3:30 I was back at it and we let Ben take a spell. A new set of anchors returned at 3 AM. Some of the most amazing coverage happened in these early morning hours. We got a phone call from a boat captain from Maurice. Captain Boudoin is from Maurice which is a small town about 2 miles from my house. He was on a shrimp boat in the Gulf with 6 other men and they tried to get back in time, but got stranded 5 miles north of Grand Isle when conditions got so bad that they had to stop. Unfortunately for Captain Boudoin, that is about 10 miles from where the eye passed. He was calling us for information because he couldn't get through to other places. We put him on the air live so we could explain to him where he was and what his conditions would be like for the coming hours. Some people questioned whether or not he was really where he said he was. But his accounts were meteorologically accurate for the area he was in. He said that winds on his anemometer had hit 130 miles per hour before it was ripped off his boat. He said he couldn't see anything outside because the wind and rain were too high and he dared not go out of the main hull. Their cell phones and radios were reaching no one, but they had a satellite phone which was how they were contacting us. He was remarkably calm for the situation, but you could sense his fear and almost serenity about the peril they faced. After the first time we put him on the air, his wife called in near hysterics thanking us for putting him on. The last she had heard from him, he had called to say goodbye in case they didn't make it through. She was glad to hear he was still alive. We talked with Captain Boudoin a few more times during the night. At one point we were in mid sentence with him, when we were abruptly disconnected. They were under the western eye wall at the time. After over an hour passed without being able to reach them again, I can't say that I wasn't thinking about the possibility that we may have just aired the last minutes of Captain Boudoin's life live on television. Thankfully, an hour or so after the eye passed, Captain Boudoin called. He was reporting a break in the rain and he had a chance to peek out and see a little of the results. Dry air pulled sharply into the SW side of the storm as it made landfall and he was under one of the breaks in the storm at the time of the call. He said that when last he had been outside, the area they were in was surrounded by marshland. He said all of the marsh around them was gone and all he could see now was water. Unfortunately, I think that much of the delta coastline of Louisiana is lost forever. But the good Captain and his crew were alive and had faced the worst of the storm. Now it was a waiting game to get through the backside of it. It turns out that some of the worst damage and flooding in Louisiana occurred right where they were. It's not a highly populated area, but from what we are hearing, it is a part of Louisiana that just isn't there anymore and probably won't return. At this point, I don't know what has become of Captain Boudoin since that last call around mid-morning, but I hope that I will someday get to meet him in person and learn more about his dance with Katrina. I am sure it will be an amazing visit when it happens. The next and probably most memorable coverage that happened was when the eye moved north and passed just east of New Orleans. We were getting a live feed of video out of the Superdome in downtown. I was at the radar zooming in on the worst parts of the storm when some extreme bands of storms were pushing through New Orleans. I asked them to take the live picture so we could see how things were going there and I was left speechless for a moment. You could see very little because the rain was driving so hard and in the midst of the horizontal walls of rain, you could see the debris and large chunks of likely other buildings flying by. It was probably a million different things at that point going through my sleep depraved mind. But I remember that feeling of swallowing what seems to be a baseball or something as my eyes welled up with tears. That was the first moment in all of that coverage that I was able to grasp even a sliver of the reality of it all. I don't think the full reality has set in even now. I sat stunned for a moment and we just left that picture up for a couple minutes. It was stunning. Shortly after that, we lost the picture all together as I'm sure the camera was either destroyed or at least knocked off line. The coverage continued wall to wall all morning. The storm officially made landfall in Buras, LA at 6:10 AM as a category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds at 140 mph. After peaking at Cat. 5 strength with winds at 175 mph and minimum central pressure of 902 mb, the storm officially became the second most intense storm ever to hit the U.S. and the strongest in over 100 years. It was the storm of all storms that had always been warned about in SE Louisiana and New Orleans and by early afternoon, the storm was moving out of Louisiana and the waiting game began. At 12:30 we stopped wall to wall coverage and went back to cut-ins each half hour with continuous crawls. At this point, thing started shifting away from being a weather story and now was becoming more of a news story. We did cut-ins each half hour through our 10:00 news. At about 9:15, my condition started taking a significant turn south. Things had slowed weatherwise and I was finally getting some down time. Once the adrenaline stopped, I was left with a brain full of Jell-O. I had sent Ben home to sleep after landfall and so he had come back to help spell me down the stretch. He did half of the 10:00 pm weather and I did half as it was mentally a struggle to even get that much done. I left immediately after the end of the news and went home. Monica already had the boards down off the front of the house. From a professional standpoint, it was the most successful broadcast venture I had ever been a part of for many reasons. First of all, simply the historical significance of the storm. This was a once in a lifetime thing to witness. I don't wish it on anyone and I am not happy to have been a part of it. But my station and I were given an opportunity to provide coverage of an event that will be talked about for centuries. We were inundated with e-mails and phone calls from viewers thanking us for staying with the storm. We've started an e-mail wall for all of the compliments so that when people start running out of gas, they can go get energized there. Yesterday, I finally got some sleep and woke up around 10 AM. I was in the shower thinking about what I could do to add to the coverage now. A friend of mine in Iowa called to see how I was doing and told me that their weather team was doing weather live from out in the community where they were kicking off a "Cash for Katrina" drive. I immediately thought that we had to get that going here. The focus has been on just getting information out up to that point. The forecast looked clear for the week, so I decided that we could scale back the weathercasts and set up an all day center where people could come and donate funds to the Red Cross. I also happen to sit on the board of directors for the local Red Cross Chapter, so I wanted to do what I could to help them. So we set up our "Help After the Hurricane" drive. We've set up a tent at the intersection of two of the busiest streets in town. We're manning it from 5 AM to 10:30 PM every day this week. Our meteorologists are there all day taking donations and broadcasting live. We started this campaign last night at 5 pm. By the time we had signed off at 10:30, we had amassed $30,000 in donations! The response has been overwhelming. From 3 year old girls dumping the piggy banks into our buckets to checks for as much as $2,000. One woman came to me absolutely in tears. I gave her a hug as she handed me a check and sobbed that she was jobless and she just wished there was more that she could do. As she walked away, I looked at the check and it was for $300. We also had many of the refugees stopping by to tell us their stories. I interviewed one couple live on the news who had waited the storm out in their attic, then used a hacksaw to cut through their roof around a vent so they could get airlifted out. The stories are mind blowing and I am so glad that we are making some difference in the relief. Our sister stations are going to be asked to join the campaign today and we anticipate having several hundred thousand dollars raised nationwide through our effort by Friday night. If you want to help, you can send a check payable to the American Red Cross. On the memo line write "Katrina" which keeps the money dedicated to the hurricane relief efforts here. Send it to: Help After The Hurricane" PO Box 90665, Lafayette LA 70509. They could use it. The only thing that I can compare it to now is the 1993 floods in Iowa. It's the only way I can relate to what those people must be going through. But when the floods happened in '93, we didn't have the wind damage to deal with too and the waters eventually went down. Some parts of this state will never rise from the waters and I would expect that most of the people living there will never return to their homes. The death toll will be staggering when history is written about this storm. I wish I could say, "Now that it's all said and done", but it's not. However, now as I reflect on the last couple days I don't know how to say I feel except blessed. Blessed that I can go home and go to sleep in my bed, with my belongings, next to my wife and dog and know that we are all safe and sound. I feel blessed that I am in someway able to be of help and comfort to the thousands of people who are living here now after being forced from their homes, I feel blessed that I am surrounded with people professionally who are dedicated to their community and to their craft and know what it takes to tackle a storm of this magnitude. I am deeply proud of the television that I've been a part of in the last 4 days and I am sure those feelings will be even more profound in the coming days, weeks and months. This is going to be a long haul for many people here in Louisiana. Knowing that many of you are reading this from over 1,000 miles away, I only ask that you keep these people in your prayers. Their lives will never be the same. And if you can spare a few bucks for the relief effort, send it on down. I know that their hearts would thank you for it. 9/1/05 Helpless When Helping The emotional price and the enormity of this event are starting to take their toll. It's been long days at work, not just judging by the hours, but because of the heart wrenching first person accounts of fear and sorrow that I am hearing. I am not complaining though. I have a house. I have a car. I have a job. I know where my wife, my parents, my siblings and friends are right now. I know that I'll get something to eat for lunch today. My life is pretty good. I can't say the same for the thousands of Katrina refugees pouring into Lafayette. We have been set up at the corner of Ambassador Caffery and Johnston Street since Tuesday afternoon taking donations. This is pretty much the busiest intersection in town. At first, we were just taking cash and checks for the American Red Cross. Now we have partnered with other agencies as well like the Salvation Army, the local food bank, Goodwill and United Way. Now those agencies have sent volunteers to our locale so that we can accept donations of most any kind. The food bank is taking food for all of the refugees. Yesterday we filled two Ryder trucks and two pickups with food for the food bank. The Salvation Army has been collecting clothes, bedding, toys, etc. The United Way is collecting school uniforms and supplies as Lafayette schools are holding special enrollment this week to get the kids into classrooms as soon as possible. School might be the closest thing to normal we can find for these kids, so the sooner the better. United Way is also coordinating people who have rooms in their homes that are willing to accept people or extra rental units that are available etc. to try to get as many people as we can out of the shelters and into beds at night. Goodwill is helping to collect clothing as well. The response has been overwhelming from the community. When we closed down shop last night after the 10:00 news, we had raised right around $200,000 so far. Our sister station in Lansing, MI reported that they had raised over $35,000 in the first day of their efforts and we expect to hear from other sister stations as they too are supporting our efforts. We have so many people from the community coming out to offer money, goods and their time. We had one woman yesterday who came to bring money and asked if she could help. She spent the next 8 hours taking donations and helping to load trucks, etc. We had another woman bring her pickup truck and offer to help shuttle things from our site to the collection agencies. It's really been great in that respect. What's been tough are the number of desperate victims who come by wanting information or help of some kind. Some our on their last nerve and last gasp of energy. Many just want info on their individual areas. They'll come in and ask for even a sliver of info on Kenner. Then it's Metarie…Slidell… the West Bank… they just want some sign of hope that maybe their house isn't full of water to the rafters or maybe their whole town hasn't been looted. One woman came and wanted a phone number to the radio station because she heard that they had a number to call to help find lost loved ones. But she was talking so fast and was so emotional that the guy she was talking to just couldn't understand what she wanted and we had no idea what the phone number to the radio station was. So she threw a few expletives at us and ran back to her car. I followed her and asked her to calm down and talk to me so we could help. After a few minutes she explained that she had been separated from her husband and she was just trying to find him and she didn't know what to do. We had a list of phone number printed up earlier in the day that lists hotlines for victims, volunteer numbers and more. So I gave her that list with the Red Cross hotline that they are using to help people find loved ones. She was appreciative once we were able to find out what she was looking for, but she was nearly delirious. Another woman arrived furious that evacuees were being pulled from New Orleans and dropped in the western parishes to loot. She said her husband was a cop and they were holed up in a police station in the West Bank with as many guns and ammo trying to fight off looters. She wanted us to put her on the air immediately so she could tell the story and get the National Guard to her husband to help. We couldn't do that and she was so angry. She just wanted to get her husband out safe. We sent her to the local sheriff's office hoping that they could relay some information for her. I really felt helpless on that one. The one that did reduce me to tears was at about 5:20 a Lafayette HazMat Suburban pulled up. Inside was a local firefighters and a man in a ratty t-shirt and jean shorts. Turns out the man was a New Orleans firefighter who wad been stuck in a fire station downtown for the last few days with about 16 other firefighters and another 100 civilians. The water had dropped a bit earlier in the day, so they organized the healthiest of the group to walk through the water and get to some boats who could come and evacuate the rest of the building. When they got everyone out, he was standing on an interstate on ramp which was being used for a boat ramp. Some of the boaters were from Lafayette. He knew that his wife had evacuated to a cousin's house in Lafayette. The men from Lafayette offered to bring him back here, so he went with them and had them drop him at a local fire station. He knew his wife was going to her cousins, but he didn't know the cousins well. All he knew was their last name was Landry. In Lafayette, a last name like Landry could just as well be Smith. So the firefighter had brought him to us hoping we could get him on the air and help him find his wife. At 5:30, we went to the first 5 minutes of the CBS Evening News for their coverage of the storm and then came back to local news at about 5:40. They came to me live and we interviewed the man. He gave as many details as he knew about the people his wife was staying with and we gave a cell number for the firefighter who was helping him. After that, I began to ask him about his story and he told us about the evacuation and the long hours of waiting in the fire station. I said to him, "I know we've heard a lot of nasty stories about looting and crime ongoing in there. But I have to think that there are some real acts of heroism going on in there to." He looked at me and I will never forget his face. It was dirty and sweaty. A half grown beard from going days without showering or shaving. His eyes were open only a sliver from exhaustion. He looked up at me with tears welling in his eyes and said, "You would not believe how hard those people are working to try to save anyone they can…" and his voice trailed off and he turned from the camera and began to cry. I said I can only imagine what it must be like and wished him god's blessing and repeated the phone numbers to call to help reunite him with his wife. I felt like I was swallowing softballs as I tried not to cry on air. I sent it back to the studio and he walked away from me. As I turned around, I saw Monica standing there. She had gotten off work and since the phones are working so poorly, she just came to touch base. Here I had just talked with another man who had lost everything. He did know his wife was safe, but he just wanted to find her. Then I turn around and see my wife standing there. I walked over to her and I couldn't talk because if I told her the story I just heard, I was going to be in a heap of tears and that was the last thing I needed. I was just really glad to see her. We found his wife, but she wasn't in Lafayette anymore. She had gone to stay with some other family in Houma after the storm passed. At least we know they are probably together by this morning. After everything was done last night, I went to the Cajundome again. They had stopped collecting goods at the Cajundome because space is becoming a premium. They estimated as many as 8,000 people will be living there by Friday. The place only holds 12,000 for a sold out basketball game, so you can understand that it is full. I knew that pillows and blankets were at a premium, so through the day I collected all the pillows and blankets that came to us in my car. After the news, I drove the blankets to the Cajundome and dropped them off. As soon as people saw me bringing them in, they clamored to the desk wanting to get their hands on them. But Red Cross volunteers told them that they still didn't have enough for the special needs victims on the second floor, so they would be taken there. It broke my heart. But there was a Graco portable crib in my car and we found two women with three babies between them to give that to. But seeing these people in the shelter is amazing. I don't know how they are managing, but somehow they do. The kids are what really get me. I can't imagine what it must be like for those parents. There's more stories, but I don't think I can write any more of them now. I'm crying as I sit at my computer thinking about it. I've tried to limit how much of the coverage I watch because it is becoming all too real. At least I know that our efforts here are making a difference on a very real and intimate level. This weekend our station is to host the MDA telethon. I think we have some difficult decisions to make on how we proceed with that event. It is going to be difficult to ask for money for anything other than Katrina victims. If it was up to me, I'd postpone the MDA telethon and hold a hurricane telethon this weekend. My guess is that it will end up being a combination of both. Regardless, we need to keep the push going and keep the momentum building through the weekend. I am optimistic that by the time we end our broadcasts Friday night that we will be over a half-million in donations to the Red Cross. Monica and I are still trying to decide what we can give, but I am sure it will be sizable. It has to be. We just haven't been together long enough to talk about it. In the meantime, we'll continue to hunker down in the trenches and do what we can. 9/2/05 A Short Update It's 12:30 and I'm going to bed… I won't be able to write tomorrow as I need to be at the collection site early tomorrow. We are being overwhelmed by the response and need all hands on deck. Here's some quick bullet points on the day… *Our firefighter was reunited with his wife in Houma today. That's a happy story. *We collected 3 Ryder trucks full of food and 4 big trucks full of clothes, toys, etc today *We've raised over $300,000 for the Red Cross so far. *Our sister stations are raising money too and should double our efforts here. *The station is going forward with the MDA telethon. I think it may be a mistake. This tragedy is too close and too new to be asking for funds for anything else. *I did a phone interview with BBC radio in Scotland tonight *My trip to the Cajundome to deliver blankets was a tough one tonight. More later, but there are over 8,000 people living there now. It is so sad. *We are extending our fund and supply drive through the weekend. We'll go from 8 to 8 on Sat., Sun., and Mon . *We expect to raise over $500K locally and another $500K in the broadcast group to reach $1 million in a week. *Tempers are getting shorter in the newsroom and in the community. It's been a long road for everyone, but we keep marching on. I listened to a lot of angry people from New Orleans today. They just don't understand why the help is taking so long to get there. *Rumors of civil unrest in Lafayette were rampant today, but untrue. Our population has risen by a good 50% though. It's feeling crowded. I will write again when I can, but I'll be at the relief drop zone most of the next 3 days. Keep praying… 9/6/05 What A Difference A Week Makes… Or Does It? Last night was the first time I sat on the news desk in a week. When I last left the set, it was after a day and a half of continuous coverage of the storm's landfall. It felt strange to be back into a suit again. I look strange on air because my usual stark-white coloring is now a gradient of white to brown to red. I always wore a ball cap when out at our collection site, so my chin is a little sunburned. Most of my face is tan, but my forehead is still fairly white. I have a mean farmer's tan when I take my shirt off. Physically, I feel fine despite the short nights. I have an appointment this afternoon to see the doctor about my ankle. The swelling from the fire ants hasn't gone down. I've been trying to manage with Benadryl, hydrocortisone cream and ice packs but it is still pretty swollen. I call it my "cankle" because it is indistinguishable where my calf stops and my ankle starts as they are the same size. Emotionally, I think I'm managing as well as can be expected. It was a long week there at our collection site. We spent a lot of time trying to help evacuees find help and we heard a lot of stories. But it was good to have a direct connection to those people and feel like you were really doing something. Our drop site stayed open through the evenings, so when evacuees showed up after the food pantry and other agencies were closed, we'd give them items directly off of our trucks. We had a lot of toys that we gave to children and we moved a lot of diapers this week. The fund drive has so far netted around $500K. We're still accepting donations at the station. Our sister stations raised about $625K so our efforts are bringing over $1 million to the Red Cross here in Louisiana. Our sister station in Richmond, VA did a food drive and is delivering 8 semi trucks worth of food to the Lafayette food bank tomorrow or Thursday. So all of those efforts have been a resounding success on the local level. I'd like to be able to tell you that things have really improved in the last 7 days, but in many ways they haven't. What has improved is the coordination of local agencies such as the food bank, United Way, Salvation Army and Goodwill. Those are the agencies I've been working with directly to get our collection items back to the people who need it most. They are really the ones making it work here in Lafayette. The Red Cross is only dealing with the people who are staying in their specific shelters. Otherwise it is the other agencies who are picking up the slack to help the thousands who are staying in churches or at a relative's house with 20 people jammed into them. It is over a week after the storm and some of these people have been displaced for as long as 10-11 days depending on when they evacuated. Today, the national Red Cross and FEMA have yet to show up in Lafayette. Those are the agencies that will issue direct relief in the form of vouchers to victims. The vouchers are good for things like clothing, food, gas and prescriptions. Slowly, the insurance companies have started getting relief checks to homeowner policy holders, but the people with the fewest resources are people who don't own a home and surely don't have insurance. When FEMA and the national Red Cross finally arrive, we should see a significant upturn in the effort locally. But in the meantime it is only getting worse. When we started our efforts last week, most of the people that came to us looking for direct aid were the most impoverished victims. By the weekend and yesterday, we were seeing people with good paying jobs asking for help. You see most of them left with a few hundred dollars of cash at best and have been living on credit cards, which are reaching their max. If they don't bank at a national bank and have their money tied up in a local credit union or something, then they can't access their assets. I had a man yesterday who owned his own business. His company supplied linens to New Orleans hospitals. But his bank was destroyed and he couldn't get any money out. He had only two changes of clothes and was running out of cash. He wanted to hold his cash for gasoline so he could get around town to get the necessary relief. It is really amazing. So where are they? Washington and the state officials are patting each other on the back for all the relief monies that are being appropriated. But I'm on the ground talking with these people every day and that money is not here. I know this is a long term effort that will need financial backing for some time. But if we could get some of that relief money to the victims here in the form of vouchers, it would greatly relieve the stress on the local system and allow the agencies here to concentrate their efforts on the people who need it most. According to the mayor of New Orleans, he sat on Air Force One with President Bush and Governor Blanco yesterday. The President offered to federalize the relief effort and get more resources in here to manage things. Governor Blanco said she needed 24 hours to think about it. It's unreal. I've talked to numerous people who have relatives in Texas or Arkansas, etc. who can't get there because they have no money for gas. If we can get people like this funds so they can take care of themselves, then we can do a much better job of handling the poorest of the evacuees who are hit exponentially harder in the long run. Many local companies have been hiring evacuees and the schools are filling up with children from SE Louisiana. Some estimate that our city has grown by about 30-40% in the last week. It may be a bit less than that, but it is a lot and it's going to be a while before that changes. I am now trying to step back a bi and see where my abilities can be best utilized in the community. I had two people call me yesterday asking if I would help with their fund raising efforts. I've been on TV a lot in the last week asking people to do something to help in the relief. As one woman put it on the phone last night, "you are the face of the relief effort in this town." I was really taken aback by that. I don't write this to pat myself on the back, but more because it so struck me. The two women that called both wanted me to make appearances at their benefit to lend credibility to their efforts. I guess if that is a way I can help, then I will. I had to turn one of them down because the event is on Saturday. Garrett and Erin are coming on Saturday to celebrate my birthday with us and watch the ISU/Iowa game. I think I really need to give myself a day like that to unwind and remove myself from the circle for at least a day. On Sunday I am going to emcee a big concert in downtown Lafayette where 7 bands are playing with proceeds going to the Red Cross. The beer and liquor are being donated by local distributors, so those proceeds will go to the Red Cross too and people are being encouraged to bring canned goods for the food pantry. So I will spend at least part of the day there. We cut a 30 second PSA to run on our air encouraging people to continue to volunteer and give funds. I guess for now I will try to use the little power I have by means of my weather pulpit and try to continue pushing people to give of their time and resources. It's going to be a long road ahead and it's going to take a Herculean effort to get it all done. Meanwhile, tropical depression #16 formed off the east coast of Florida. Last night some of the models took it across Florida and into the Gulf with landfall between Mobile and New Orleans. Today, the model take it north along the east coast of Florida and turn it NE back into the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Nate also formed yesterday but will likely only affect Bermuda if anything. This week marks the peak of hurricane season. We've already seen 15 named storms, so we have 7 names left. If TD 16 become a tropical storm, it will be TS Ophelia and we'll only have 6 names left. The National Hurricane Center has decided that if they run out of storm names this year, they will start using the Greek alphabet to name storms. I wonder what would be a better scenario… another major hurricane forms in the Gulf and hits the same area again or if it hits a different area and knocks another portion of the Gulf off it's feet? I don't know which would be better or worse. Probably best not to think about it. Obviously, the best case scenario is for nothing to hit at all. 9/7/05 A New Version Of Normal Today will mark a turn back towards "normal" at the television station. Since the storm we've been cutting into programming at least once an hour with news updates and running a continuous informational crawl at the bottom of the screen. Newscasts have been lengthened to two hours during the evening and we've had the main anchors on the desk every day since the disaster. Today we are going to try to scale back a bit. We will still be running the crawl and will cut into programming when there is news of significance, but the regular updates will stop and our newscasts will return to their regular format. But I can't really say things are returning to normal. Yesterday was my first full day back in the office since Katrina hit. It's going to be a while before things feel normal there as well as most of Louisiana. The newsroom is full of reporter crews from sister stations and CNN along with our own crews. It's taken a Herculean effort on the part of everyone here to produce the countless hours of news coverage that we have in the last two weeks. Everyone is running on empty. Tempers are a little short at times, but no one complains. How could you when your eyes are in front of these pictures all day long? I did a phone interview live at 5:00 with our sister station in Green Bay. They all want to hear news that the relief effort is hitting full stride. But the direct financial help has yet to arrive in Lafayette anyway. The head of the local Red Cross chapter was in the studio for an interview last night. I followed him into the hallway after the interview to chat with him briefly as I serve on the local Red Cross board. His eyes are slivers and his voice is soft. He is so far past tired it is a wonder he can even stand. I asked about the Red Cross and when they would be able to start issuing direct aid. He said that the local chapter is so overwhelmed trying to maintain the sheltering operations that they can't spare any trained volunteers to operate as case workers. Apparently only trained case workers can issue that aid and the national chapter has yet to heed the call for additional help in this area. It sounds like it is starting to happen in Alabama, Mississippi and at least as far west as Baton Rouge. But who knows when those workers will get to Lafayette, Alexandria, Dallas and Houston. He was telling me about the hundreds of area medical personnel working volunteer shifts at the Cajundome where some 8,000 evacuees are housed. The overwhelming community response has been widely felt there. He wants me to come over and tour the dome with him so I can see more of what is happening there. I told him to take care of himself and he said he was actually going home and turning off his cell phone tonight to get some decent sleep. It's such a huge task for these local leaders to tackle, but they are doing a wonderful job. This community and these "crazy Cajuns" as they sometimes call themselves are wonderful people. They come from simple hardworking upbringings. They know how to work hard and they know how to play hard too. People always ask me if it is a culture shock to come here from Iowa, but it hasn't been. These people in south central Louisiana are a lot like the Germanic farming descendants in western Iowa. When a heart breaks, they run to fix it. Other than the fact that I speak no French, these Cajuns make me feel right at home. Last night we had a man drop off a check to the Red Cross for $120,000. Our "Help For The Hurricane" campaign total is up to $520,500 and they aren't done counting funds. Checks continue to come into the station. I got checks yesterday from my Grandpa Clay and from Si Mathiasen in Harlan. So it's literally a nationwide effort down here now. Thanks guys! An edited version of my initial Katrina blogs ran in the Harlan Tribune yesterday. For those of you who don't know, Harlan, Iowa is my hometown of about 5,000 people. They wanted to put up a link to my entire blog, but I told them I'd edit the main stuff for them and they could run that. Some of the stories on this blog are better left untold to the masses! Garrett told me I've really arrived now that I'm in the Tribune. I am glad they ran it though. If it helps someone 1,000 miles away feel a connection to what is happening here and motivates them to do something for the people here or even for someone in their own communities, then it is worth it. I caught up to my close friend Steve Rodenborn on the phone the other day too. Steve has a unique perspective as he spent time in Baton Rouge a few years ago working with street kids there. Another of our friends Jamie VanLeeuwen did his graduate work at Tulane and now works with street kids in the Denver area. The two of them have been trying to track down the kids they knew were still in the city near the time of the storm. It sounds as though they've had good luck and many of them have been evacuated to the Houston area. Jamie is loading a couple vans with supplies and heading that way. There are so many that could otherwise fall through the cracks. I'm glad to hear of people like this trying to fill those gaps. One of our reporters returned last night from a fly over Plaquemines parish. Plaquemines parish is the extreme SE corner of Louisiana and is home to a lot of shrimp boats and offshore drilling workers. This is the area where the storm made its initial landfall with sustained winds at around 140 mph. It's like they endured a 50 mile wide tornado. He flew over the area with the parish president. His impression is that there is nothing to go back to and doubts if or why anyone would want to go back there. It sounds like St. Bernard parish east of New Orleans is in a similar state. Another interesting story of just how overcrowded our city is… I went to the doctor to get my ankle looked at yesterday (or should I say cankle). It's just an allergic reaction and they gave me a prescription for cortisone pills. Well I couldn't find a pharmacy in town that could fill my prescription in less than 24 hours. There is such a backlog of people trying to get prescriptions filled that they don't have enough people to process them all. My situation is a matter of comfort rather than immediate medical need. But I have to think that some people out there need their medicines much worse than I and may not be able to wait for them. City/Parish government is estimating about 30 to 40 thousand extra people are now in Lafayette Parish. The city's population is about 112,000 and the parish maybe 140,000 at the most. So it's roughly a 25% increase in population in a week. You can imagine what it's like driving around this town right now. And the crazy thing to think about is that these people won't have a home to go back to in months. So how many will stay permanently? Who knows, but I'm sure it will be substantial. We're still watching what is now Tropical Storm Ophelia off the coast of Florida. The official forecast keeps the storm moving NE at a snails pace and reaching hurricane strength by the weekend. This path would likely mean flooding rains for eastern Florida, Georgia and possibly up to the Carolinas. The problem with this storm is that it just hasn't made up it's mind as to movement. It's been nearly stationary for the last 24 hours and until it starts showing some more definite signs of movement, it will be difficult for the models to pinpoint a forecast. At this time there are still models that skip the storm over Florida and run it right down the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana. The good news is that if that scenario did happen, it likely wouldn't be a strong storm because the waters off the coast have been cooled by the upwelling caused by Katrina. However, heavy rain would be likely which would only compound flooding problems in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Even worse is it might affect areas that were otherwise left unscathed by Katrina. Hopefully, the high pressure over the SE US will force it east rather than west and we can buy a little more time. It's going to be a nervous time for a while anytime the tropics pop a new storm. following up on captain baudoin If you've read my Hurricane Katrina blogs, you know who Captain Donald Baudoin is. You might not recognize the spelling as I have apparently been misspelling it for about a month. Anyway, last week before Rita this letter to the editor appeared in the local paper: TV station gave family reassurance I would like to extend sincere gratitude to KLFY TV-10 for going above and beyond the call of duty on the night of Aug. 28. I contacted them after my wife received a frantic call from a friend who explained that her husband, Capt. Donald Baudoin, and his crew was stuck in the Gulf with Katrina approaching. I spoke to Dwight in the newsroom who was sincerely concerned. With Capt. Baudoin's wife's permission, I provided Dwight with his telephone number. Shortly, they aired a telephone interview with him. His family was extremely relieved and were reassured that he and his crew were utilizing their professional training to survive in the harsh conditions. TV-10's continuous coverage of the situation was an appreciated opportunity for Capt. Baudoin's family and the crew members' families to know that they were all right. We also are grateful for Dwight, who took the time to make several attempts to contact Capt. Baudoin and his crew after his wife received a phone call from him that was frightening. Dwight was our only connection to Capt. Baudoin. I also was told that when Capt. Baudoin's ship lost vital equipment, the meteorologist would call him periodically to give him an update on the hurricane coordinates and other information. Capt. Baudoin and the rest of us are all appreciative of the efforts the KLFY-TV news team put forth. They played a major part in Capt. Baudoin, his crew and the sister vessel's survival. I have been told that Capt. Baudoin and the others were eventually rescued safely. Hours after returning to land and seeing his family briefly, he returned to the Gulf in order to bring offshore workers out there to assess the damage. He was not forced to do this, but understands how important it is to begin the necessary repairs offshore in order to return things back to normal as soon as possible for the rest of the country. His actions that night and now demonstrate his experience, knowledge, professionalism and dedication. Thanks again, TV-10, for your help. Kerry Thibodeaux Lafayette 9/18/05 Please No Rita Tropical depression #18 formed near the Bahamas yesterday. Incidentally, so did tropical depression #17 a little earlier in the day which is about 500 miles SE of the Windward Islands in the south central Atlantic. #17 quickly became tropical storm Phillipe and is forecasted to move north/northwest and possibly affect the east coast, but it should stay east of the US. But #18 is a different story. It is headed for the Gulf. Once it reaches max sustained winds of 39 mph, we'll have tropical storm Rita to answer to. The official forecast strengthens Rita to hurricane strength as she moves over the Florida Keys into the Gulf on Wednesday. The official forecast track takes the storm straight west across the Gulf and lands her in south Texas/northern Mexico. But I don't know what they are basing that forecast on. Almost all of the forecast models turn the storm north and send her towards Louisiana by the end of the week. What a horrible scenario that would be with people just getting to go back for the first time this week. We'll pray that the storm doesn't follow this path. If the storm did move to the northern Gulf, sea surface temperatures are about 7 degrees cooler than when Katrina moved through. As Katrina cut through the Gulf, it upwelled cooler water from the depths to help drop the surface temperatures. That provides less energy to the storm, so the rapid intensification we saw with Katrina wouldn't be as likely. However, even a minimal hurricane could have devastating effects to an area ill equipped to deal with another storm. Those levees in New Orleans are not prepared to deal with another hurricane of any strength. The image below is a composite of several computer models and their forecasted paths. The red line is the official National Hurricane Center Forecast. They're obviously going against the models on this forecast. I would expect to see it change before the day is out. 9/19/05 Don't Need-A Rita Well things are looking no better for this storm today. If anything, they look worse. The Hurricane Center has revised their forecast track farther north than yesterday with landfall near Corpus Christi. Many of the models are pulling the storm north much sooner than that which would bring it right towards Louisiana. Even worse case scenario would be if it made landfall slightly to our west which would put us in the worst of the storm. Each line on this map represents a different computer model solution. The red line on the left is essentially the NHC forecast as of this morning. The most disconcerting line is the blue one in the middle that brings the storm right up Vermilion Bay and into Lafayette. This is the forecast path fro the GFDL model which is one of the premier long term models available. It's quite disconcerting to see that line. In this morning's discussion from the National Hurricane Center, they pointed out that the forecast may need a significant revision later in the day. Here is the text from that discussion: "THERE HAS BEEN A FAIRLY SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN THE GUIDANCE LATE IN THE FORECAST PERIOD…WITH THE GLOBAL MODELS ABRUPTLY WEAKENING THE MID-LEVEL HIGH OVER THE WESTERN GULF AND ALLOWING RITA TO BEGIN A SHARPER RECURVATURE TRACK. WHILE I HAVE ADJUSTED THE 120-HR POINT ABOUT 120 NM NORTH OF THE PREVIOUS ADVISORY…I AM STILL WELL TO THE LEFT OF MOST OF THE 120-HR GUIDANCE." That's the NHC's way of saying… "expect significant forecast changes later today." The good news is that all of this WILL change. As the week goes on, more data will be available to the models and we'll have a much better idea on how things will progress. Here are the things we need to keep an eye on: Sea Surface Temperatures: They are about 5-8 degrees cooler than when Katrina moved through. Katrina helped to upwell cooler water and things are still cooler thanks to that. When Katrina roared through the Gulf, SST's were 90-93 degrees. Now they are on the average about 84-85 with pockets as warm as 88. The bad news is that Rita will probably spend most of her time in the warmest water that the Gulf has right now. Lots of Real Estate Ahead: This storm will have a lot of time to gain strength. Aside from the Florida Keys, there is not much in the way of land in this storm's path. That means there is nothing to knock it down as it progresses west. Just a lot of warm water for it to breed upon. Lack of Shear: Shear in the mid to upper levels of the atmosphere inhibits the development of tropical systems. Oversimply put, shear is the twisting of air. At this point there is an upper low in the NW Caribbean which is helping to supply some shear to this system. But it is forecasted to lift out of there today and that looks to be the last obstacle in this storm's path. So there won't be much help in the upper levels to suppress this storm. High Pressure Shield: Right now, much as was the case during Katrina, there is a dome of high pressure parked over the northern Gulf Coast. If this high stays put, it will force the storm west rather than turning north. That's our best hope right now. The forecast though pulls that high slightly north and then east. If the high does that, it is still possible for Rita to pull in on the SW side of the high and end up dangerously close to Louisiana. With Katrina, this high was in place too and broke down at the end. Had the high not been in place, Katrina would have hit Florida. But it held on and forced the storm west towards New Orleans. The timing and placement of this high pressure will be of critical importance over the next few days. In a nutshell, this is likely going to be a major hurricane by mid week. I would expect the storm to reach hurricane strength by tomorrow and possibly cat. 3 strength by Thursday with landfall sometime this weekend. In the meantime, plans continue for a what if? 9/21/05 Another Big One Even if we stopped today, 2005 would go into the record books as one of the most active and damaging hurricane seasons on record. By the time it is all said and done, it will likely be THE most active and damaging hurricane season ever. The Gulf coast is bracing for it's fourth major hurricane (category 3-4-5) of the year. Hurricane Dennis was a cat. 4 storm when it made landfall near Pensacola on July 10. Hurricane Emily was a cat. 4 storm when it hit Cancun on July 18 and a Cat. 3 storm when it made landfall on July 20 again just south of the US/Mexico border. We are very familiar with the strength of Katrina which ranks second on the all-time list of most intense hurricanes. It reached category 5 strength before making landfall as a cat. 4 on August 29. Rita is soon to be added to this list of notoriety. There is nothing ahead of this storm to slow it down. It is already to category 3 strength this morning and showing sign of rapid intensification. The National Hurricane Center expects this storm to reach cat. 4 strength before the day is out and possibly reach cat. 5 strength for a time before dropping back to cat. 4 prior to landfall. With all signs pointing towards landfall in east Texas, the Houston/Galveston area look to be the closest metro area to feel the wrath of this storm. Evacuations are already underway this morning. One of the concerns with this storm is that with the forecast path set to take a late right hand turn, the possibility exist for the storm to have a prolonged landfall as it rips up the coast rather than a straight on landfall. This would keep the winds stronger for a longer period of time along the coast and affect a larger area with extremely damaging winds. The storm surge will be felt across most of Texas and Louisiana. The Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans is greatly concerned about rainfall and high seas resulting in levees breaches there. That would be a devastating blow as they just got the city pumped out yesterday. As for my neck of the woods, I am still not sounding the all clear. A northerly turn a few hours earlier than anticipated could mean serious repercussions for at least SW Louisiana. I am still optimistic that the effects on us here will be minimal all things considered. However, I did put my LSU/Tennessee tickets up for sale on eBay last night. Apparently, the gods of the tropics do not want me to attend major sporting events. I should point out that I have tickets for the ISU/Texas A&M game on the last weekend in October. Expect at least a cat. 4 storm in the Gulf by then. In all seriousness, it will be another long weekend. Here is my latest discussion from the station's website: ============== The latest on Hurricane Rita from the Live Doppler 10 Weather Center from Chief Meteorologist Ryan Burchett at 6:45 am… Latest coordinates on Rita: 24.4N, 85.3 W moving W 14 mph Max sustained winds: 135 mph (cat. 4) Pressure: 27.99″ or 948 mb Next coordinate update: 10:00 am Rita has passed the Florida Keys and is now well into the Gulf. The storm continues to gain strength and is already a category 4 storm. Some forecast models strengthen the storm to cat. 5 before weakening slightly prior to landfall. This storm has the potential to rank in the top five most intense storm to ever hit the United States, only weeks after the second strongest storm in history slammed onshore. With plenty of time and space ahead of this storm, the forecast track can still change significantly. At this time though, the official forecast path still takes the storm to near Matagorda Bay, Texas which is about halfway between Corpus Christi and Houston. Landfall is forecast to occur sometime early Saturday morning. The computer forecast models remain in fairly good agreement on this path at this point. Typically we do not see such consensus in the models from this far out, so confidence in the forecast path is good at this time. However, the angle at which the storm hits the coast and how hard of a right turn we see down the stretch will have significant bearing on what storm conditions we see here in Louisiana. We are still hopeful that Louisiana will be spared from the very damaging effects of this storm. Can we sound the all clear? No. However, as the forecast track firms up over the next day or so, we'll hopefully begin to feel better about our position here. By Thursday we'll start seeing extra cloud cover on the outskirts of Rita. By Friday evening it looks like rain bands reaching us and then significant rain likely on Saturday. The storm will continue to bring us soaking rains into Sunday before lifting north. As far as wind is concerned, if this forecast path holds things would be a bit blustery but we would see only isolated areas of damaging winds. Some sporadic power outages would be possible, but widespread outages would be unlikely. The biggest threat for strong winds would be in the far SW corner of the state in Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes. The biggest impact for Louisiana will likely be storm surge. It's just too early to really have a handle on what we are looking at as far as storm surge is concerned. A lot depends on the strength of the storm and the pressure gradient that sets up between the high that will be to our NE and the storm itself. Obviously the exact track of the storm has a lot to do with that too. Some coastal flooding is a certainty at this point, it's just a matter of how severe. The latest info coming from the National Hurricane Center is pointing at possible landfall as a cat. 4 storm. If that was the case, we could still see storm surge here as high as 4'-7' above normal tidal levels and that may be conservative. For now, it's just a waiting game. By Thursday morning we should start having a much better read on those impacts. The surge and rainfall are of great concern to the New Orleans area as extra rainfall is likely along with at least a minimal surge in sea levels as the storm passes. Rainfall of a few inches along with a storm surge of only a couple feet may be enough to cause significant problems with the makeshift levee system that is in place. 9/22/05 Holy Cow! « another big onehurricane rita log… Thursday entries »holy #$% I don't have time to write except to tell you I am putting boards on my house. I'm not going to lie to you, things are looking pretty scary for Louisiana again and we are on the wrong side of the storm. Below is my latest discussion from our website. I will update the blog when I can, but I don't know how often that will be as I'll be at work for most of the next 4-5 days at least. At this time, we do not plan to evacuate in Lafayette. If the track shifts farther east, we will have to consider that. Garrett is standing by to open his guest room to Monica and has a kennel for Buster. We'll all just say our prayers and do what we do. It did dawn on me that I am working at probably the only TV station in the US that will be doing wall to wall coverage of both Katrina and Rita. What did I do to deserve this? Stay tuned to TV-10 for live updates at the top of each hour plus information at the bottom of your screen every 15 minutes. The latest on Hurricane Rita from the Live Doppler 10 Weather Center from Chief Meteorologist Ryan Burchett at 10:10 am… Latest coordinates on Rita: 25.4N, 88.7W moving WNW 9 mph Max sustained winds: 165 mph (Cat. 5) Pressure: 26.78 in or 907 mb Next coordinate update: 1:00 pm WATCHES AND WARNINGS: A HURRICANE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM PORT O'CONNOR TEXAS TO MORGAN CITY LOUISIANA. A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION. AT 10 AM CDT…1500Z…A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM SOUTH OF PORT O'CONNOR TO PORT MANSFIELD TEXAS. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE SOUTHEASTERN COAST OF LOUISIANA EAST OF MORGAN CITY TO THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. AT 10 AM CDT…1500Z…A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO THE MOUTH OF THE PEARL RIVER INCLUDING METROPOLITAN NEW ORLEANS AND LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM SOUTH OF PORT MANSFIELD TO BROWNSVILLE TEXAS…AND FOR THE NORTHEASTERN COAST OF MEXICO FROM RIO SAN FERNANDO NORTHWARD TO THE RIO GRANDE. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA…GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS. EVACUATIONS: CAMERON PARISH…EVACUATION FOR THE ENTIRE PARISH. CALCASIEU PARISH…AN EVACUATION IS MANDATORY FOR PERSONS SOUTH OF INTERSTATE 10…AND RECOMMENDED FOR RESIDENTS NORTH OF THE INTERSTATE. ACADIA PARISH…VOLUNTARY EVACUATION FOR SOUTHERN PART OF THE PARISH. IBERIA PARISH…VOLUNTARY EVACUATION SOUTH OF HIGHWAYS 90 AND 14. JEFF DAVIS PARISH…EVACUATION OF LOW-LYING AREAS SOUTH OF I-10. LAFAYETTE PARISH…VOLUNTARY EVACUATION OF PEOPLE IN MOBILE HOMES… LOW-LYING AREAS…AND PEOPLE WITH SPECIAL MEDICAL CONDITIONS THAT REQUIRE ELECTRICITY. ST. MARTIN PARISH…VOLUNTARY EVACUATION OF LOWER ST. MARTIN PARISH AND LOW-LYING AREAS IN UPPER ST MARTIN PARISH. VERMILION PARISH…MANDATORY EVACUATION SOUTH OF HIGHWAY 14 TO ABBEVILLE AND PEOPLE IN ALL MOBILE HOMES OR SPECIAL MEDICAL NEEDS. Rita continues westward across the central Gulf. The pressure has risen slightly since last night and slight weakening is expected during the day today. The storm is still a category 5 hurricane. Max sustained winds are now at 165 mph, down from 170 mph at the last advisory. With the central pressure dropping to 897 mb at 10 pm Wednesday, Rita now ranks as the #3 most intense hurricane on record. That's just over three weeks on the heels of Katrina which is now the #5 most intense hurricane to hit the U.S. with a minimum pressure of 902 mb. The forecast track for this storm has again moved farther to the NE this morning. The track now calls for landfall just NE of the Houston/Galveston area. The storm is forecast to make landfall sometime late Friday night into early Saturday morning as a category 4 storm. The angle at which the storm hits the coast and how hard of a right turn we see down the stretch will have significant bearing on what storm conditions we see here in Louisiana. At this point, it looks like a catastrophic situation for Houston and significant effects will be felt in SW Louisiana as well. By this afternoon we'll start seeing extra cloud cover on the outskirts of Rita and some scattered thunderstorms. By Friday it looks like the significant rain bands will begin reaching us with heavy rain likely Friday, Saturday and into Sunday. After Sunday, scattered showers can be expected to continue through at least Tuesday. Storm totals in the 10 to 15 inch range are possible with this storm with the heaviest rainfall occurring in the western half of the state. With that much rain likely with this storm, people in low lying areas inland should be prepared for likely flooding conditions. As far as wind is concerned, if this forecast path holds things would be very gusty with the most damaging winds occurring in SW Louisiana. A prolonged period of tropical storm strength winds can be expected from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning. Sustained winds in Acadiana can be expected in the 40-70 mph range with gusts in the 50-80 mph+ range and even higher along the coast. Some power outages are likely, especially in SW parts of the state. The biggest threat for hurricane strength winds would be in the SW corner of the state in Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes and along the coast during the evening and overnight Friday night into Saturday. The rest of the area will likely see at least tropical storm strength wind for a prolonged period of up to 18-24 hours from Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. Isolated tornadoes are likely as well as we will be on the NE side of the storm. The worst of the wind will occur from Friday afternoon through Saturday morning. Another significant impact for Louisiana will likely be storm surge and inland flooding. Exactly what we'll see for storm surge remains to be seen, but the National Weather Service calls for 10′-15′ storm surge for Cameron and Calcasieu parishes could push storm surge waters as far north as I-10. 5′-10′ storm surge can be expected for Vermilion, Iberia and St. Mary Parishes including Vermilion Bay. A lot depends on the strength of the storm and the pressure gradient that sets up between the high that will be to our NE and the storm itself. Obviously the exact track of the storm has a lot to do with that too, but coastal flooding is a certainty at this point, and if this track holds, that flooding will be severe. We are awaiting some more definitive storm surge data from the LSU Hurricane Research Center which should be available to us by Thursday. The surge and rainfall are of great concern to the New Orleans area as extra rainfall is likely along with at least a minimal surge in sea levels as the storm passes. Rainfall of a few inches along with a storm surge of only a couple feet may be enough to cause significant problems with the makeshift levee system that is in place. At this time it looks like a surge of 3′ to 4′ can be expected around New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. 9/22/05 Hurricane Rita Log As I have some time, I am condensing the many blog entries from 70+ entries that are on here into single entries. I am adding the comments and entries just as they were entered before. They'll just come in larger set of articles. This is the first set from Thursday afternoon through early Friday morning. Thu. 6:00 PM Just a quick update. Much of our area is being evacuated. Monica is putting things together and heading with Buster to Dallas to stay with Garrett. We have been on the air wall to wall since noon and there is no looking back now. To give you an idea, Lake Charles, LA is looking at a Biloxi situation from Katrina, Lafayette is like Mobile and Houston is like New Orleans. We will experience at least cat. 1 hurricane strength winds in Lafayette. Rains are expected to continue through at least Tuesday which will have us looking at significant flooding around much of Louisiana. Keep praying. We are making evacuation arrangements at the station if necessary. I will update this webpage as possible to let you know I am safe. It is next to impossible to make a phone call here even on land lines. It will only get worse as the infrastructure gets damage in the next few days. Thu. 8:30 PM Monica is on the road to Dallas with the dog. Boy are they in for a treat in Dallas! She took a lot of photos and irreplaceable items with her just in case. I really think our house will be ok. If not, we are well insured! I am back at work. We stopped wall to wall coverage at 7 and have been doing cut-ins every 30 minutes. I touched base with Mom and Dad. I will be communicating with Monica in Dallas and anyone looking for info will have to try to use the phone tree to get to her. I'll update this page as often as I can for as long as I have internet access available. The phones are useless, but text messaging works fine. Send a text message to my cell if you need something. We expect to launch wall to wall coverage again early tomorrow morning. The weather staff will cover live 30 minute updates all night long. I am covering things until 3 AM and our morning meteorologist Jeremy will relieve me at 3. I'll go home and get some sleep and then come back in by late morning for the long haul. I am expecting cat. 1 hurricane winds in Lafayette based on the current forecast projections. We'll see… Here's our latest statement… ============== Stay tuned to TV-10 for live updates at the top of each hour plus information at the bottom of your screen every 15 minutes. The latest on Hurricane Rita from the Live Doppler 10 Weather Center from the TV-10 weather team at 7:10 pm… LATEST COORDINATES: 26.0N, 89.9W moving WNW 10 mph Max sustained winds: 145 mph (Cat. 4) Pressure: 26.96 in or 913 mb Next coordinate update: 10:00 pm WATCHES AND WARNINGS: A HURRICANE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM PORT O'CONNOR TEXAS TO MORGAN CITY LOUISIANA. A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION. AT 10 AM CDT…1500Z…A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM SOUTH OF PORT O'CONNOR TO PORT MANSFIELD TEXAS. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE SOUTHEASTERN COAST OF LOUISIANA EAST OF MORGAN CITY TO THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. AT 10 AM CDT…1500Z…A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO THE MOUTH OF THE PEARL RIVER INCLUDING METROPOLITAN NEW ORLEANS AND LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM SOUTH OF PORT MANSFIELD TO BROWNSVILLE TEXAS…AND FOR THE NORTHEASTERN COAST OF MEXICO FROM RIO SAN FERNANDO NORTHWARD TO THE RIO GRANDE. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA…GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS. EVACUATIONS: Click here for the latest on evacuations in Acadiana. WHAT TO EXPECT IN ACADIANA: Rita continues westward across the central Gulf. The pressure has risen slightly since last night and slight weakening occurred during the day today, but it is still a very strong storm. The storm has dropped to a strong category 4 strength hurricane. With the central pressure dropping to 897 mb at 10 pm Wednesday, Rita now ranks as the #3 most intense hurricane on record. That's just over three weeks on the heels of Katrina which is now the #5 most intense hurricane to hit the U.S. with a minimum pressure of 902 mb. The forecast track for this storm was moved to the NE earlier today. The track now calls for landfall just SW of Beaumont, TX. The storm is forecast to make landfall sometime late Friday night into early Saturday morning as a category 3 to 4 storm. The angle at which the storm hits the coast and how hard of a right turn we see down the stretch will have significant bearing on what storm conditions we see here in Louisiana. At this point, it looks like a catastrophic situation for Houston, Beaumont and SW Louisiana as well. This afternoon we started to see the breezy winds and isolated storms on the outskirts of Rita. By mid-morning Friday it looks like the tropical storm strength winds and significant rain bands will begin reaching us. Heavy rains are likely Friday, Saturday and into Sunday. After Sunday, scattered showers can be expected to continue through at least Tuesday. Storm totals in the 10 to 15 inch range are possible with this storm with the heaviest rainfall occurring in the western half of the state. With that much rain likely with this storm, people in low lying areas inland should be prepared for likely flooding conditions. As far as wind is concerned, if this forecast path holds things would be very gusty with the most damaging winds occurring in SW Louisiana. A prolonged period of tropical storm strength winds can be expected from Friday late morning to Saturday afternoon. Sustained winds along the coast and in SW Louisiana will be from 60 to 100 mph with higher gusts. Farther to the NE near Lafayette, we'll see sustained winds from 40-60 mph with higher gusts. Power outages are likely, especially in SW parts of the state. The biggest threat for hurricane strength winds would be in the SW corner of the state in Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes and along the coast during the evening and overnight Friday night into Saturday. The rest of the area will likely see at least tropical storm strength wind for a prolonged period of up to 18-24 hours from Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. Isolated tornadoes are likely as well as we will be on the NE side of the storm from Friday afternoon through Saturday evening. The worst of the wind will occur from Friday afternoon through Saturday evening. Another significant impact for Louisiana will likely be storm surge and inland flooding. Exactly what we'll see for storm surge remains to be seen, but a 15′-25′ storm surge is possible for Cameron and Calcasieu parishes which could push storm surge waters as far north as I-10. A 10′-15′ storm surge is possible for Vermilion Parish. Iberia and St. Mary Parishes including Vermilion Bay could see a surge from 8′-12′. A lot depends on the strength of the storm and the pressure gradient that sets up between the high that will be to our NE and the storm itself. Obviously the exact track of the storm has a lot to do with that too, but coastal flooding is a certainty at this point, and at this point it looks like that flooding will be severe. We are awaiting some more definitive storm surge data from the LSU Hurricane Research Center. The next update from them should be available to us around 11 pm Thursday. The surge and rainfall are of great concern to the New Orleans area as extra rainfall is likely along with at least a minimal surge in sea levels as the storm passes. 3 to 5 feet of storm surge is expected across New Orleans and the Army Core Of Engineers are saying that if this happens the levees that are in place at this time will be able to handle that. Thu. 11:00 pm We tried to sneak Monica out on back roads as advised by the LA State Police. Bad idea. She's gone about 40 miles in about 2 1/2 hours. We finally got her to a four lane road to cut east to I-49 so she can scoot north. If you want to look at a map, she went from Lafayette to Eunice in bumper to bumper traffic. Now she is going east on 190 which is a 4 lane road to Opelousas where she will go north on I-49 to Alexandria and eventually to Shreveport where she'll catch I-20 west to Dallas. The traffic seems to be moving again for her, so hopefully it will continue that way. At this rate, she'll be in Dallas around 4 AM at best. We just finished an extended 10:00 newscast and I am staying to do cut-ins every 30 minutes through the overnight. I will be relieved at 3 AM by our morning guy. Fri. 12:15 am Monica is moving on the Interstate and is about to Alexandria. She said the traffic runs about 60 mph for a while and then slows to about 40 mph. Hopefully once she passes Alexandria, things will pick up significantly. At least she is moving. I'm advising her to stop and take a nap if she needs to. For now, she's still trudging along. That's the latest for now. Fri. 1:15 am Monica has made it to Natchitoches (pronounced nack-uh-tish… go figure) and plans to stop for gas and for rest room breaks for all passengers (meaning the dog has to go too.) The traffic let up considerably after Alexandria and seems to be going smoothly. She thinks it should be smooth sailing the rest of the way. She still may stop for a nap at some point. Another thought that just occurred to me… would someone tape the ISU/Army game for me? Garrett that sounds like a job for you since you could send the tape home with Monica. I'll try to Tivo it, but my guess is I'll have little to no satellite signal during the hurricane rains. I probably won't even know the score when I finally get the tape. And if you were wondering… the LSU /Tennessee game that I had tickets to got moved to Monday. I still wouldn't have been able to go. Fri. 3:45 am Monica is into Texas now and looking for somewhere to stop for a nap. I am heading home to sleep and will return around noon time. Things are still looking nasty for SW Louisiana, but possibly a little better for Lafayette. We will see. Comment: Take care - Thinking of you and Monica (not so much Buster), OK a little bit of Buster. The Dahle's Fri. 10:00 am I just awoke to the sound of chainsaws in the neighborhood. My windows are boarded up, so I can't see who is running chainsaws, but I hope they have a way to secure whatever they are cutting or it will be flying around my neighborhood tonight. Monica arrived in Dallas around 6 AM and all are fine there. I had hoped to get about 1 more hour of sleep, but that is ok. I got about 6 hours of sleep, so it could be worse. I'm getting a few last minute things buttoned up around the house and I'll head into work. Winds are picking up along the coast, but things are still fairly calm with winds sustained about 10-15 mph. Outer rain bands are beginning to reach Lafayette, but nothing serious. Fri. 11:40 am The first rain squalls are reaching Lafayette now. Winds are sustained here about 20 mph with gusts to about 31. The rain is not heavy, but steady at this time and probably will continue through the rest of the day and overnight. A tornado watch has been issued until 6 pm and I'm sure we'll be under a tornado watch through the night and much of the day tomorrow too. We're already seeing tropical storm strength winds along the coast and storm surge begging to come up. Already reports are of waters coming up 1 foot in Cameron which will probably be erased from the map when this is all done. I bottled up about 10 gallons of water in new gas cans I bought and finished buttoning up the house. I am heading to work and will be there for the duration. I have a generator at the house with 10 gallon of gas. I'm detaching the electric garage door so I can get back into the house in case of power outages. The doors are boarded up because we have glass on all of them. I guess we're as ready as we're going to be. I'm taking several changes of clothes to work. I have extra suits and extra street clothes just in case I can't get back home for a period of time. At some point kbon radio plans to carry our broadcasts live on the radio. They have streaming audio on their website at www.kbon.com I don't know if they will be streaming our audio or alternate programming, but you can check periodically throughout the storm. Fri. 1:30 pm Tornado warning starting to fly in SE Louisiana around New Orleans and as far west as Baton Rouge now. Heavier rains are now coming down in Lafayette, but winds are still in check in the 20-30 mph range with a few higher gusts. We'll see the winds pick up on the front side of those squalls that will bring the tornadic threat later today. We just had the local utilities manager on and no power outages have yet been reported. Senator Boustany is on his way to the studios and we hope to have General Honore on live from Lafayette City Hall later this afternoon. Lafayette is turning into the hub for front line action as we will be affected, but not catastrophically unless a tornado touches down somewhere. At this time, the worst of the storm is going on in SE Louisiana. The storm has weakened to cat. 3 strength as a lot of dry air has pulled into the west side of the storm. This is good news. However, the last few frames of the latest satellite imagery shows the eye wall is stabilizing and possibly filling back in. The storm is now over some of the warmest water available to it, so I would expect it will at least maintain strength if not pick up a little this afternoon. The coverage has been top notch with live reports from reporters in Cypremort Point and Lake Charles as well as live pictures of the problems in New Orleans at this time and from Galveston. Our forecasts look right on target for the area, so we still feel comfortable that we are prepared for things here at the station and in Lafayette. The biggest problem right now is that most of the gas stations are out of fuel. That could be a problem in the next 36 hours for those of us who are here. As for me, I have a little over a half a tank in my car and will be moving very little in the next 36 hours plus so I should be fine. Worst case scenario I have 10 gallons of gas in the garage that I had saved for my generator. Hopefully I won't need it. Fri. 2:15 pm Trying to update as I have time. You'll likely see longer breaks between updates later today. Here's what I just typed up for the station's website as of current conditions here. RIGHT NOW: Rain: Heavy rains are filling in across all of Acadiana at this hour. Wind: Winds are steadily increasing to at least tropical storm strength. The winds will rapidly increase by this evening. The worst winds are occurring along the coast and on the leading edge of large thunderstorms moving through inland areas. Tornadoes: The tornadic threat is rapidly increasing for Acadiana as well. Numerous tornado warnings have been occurring this afternoon in SE Louisiana. Those thunderstorms that prompted the tornado warnings are now moving into Acadiana. We expect to be under a tornado watch for most of the day and overnight. Flooding: At this time, the ground and drainage systems are adequately handling the inland rainfall. Later this evening, we expect to see low lying areas beginning to flood and widespread inland flooding possible during the overnight and through the weekend. Storm Surge: Storm surge waters are now moving inland in Cameron, Vermilion, Iberia and St. Mary Parishes. The most significant storm surge levels will not occur until later tonight. 1. COMMENTS: the wife Says: September 23rd, 2005 at 4:45 pm e Ryan - thank you for writing when you can. Again, please take care of yourself. Are there a lot of families of station people there? Any updates on how long it will all last? 2. baseballguy Says: September 23rd, 2005 at 5:14 pm e Ryan - Keep safe. Always concerned to hear what's happening next. Monica - It's good to hear that you are out of harms way for the most part. Stay safe too. Thanks, Ryan, for keeping us all on the page and letting us know how you are doing. ~Scott Fri. 5:30 pm Rains continue to dump. We've seen about 1.3″ in Lafayette so far. Sustained winds here are at about 20-30 mph with our peak gust at the station so far reaching 40 mph. Sustained winds have reached 45 mph along the coast. Tropical storm threshold is 39 mph. Gusts up to 70-80 along the coast. Cameron Parish in SW Louisiana is reporting 100% evacuation which is amazing. The devastation from Katrina is saving lives today as people got out of the way. We just had our first tornado warning in the viewing area with a tornado reported south of Crowley. No confirmation at this point. It's very difficult to pick out any signatures on radar because of so much heavy rain. It's tough for the radar to punch through it all and see into the storms. Just a lot of rain and gusty winds. Power outages are beginning to happen even in Lafayette. More widespread outages happening along the coast. Just did a phone interview live with the hurricane hunters. This group is going to take off later tonight and will handle the mission until landfall overnight. They hope to be able to call us from the air later tonight. We've also done live phone interviews with the National Hurricane Center. As for Monica's question, I haven't been able to get out of the studio so I don't know who is here. But basically everyone who is here is staying as winds are getting too gusty to be out on the roads. Many people sleeping in the second studio and gaining some rest for the overnight run. Some have been here since as early as 2 AM. We have about twice the number of hands on deck as our competition which has allowed us to really cover the storm well. I haven't seen them so I don't know for sure, but crews from our sister stations in Davenport, IA, Lansing, MI and Knoxville, TN are here and helping. We also have a sat truck here and 4 live trucks at our disposal so we've been all over the place and the main event is yet to come. We're going to have to pull them all off the roads in the next hour or two though as conditions deteriorate. They will stand ready to dive in behind the storm as soon as winds begin to subside tomorrow. Monica… Did Troy get in touch with you? Have you figured anything out with the dog? They're trying to find a place to keep him where they could get him out if possible on Sunday. The kennel he is at now is not open on Sunday so she couldn't pick him up until Monday. Troy Kloewer, one of my best childhood friends, lives in Dallas as well and was going to try to help her find something. 1. COMMENTS: the wife Says: September 23rd, 2005 at 6:27 pm e Yes, Troy called, but didn't really know of any kennels to recommend. He said if needed, Buster could go stay there and he could just run along side his house and in his back yard or he could fix something up in his garage. I thanked him very much for that and really appreciate his willingness to jump in and help. I told that I would keep that as a last resort just cause I don't want Buster to tear anything up. I did find one other kennel that he has a reservation at for Saturday night, and I can pick him up Sunday. But Ryan I want to talk to you about this. Do you think it's even plausible for me to come home on Sunday? The things I worry about are flooding and finding enough gas to get me home. If I decide to stay here till Monday, I'm just going to leave him where he's at so not to disturb him again. Also with Troy, we might try to get together for lunch tomorrow and I could see his house. MSNBC has a crew in Lafayette, I'm sure many of the major networks do, but I've just seen this one reporter. I can't tell where he's at and he hasn't said. I just feel as though things look bad for Lafayette and I know you'll find this surprising, but I'm worried! Ryan, I love you very much. Do whatever you have to keep yourself safe. Keep the blogs up so we know you're ok, and really, try, try, try to get some sleep when you can. Fri. 6:30 pm Go Cyclones! Just wanted you to know I didn't forget. I won't be able to watch anything though. I just talked on the phone to Monica. Things are fine here at this time. We'll make a decision around noon tomorrow as to whether or not she will be able to return on Sunday. At this point, I anticipate significant flooding and no power. But we'll see. All is ok at this time and we continue to monitor things. There will be problems in Lafayette, but nothing catastrophic I hope. Fri. 7:30 pm Winds are picking up here and so far we have about 2″ of rain in the gauge. But with so much rain falling sideways, I would expect actual totals are higher and not making it into the gauge. Our morning met just came back after getting some sleep. I am turning things over to Ben and Jeremy for the next few hours. I am going to try to take a quick nap so I can be back before midnight and carry the storm through landfall and beyond. You probably won't see an update from me until late night. I just flipped over to see one play of the football game. Touchdown Austin Flynn. Great timing. Gave me a much needed smile and flip in my stomach. Go State! Fri. 9:00 pm I'm back at it. Couldn't sleep anyway. Landfall has been moved up to around 12 -1 AM. That will bring the storm onshore at high tide almost exactly. Bad news for the coastal flooding. We've pulled all reporters back into the station for the worst of the storm until it is safe to have people back out on the roads. Widespread power outages are occurring, but we still have power here. The generators are running in case so we have no interruptions. COMMENTS: 1. the wife Says: September 23rd, 2005 at 10:01 pm e Oh man, no sleep? That's not good! I'm getting into bed and going to turn on the TV to see the latest. Erin and I went out for something to eat, I realized it's the first real meal I've had in two days, just not much of an appetite. I meant to ask you before, do you have reporters and photogs from the other Young stations or what other kind of personnel? And are they all there now? Just wondered if you knew anyone. Keep me posted. I'll have my cell by me all night. Fri. 11:40 pm I am fine but extremely busy. We are feeling the worst this storm has for us beginning now and lasting for the next few hours. Power is out for many. Our house is seeing extreme winds right now. Sat. 12:35 am I just had a chance to step aside from coverage for a couple minutes to walk outside. It's freakin' crazy out there, but I think Lafayette will be fine once all is said and done. We are experiencing the worst of the storm at this stage and I was able to comfortably stand outside, so we'll be fine here at the station. Cameron and Lake Charles will experience tornado strength winds for about the next 30-90 minutes. They will be nearly gone by sunrise if not from the wind, from flooding. I just found out ISU struggled, but won. Nice work guys. They have a hard time without me. Darci, I got your text message. We're fine. COMMENTS: 1. Pete H Says: September 24th, 2005 at 1:35 am e So glad to hear you will be fine!! Take care and looking forward to talk to you when things calm down. By the way, don't plan to go to any more major sporting events, look what happens!! Pete Sat. 2:25 am Eye is making landfall just west of Cameron and east of Sabine Pass. We are still ok here. Sat. 3:05 am We just got the official statement from the National Hurricane Center that the storm made landfall at 2:30 AM just east of Sabine Pass and just west of Cameron in extreme SW Louisiana. We just recorded a 70 mph gust at the station. A few trees are down in the parking lot, but the building is doing fine. I just walked outside and the winds here are still manageable. We are in no danger inside the building at this time. Adrenaline is keeping me wide awake so I am doing well. I'm sure I'll crash hard later this morning. Sat. 5:10 am Still going strong… things are getting slowly better in Lafayette. I tried to call the house to see if the answering machine would pick up, but no dice. So that means our power is probably out. But that's not a big concern just yet. I have the generator if it is out for a prolonged period. I'll worry about that later. The fridge will be fine as long as we don't open it for a day or two. I'm hoping to take a nap here in a bit if possible, but it will probably be a couple hours yet. Sat. 6:45 am We just debriefed our army of reporters. Holy crap do we have a crew! Three crews from Nashville with a sat truck… 3 of our crews as others sleep… one crew from Richmond, VA and another from Lansing, MI. We are slowly getting crews out the door as the worst of the winds pass. Tornadoes and heavy rains will be a threat for much of the rest of the day. I am going to try to go lay down as we've handed things over to Jeremy our morning meteorologist. He is going to handle coverage through 1 pm. I sent Ben home as he just lives a couple blocks away. He is going to sleep through the day and handle the overnight shift from 7 pm to 3 AM. I am going to sleep for a while and cover the afternoon/evening from 1 pm to 7 pm. Then we will get into a rotation of Jeremy handling mornings, I will handle afternoons and evening and Ben overnights. We'll need to have the weather office staffed around the clock at least through the weekend and possibly into Monday and Tuesday because of the flooding concerns. Hopefully it will be a bit before you hear from me. I just called the house again to see if the answering machine would pick up…no luck. I'll call my neighbor later and see how the house fared. COMMENTS: 1. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 7:35 am e Ryan, maybe e-mail Jeremy Latiolais? I know we probably don't have power, but just in case we do, or in case he has his generator going already. You never know, he might be checking online if he can. Just a thought, I'll also try to call him around 9:00 sometime while you are hopefully sleeping. Thanks for keeping me updated throughout the night! 2. TSWilson Says: September 24th, 2005 at 12:35 pm e It is about 12:35 Central and I'm in Boston but watching MSNBC. They just had a live report from Lafayette and said the river was flowing backwards. Looks like the wind is still blowing hard! So glad your home is OK. Ryan take care of yourself. 3. Ryan Says: September 24th, 2005 at 1:29 pm e The Vermilion River is flowing northward. As the storm surge forces up the rivers and streams here, that is a common occurrence. At this time, the Vermilion (which is the main river in town… I live nowhere close to it) is about 3′ out of it's banks and rising. No water anywhere close to our house according to my neighbor. we do have flood insurance if you're wondering. Sat. 8:30 am: FROM THE WIFE - It's 8:30 and I just got off the phone with our neighbor Jeremy Latiolais (pronounced latch-a- lay). He said we lost power about 8:30 last night and that it was a pretty bad storm. He and his wife and two little girls, Lauren, 6, and Abby, 4, stayed there. He said the girls slept through everything last night! As they say here, sha babies! They have a generator so he's had the tv on and been able to watch Ryan. He said they lost probably about 50 shingles from their house. He was nice enough to walk outside and get a good look from the front and side of our house and said we looked good. The wind was still ripping through there pretty strong, so I'm really hoping that tree in our back yard can withstand the rest of the wind. Sounds like we might have lost a hibiscus in the front of the house, but I'd welcome that if it's all we have to deal with. Ryan, Jeremy was going to call and check in with you, but he figured since he hadn't seen you in a while you were sleeping. If you can get through, I'm sure he'd be happy to hear from you when you get up. He said Darlene's (our neighbor to the east) has some water in her driveway like usual. He also said there weren't as many tree limbs down in the neighborhood as when Lily hit. So everyone out there, keep praying and hoping that tree in the back holds up! Sat. 12:40 pm: I am back at it. I got about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Flooding is becoming a major concern across much of Louisiana. At this time, drier air from across Texas is feeding into the SW side of the storm which is providing a break in the rain. However, once winds on the back of the storm switch to feed more moisture off the Gulf, it should fill in. I tried to call Jeremy, but got no answer. He's probably busy right now. Monica and I decided she will stay in Dallas until at least Monday. I just talked to our neighbor Jeremy. He has some shingles off, but that's about it. He said that on Canais Road just west of our house there are 6 power poles down on the road and many of the others are leaning, so it may be a time before we have power again. He did say we are close to transmission lines, so we should be brought up in a reasonable period of time. I'm back on the air until at least 6:00. We'll go from there. The winds are dying down. We had a peak wind at the station of 85 mph. By the way, we just did a live phone interview with mayor "Jimbo" Pettijean. I don't know what town it was, but that is a sweet ass Cajun name. Sat. 2:00 pm For people who know the area or who have been here to visit… the Delcambre shrimp docks are completely under water. Most of Delcambre and Erath are completely flooded and now New Iberia is flooding as winds have shifted to the south and forcing the storm surge to the north and north east side of Vermilion Bay. Earlier in the night and morning the wind had more of an easterly direction which forced the water to the west side of the bay. Avery Island (where Tabasco is made) is dealing with flooding. The toll booth onto the island is completely under water. The whole island is a salt mound, so it is not totally under water. We tried to get reporters to Cameron with no luck. Cheryl and Elwood (our most daredevil crew) couldn't find a way in due to debris and flood waters over most roads. Right now, the worst pictures are coming from Lake Charles. They are dealing with catastrophic damage there from wind and flooding. Cameron will likely be worse, but we can't get there yet. In Lafayette, we're realizing more damage than earlier anticipated. Now that the ground is saturated, many trees have given way at the roots. My co-anchor Blue Rolfes has a tree in her yard that fell partly on her house and partly on her neighbor's. However, they don't think they have structural damage. Waters still rising for most of the area, so it will be a long haul through the weekend. Are they still playing football today? Our cable is out here. Let me know how Iowa does. Sat. 4:50 pm WATCH NBC NIGHTLY NEWS AT 5:30! Brian Williams is anchoring the show from the Hilton in Lafayette. Apparently they are doing a story about how everyone they talk to in town is watching us. They are fascinated that we had information in French for our viewers. Maybe Garrett and Monica can tape it for me. Monica says we are being streamed on the web at www.kbon.com too. Cable is out and our over the air signal is much stronger than our competition's. We have about 4x the reporting staff on hand too. We're getting reports that about 700,000 people in the state are without power. Monica, I haven't had time to call Jeremy again, but I am certain that we are doing fine in this area as the rains have been manageable in Lafayette. We just got some of our first pictures out of Cameron Parish. If you only knew our reporter Cheryl Fatzer. A direct quote from her piece… "All I can say is mobile home in a ditch and water everywhere." It was a classic. We're still rocking and plan to stay on wall to wall all night and into tomorrow. Right now it looks like the first thing that may knock us out of our coverage is the NFL. But the fight is on to stay on the air. COMMENTS: 1. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 4:58 pm e Thank you for posting this, I was getting worried of why we hadn't heard from you for awhile. I know, you are plenty busy, but I just need some sort of contact! When I talked to Jody Dupont in Breaux Bridge around noon, they had power on and off and still had water. Do you guys have water, do you think we have water at home? Also, do you have any information about Bayou Teche in Breaux Bridge? Jody, Eric and the girls don't live to far off the Bayou. She said water was rising, but they were still ok. Ryan, please give Fatzer my regards and tell her to continue kicking ass! 2. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 4:59 pm e Hey, thanks for the shout out about those of us listening on the radio! Sat. 5:05 pm To respond to Monica's questions… LUS says the water in Lafayette has not been compromised. They had generator power at the treatment plant and now are back on the grid so water is fine at our house. I haven't updated the blog much because I am on staff by myself right now so I don't have much time to do much else except gather info and cover my on air time. We're covering a presser now so I can type. I plan to go home and check on things after Ben comes in to relieve me around 7. I hope to shower too. I am gross. I keep brushing my teeth because it makes me feel a little cleaner. CJ (my news director) is killing himself. He's slept for 1 hour from 5-6 AM and that is it. I think he is updating his blog from time to time. You can read it at this link. Let me know how the NBC News looks! Any other college football shockers I need to know about Neff? 1. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 5:19 pm e Ryan, have you heard if you'll be able to get home ok with all clear roads? Are you planning to sleep there for awhile? Or do you have to go right back in? 2. Ryan Says: September 24th, 2005 at 5:23 pm e I just talked to Joey Durel and he said that he think Johnston is clear now because emergency crews are using it to get to Abbeville. We'll see how Borque Road is. If I can't get there I'll come back. I plan to sleep at the station where there is a/c. Also, you'll never guess who is bringing me dinner! I just got this e-mail. "hello ryan.. you are doing an outstanding job. we would like to bring spaghetti for dinner. please email us back. jolyn barras… from storment's office." 3. Ryan Says: September 24th, 2005 at 5:33 pm e Now that's a shout out! 4. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 5:44 pm e Oh, Miss Jolyn! Please tell her I said hello! How sweet of her! Maybe if you can't get home, you could just go to Ben's and take a shower. 5. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 5:44 pm e Oh crap, what did I miss as a shout out? I was watching the NBC Nightly News in the other room! Damn it! Sat. 5:45 pm Were you listening online? I just gave Monica a shout out on the web. I just called my 90 year old neighbor Mr. EJ and he stayed the storm out in his home. He has no electricity and he is worried about his food in the fridge and freezer, but otherwise he said he is fine. I called him to tell him that I could bring him something if I can make it home by 7:00. He said he missed his coffee today, so if I make any morning runs, he said to bring him coffee. I offered him my generator, but he said he didn't need it. I'll have Jeremy check on him periodically because he said that his daughter is stuck in Houston because they can't get gas to drive back here. Miss Louise is fine at her house and still has power and water with no flooding near Kaplan. I may try to see if I can drive EJ to her house later. George was just on live from Delcambre. The whole town is underwater and people are being rescued off of roofs. It's unbelievable. That's the latest. COMMENTS: 1. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 6:07 pm e I didn't get to hear my shout out! Tell me about it! The Nightly News is doing an extended version, but Dallas cut out to go to their own local news. The part I got to see didn't have any mentions about KLFY's coverage. I can't believe Mr. E.J. is home! Did he say who boarded up his house? So we still don't have power in our sub-division? I'd offer to call LUS, but I'm sure hoping Jeremy or someone else there has called. That examples of Delcambre is exactly what I'm talking about with the national news. There is nothing coming from Lafayette, Vermillion Parish, etc. where seems to be getting the brunt now. 2. Ryan Says: September 24th, 2005 at 6:14 pm e I just told people that it wasn't raining in Dallas where my wife was listening on the computer. I called EJ back and offered to take him to Louise's but he said she had a house full of evacuated relatives. So he is happy to stay home. But he asked if I could pick him up some batteries. I'm also going to give him our TV/radio combo so he can watch the coverage of things. We aren't LUS, we're SLEMCO for power. They know our area is out. We just lost phone service to the station. So my cell is all I have and it is spotty. 3. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 6:19 pm e I just heard Val say about your phones. Do you have a charger with you for your phone? Take that one lantern type light we have over to Mr. E.J. too if he would use it and we have some batteries at home if that's the type he can use. Also, does he need some of that water we have or any other food? There's some canned stuff you could take him, some breakfast bars, a fresh loaf of bread, jelly, PB and tapioca. See if he wants any of that. 4. Ryan Says: September 24th, 2005 at 6:22 pm e He said he is good for food and water. I'll try to offer it to him though. 5. Ryan Says: September 24th, 2005 at 6:22 pm e Monica, check out CJ's blog at www.upforanything.com He has an example of our new mapping software. 6. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 6:29 pm e I just talked to Jeremy. He is on his way to New Iberia, had a call to the Holiday Inn there. Apparently something with a sewage back up and the power there he had to go fix. He said he and Jen and the girls are going to go over to his building tonight and stay in the camper because they have power in that area. That way they can have AC. He said you won't have any problems getting home, Borque is all clear. When I was talking to him, Darlene called through, but he didn't pick it up. He wondered if maybe she was calling to tell him power was back. Sounds like our tree is still standing! 7. TSWilson Says: September 24th, 2005 at 6:32 pm e Listening to you on the computer. Hope you get some sleep soon! Sat. 8:45 pm I was able to get out of here and go home at around 7:00. First of all, the city is like a ghost town. However, the two businesses that I saw open on the way home were packed… Walgreens and one of the daiquiri bars! There's a lot of superficial tree damage in town, but all in all it looks as though Lafayette will be fine. I made it home and we have some shingles in the yard, but I'm not sure they are mine. I couldn't see any shingles off of our roof, but it was dark. I know that the neighbor lost some, so they could be his. We have some limbs down in the yard, but the big tree is standing. Some of our landscaping trees in the front of the house are uprooted, but no big deal. The power came on about 15 minutes before I got home. So I had a hot shower, which was awesome! The fridge and freezer made it through fine without power so we are pretty much in the clear at the house. I checked on Mr. EJ. He was drinking coffee since his power had just come back on! I made some calls home to let everyone know I was ok. As for the football, thanks Ryan! I didn't need any particular scores, but I just wanted to feel like I was in touch with it. Looks like our genius plans are destined for failure. Oh well. I'm starting to get the ball rolling on our relief efforts so we can get that up and running on Monday instead of waiting to the last minute. Katrina was a great opportunity for us to learn the process and now this station is operating like a fine oiled machine on this storm. I am back at work for a couple hours, but will not stay overnight. We're planning to stay on wall to wall, but the threatening weather is subsiding so it is rapidly turning into a sustained news coverage event rather than a weather coverage event. All for now. I'll try to write before I go to bed, but I was having trouble accessing the site from home for some unknown reason. COMMENTS: 1. the wife Says: September 24th, 2005 at 9:53 pm e Hey you! Just got back to Garrett and Erin's. Did you get some spaghetti when you got back to the station? Josh Chamlin (sp?) called to check on us and see how we are doing. They took off on Thursday early evening and went to Florida to stay with his parents. He just wanted to check in on us and said again they enjoyed dinner with us a couple of weeks ago and so once things settle down a bit again we'll have to try and get together. Gabrielle got on the phone too, told me he got a Mr. Incredible costume today! Anyway, give me a call on your way home. Hope to talk to you then! Sat. 11:00 pm I'm heading home. My shift is from 11 am to 7 pm for tomorrow and then we'll kick off our relief efforts Monday morning at 8 AM. Nothing much else to report. The weather event is pretty much over and waters subsiding slowly along the coast. Good night! Sun. 1:00 pm Sorry it has been so long since the last update. Our DSL is sporadic at home, so I had to wait until I came back to work to write. Things are crazy here at the station. We finally stopped coverage at kickoff of the football game at 12:00 with plans to go back on later on. The competition hung it up last night at 10:30 and have not been back on since as they have no morning show on weekends. We are squeezing back the football game periodically for short updates of critical info. As for the weather, we still had gusts up to 35 mph overnight. It's breezy now, but the gusts are in the 10-15 mph range at worst. We're watching for a few thunderstorms to pop in the next few hours. It's getting hot and humid with the south-southwest winds today. A few lines of storms will probably come together in the next few hours, but it shouldn't compound problems too much. The surge waters a receding. There is still water up to the northern parish border in Cameron Parish and only people in helicopters and boats have been able to get into there. Our reporters are surrounding it and waiting for opportunities to get pictures of the area. We think one of our reporters may be going up in a coast guard helicopter later today. Water is slowly receding in Vermilion Parish too. The good thing is that the waters aren't standing and people will be able to start cleaning immediately instead of letting it set for mold etc. as happened in New Orleans with Katrina. I forgot to write that I lost this big chunk of plastic off of my hood last night. It was a mainly decorative piece at the top of the hood near the windshield. Frankly I didn't care when it happened and didn't even stop to pick it up. Now that I see it in daylight, I can see that it really looks like crap, but oh well. I was awaken this morning at about 9:30 (my alarm was set for 9:45 so it was fine) by my neighbor Jeremy calling. He was making breakfast for the girls and had eggs, bacon, biscuits and orange juice for me. He and his daughter Lauren brought it over to me. We owe them a big dinner and a lot of beer. I think I might go over and watch some football with him tonight when I get off. I don't know if the water in the ground is chasing them up or what, but there are ants everywhere… at home and at work. Don't worry Monica, they aren't in the house. But I see them all around in huge groups outside. The last thing I need is more ant bites so I am steering clear. The cable is still out and I am at work so the only station I can see is ours. I have the internet though, so I am watching the game tracker of the Vikings game. Looks like my boys finally woke up so I can see that they are up 17-0 in the 1st quarter! I've been in touch with Monica and schools are beginning to cancel although I haven't heard anything about Breaux Bridge. I do know that power is still out at the hospital there, so I would anticipate no school for Monica tomorrow which is good since she will be on the road anyway. A few gas stations have received deliveries today. There are lines, but slowly it looks like we'll have those resources back. A lot of people who left the area for the storm are returning today, so hopefully Monica is missing the worst of the traffic. I'm sure it will be slow going though coming home, but maybe not as bad as today. We'll see. I am organizing the relief efforts this afternoon. We are going to do roughly the same thing we did last time in that we'll set up shop at the busiest corner in town and accept food and monetary donations. We are not messing with clothing this time because it is too difficult to manage. This time we are going to be there from 8 AM to 8 PM. My sole job this week will be to manage the relief effort. The other two meteorologists will handle the weather from the studio. We are working on setting up a foundation of sorts through the television station that people can give monies to directly for dispersal to local agencies. We did the Red Cross last time, but those monies have to be filtered through the national organization. What we plan to do is allow people the choice to give to the TV-10 relief fund or the red cross. Then the monies from our local foundation will be distributed directly to local agencies like United Way, Goodwill, FoodNet, Salvation Army and other churches and organizations that are offering direct relief to those who are affected instead of waiting for the national agency response. All for now… skol Vikes! Sun. 4:00 pm Vikes win big…33-16. My fantasy team has scored a league record 127 points and I still have players to go… Obviously by my lead being football, things are getting better here. I am going to stay for another hour or so and get a forecast together for tonight. We're doing an extended 10 pm newscast. I found out through the grapevine that the competition is not calling in their regular staff, so I am going to cover the 10:00 just to stick it to them. Is that bad? It's no fun to be home anyway because I'm the only one there and we have board on the windows. Things are set for our relief efforts. We're doing food and money in the same place we did last time. I will be watching closely for fire ants this time! Without taking clothing and supplies, it will be a much easier effort to manage. That's all for now. I hope to go home around 5:00 and watch some football. Sun. 7:35 pm I am home from work for a bit and got a chance to get outside and take down the boards from the front and sides of the house. That will at least allow some light in when Monica and Buster get home tomorrow. The boards on the back of the house will have to wait as they are a little more involved. On the front and sides of the house, all of the windows are set into brick walls so we can use clips to set the boards in. In the back of the house, I brace them into the ground with 2×4's so I don't have to run screws into the window casings. It worked well, but it takes a little more time to take down and since I have to go back to work tonight I don't want to get that sweaty. Now I'm trying to take in a little football before I head back to work. Obviously, our internet is working ok again. We're doing a 1 hour newscast at 10. I'll head back in around 9:00 as I have most everything ready to go. Gas stations have lines, but as they open we are getting more fuel in town. I am hopeful that Monica can get back to town tomorrow without problems. I don't know what the traffic will be like coming in on I-49 but at least she'll be driving during the day this time. I'm looking forward to having her and Buster home. It's not home here without them. Especially with boards on the windows. It seems foreign when you walk into the house. I'm looking forward to things feeling a little more normal in the next few days. I am going to have long days in the sun this week, but cooler air is on the way. Since we're only going 8-8 on our relief drop site this time, I'll at least have evenings with Monica this week. That will be nice. 1. the wife Says: September 25th, 2005 at 8:56 pm e I've had great hospitality in Dallas thanks to Garrett and Erin. But, I am ready to be home and to see you too! I'm ready to break Buster out of jail and I am very sure he is ready to be in his home! I think there will be three of us in bed tomorrow night! Mon. 12:45 am I just got home about 10 minutes ago. I should be in bed as I have another long day tomorrow, but I am unwinding with a last minute blog and a small glass of brandy on the rocks. Man, has there ever been a drink this good… The news didn't go on until almost 11:00 because football ran over on CBS. Plus we did a 1 hour extended newscast. After that I had to run around the station to gather a couple things for the relief drive like money bags to put cash in for the bank, buckets for donations, TV 10 banners, etc. I am hopeful that the response to our drive will still be a good one. I am sure it won't be the same as Katrina for many reasons. #1… many people here are directly affected. They won't have a lot of money to give. #2… For many people, myself included, funds were stretched to try to give a meaningful amount of money during Katrina. This is less than a month passed and there isn't as much money to go around. Certainly this storm doesn't have the nation's attention like Katrina because the major metro areas weren't as affected. That's understandable, but there won't be the push that we saw earlier from the rest of the world. We have to take care of our own though and I hope that people will do what they can here. I stopped at a gas station that had it's lights turned on as I drove home. The station was closed and I was the only car there, but I gave the credit card a swipe just to see if they still had gas. Sure enough I filled my car for $2.41 a gallon. So I didn't have to wait and the prices have actually gone down a few cents since before the storm. Who would have thought? Now I am going to watch about 10 minutes of the ISU/Army game because that's all my Tivo got before either the power went out or the satellite had rain fade. Either way, it stopped recording about 10 minutes into the game. I think Monica has a tape for me, so hopefully I'll be able to watch it before the Nebraska game next weekend. Tue. 8:20 pm Sorry no updates… our power went out yesterday. We slept through an 85 degree night and it returned today at around 1 pm. At least Monica got a little of the hurricane experience! The house is cool again. I've spent 24 of the last 36 hours in a parking lot collecting donations and food. I think tomorrow will be our last day of that and then I'm back to the weather. there's lots of stories to tell, but I have no energy tonight. Maybe this weekend we'll catch up.