*** HURRICANE ISAAC THREAD ***

[deathgodusmc]

Yeah, that stupid tree-hugging mother fucker is totally wrong.

But back to something important - me. I found an interesting mapping app on wunderground:

WunderMap® | Interactive Weather Map and Radar | Weather Underground

... which has a Road Trip Planner that lets me tell it where I'm going, suggests a route, and adds forecast info. The hope (ie: my hope) is that it makes reasonable account of disaster-level weather events and routes travelers appropriately. However, I think it just picks the same route any other mapping software would pick and then adds local weather bits. So, right now, it tells me to drive through the eye of the storm and warns me to expect thunder storms.

I can't tell if this is a sad joke or reasonable advice. Someone here mentioned they live in Baton Rouge. If someone wanted you to go to Mobile tomorrow, would you take I-12 to I-10 and use your wipers, or would you tell that someone to get bent, stay at home, and hope the power stayed on?

Cheers,


AetheLove

Depends on who that someone is. I know plenty of people i would tell to head to the beach for the good view of a hurricane coming ashore.

[kibner]

Welp, woke up at 6am and went outside to check the water level. Looks like it rose 4+ feet while I slept. Now the water covers my car's exhaust and is a couple inches over the bottom of the door. Don't want to risk starting it up.

The water has only gone up a couple more inches in the time since then and it stopped raining before dark last night, so I hope it stabalizes or starts going down soon.

Need to call my insurance agent to find where they want me to bring my car to get it inspected and so I can put in a claim. Won't really be able to do that until the water level receeds a bit, though.

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk 2

[WileECyte]

Here ya go Ae

Louisiana - Low Bandwidth Web - Road Reports

LA DOT road closures. Looks like I-12 is open. The Pontchartrain Causeway is closed.

[kibner]

Yup, I bet my car is going to be listed as totaled once I can get it towed somewhere to get an estimate. The water has risen a bit higher and it rained a little bit more.

:sigh:

Time to start looking around for certified pre-owned once I can even leave my house again.

On the bright side, my house is 10 feet above the ground, so I don't have to worry about it flooding.

[Adretheon]

Looks like it's here finally, getting the edges of the storm, powers out and its gunna be raining all night till tomo at 4pm
Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

[Bunni]

I'm in Houston, I have to drive to Charlotte, NC. If anyone has highway reports on I-10 or I-20, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Cheers,


AetheLove

im in nc clt, ya rain yesterday was baaadddd, bad enough that even i pulled over while driving back from univ, but then again i surrounded by semi,s tossing up a lotta water too so... but now its been some sunny and some overcast

[AetheLove]

So I'm at a friend's place a couple miles NW of Charlotte.

To everyone who replied to me in this thread: thanks.

I saw some crazy shit. I watched some guy drive straight into standing water 4-feet deep at 65 mph. I want to know what people down there call those few stretches of I-10 near Baton Rouge that are elevated above the swamp for miles. I found out that Alabama has pretty nice rest areas on their interstates.

Other stuff too. But for now, and again, thanks.

Cheers,


AetheLove

[Langrad]

How did his car do after hitting that water?

[AetheLove]

How did his car do after hitting that water?

Was on I-59, in Mississippi, heading north towards Hattiesburg. It was afternoon.

The highway along that stretch undulates up and down a bit with the hills (or, rather, the small variations in elevation that pass for hills in Mississippi).

At that point, the hurricane had passed. The weather was a wide scattering of clear skies and thunderstorms - typical aftermath of a large storm system. All that afternoon and evening, and up into Alabama, I kept getting tornado warnings on the radio. The NWS was tracking many angry hurricane spin-offs.

There were trees down everywhere, and I passed a few caravans of road crews doing cleanup and utility work (electric).

I was doing 70. At this point it was clear more often than it was raining, but when there was rain it was torrents. Many of the streams I crossed were swollen to the point of being as high as the bridges that crossed them. I frequently saw standing water that was only a few inches below the road surface. The ditch between the north- and south-bound lanes was almost always full of standing water. I had to slow down on a number of occasions because water at that point was still crested over the road and there were a couple inches to drive through. You don't want to take a wide stretch of 3" water at-speed - hydroplaning is a bitch.

At one point the highway took a major dip and curved to the left at the bottom. Some highway engineer had a lot of fun designing the bank in the road at that point. It was steeply banked and on a nice day, at 75 or 80, that curve would have been fun - you'd get good compression in your suspension as you went through. It'd be even better leaned over on a motorcycle.

But because of the dip, and the addition of the bank, the left edge of the road wasn't much higher than the ditch between north and south. So there was standing water almost completely across the road. At the right side, between the shoulder and the guard-rail, I figured there'd be a couple inches of water on my left tires. On the left side of the left lane, I judged it ran about 5 feet deep at the lowest point.

At night, that would have been serious trouble, but it was broad daylight. I saw it from far off, hit my flashers, and was gently braking and moving right when I saw a car approaching me from behind. He moved left to pass. I knew he'd see the water. And he kept going. I knew he'd start to brake and move back right. But he just didn't. I have no idea at all how this idiot didn't see the FUCKING LAKE across his lane.

It made quite a splash.

Water is an enormous drag. More water on the left side of his car meant that his car was turned and dragged left as he plowed into the lake and rapidly lost speed. By the time his car's considerable momentum had carried him across the deepest part, he was sideways and off the left side of the road as he came shallow again. When his tires dug into the grass and mud under the water he was 90-degrees to the road, his hood was completely submerged, the water was just below his (open) window, and the ass-end of his car was halfway clear.

He looked to his left, out his open window, and stared at me with his mouth wide open as I went through the few inches of water on the right at about 10 mph.

I was going to pull over and stop, but the car behind me was already stopping, as were the four utility company trucks coming behind him. The insurance company will not lack for witnesses. I don't know what I could have done except to laugh in his face. He hadn't crashed and didn't seem hurt, and there was nothing I could do except get my own feet wet. There was a good chance that the car would have rolled and he would have been in the same position except upside down. In that case, I would have pulled over and (with the other Not Stupid driver who also pulled over) attempted to rescue his stupid ass from drowning.

Cheers,


AetheLove