Holy crap!

[gwynhefar]

Ok, so we had a thunderstorm last night. I remember listening to the rain and seeing the flashes of lightning as I was falling asleep. It was rather pleasant. Woke up this morning, and everything was wet, and a little drizzly, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. So I headed into work, and almost immediately hit standstill traffic. I figured there must be an accident or something and traffic would thin out once it was cleared. Instead, it took me an hour and a half to drive 1.5 miles from the end of my street to the highway ramp. I never did see specifically what caused *that* backup, but considering what I found on campus, I can guess. The highway wasn't bad until I hit the road into campus, where I spent another 20 mins in traffic because a streetlight was out.

The campus itself was practically a disaster area. Broken tree limbs were everywhere and some of the smaller ornamental trees were down completely. It reminded me of what the campus looked like after Katrina. Apparently, what was just a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm on my side of the city was actually a mega-storm in other areas. A check to the downtown Baton Rouge wind archive shows that sustained winds peaked at 35mph last night, with gusts of almost 70mph. That's consistent with a low-level tropical storm and the gusts almost made hurricane strength.

When I finally got to work there's an email from the University confirming that classes *would* be held today, despite the severe weather damage to campus, but asked professors to be lenient with students who missed class or came in late due to wide-spread flooding and severe traffic issues.

It's pretty horrifying. An apartment complex about halfway between downtown and my place had its roof ripped off, and large numbers of people are out of power. In Mississippi, apparently at least one person was killed by the storm. I'm glad it didn't hit as hard where I am, but I'm still not ready for this to start up yet. Hurricane season isn't until June, dammit!

Comments

Re: tempest

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

Indeed. If student, faculty, and staff safety were their main priority they would be closed today - the traffic is insane out there. I was almost hit twice on the way in.

Not to mention the fact that they remained open on the snow day, which I still hold to be bordering on criminally negligent.

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

Wow—sounds like you had a small tornado.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

That's very likely. I haven't heard it confirmed yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of small ones spawned last night. Would explain how certain areas of the city are very hard hit while others, like where I live, were barely touched.