Levees will hold..

I think they will

In my mind "complete" is complete enough to withstand any of God's wrath....overbuilt

They'll probably hold anything less at this point

when the levees break..led zep song

Even though there's no visible eye, there is still a center of circulation (CoC)
The shear in the NE quadrant, is blowing clouds off and they can cover any eye

Eyes are hard to see on visible images
Many times you need an infrared or shortwave to cut the cloud tops to see it
See below



While it's not the perfect eye you see in pictures, there is a small one
Gustav is strong, but just a little disorganized
He looks better now than he did earlier today

i heard that only 20% of the new levees are done

I heard that as well, but I tend to wonder how "done is done"
Is that overbuilt to withstand the biggest and baddest God has to offer?

Some sort of levee is there now, obviously
So, how much can it hold is the question

I tend to think, as with some Army Corp things, they under estimate the old and over build the new

CYA measure

The fact that Gustav didn't turn into a Cat. 5 right after passing Cuba is hugely significant. Even though Katrina had only hit our area with Cat. 3 wind speeds, the fact that it pushed the storm surge of a Cat. 5 throughout its path through the Gulf is what screwed us. With this one only pushing Cat. 3 along its path toward us, it would have to hit at exactly the right spot to really screw us like Katrina did - and as of now it looks like they are edging the forecast just west enough to keep us away from that scenario.
Took the family to the Barber museum today - even my wife liked it. Isn't evacuation great? Another 12-15 hours and I should know if I still have a house and a dental practice to return to.

Do they have a good estimate on landfall time yet and what will the tide be at that time?

Tomorrow morning, about 7am

"landfall" is only when the center makes land, and there's hours of storms in front of it

I was just wondering if the height of the surge was expected at high or low tide or somewhere in between. I rode Hugo out years back and I remember storm surge + high tide = bad.

That's what I was getting at. If they expect landfall at 7:00am they should also know roughly whether the surge will happen during a high a low tide. Low tide surge would be best for levees.

Gustav is wrapping up tighter and pressure is dropping
It's getting stronger

Doesn't look like the difference between low and high tide is all that significant there. Still, every little bit could be the difference.

even God tried to warn people about living in a flood zone
he sent the indians and told the white man..big flood..no tee pee here
at least HaNNA is all busted up..
last year they said alot of hurricanes would hit the gulf..nothing really happened..and this year they said there would be alot of hurricanes..they are right this year!

Why does man always think he can out engineer Mother Nature? All it takes is longer duration or just a bit more force and poof, flood zone. I hope this doesn't do what Katrina did.

New Orleans is a specific problem, but the Houma/Morgan City area may wind up being an even bigger one. I've spent a lot of time down there on natural gas work, and it's incredibly low. Lots of times we'd go to locations by boat because the roads were so serpentine to stay on high ground that you'd drive 50 miles to go 5 miles as the crow flies. It was easier to just launch a boat and go straight there. It's basically a brackish swamp area. And, again, it is a tremendously important area to the country as far as energy goes.

One of the risks is that some of the real large pipelines that bring gas into processing areas in Morgan City may rupture. They're buried in sand under the water, but lots of water moving around sometimes expose them and, if water channels underneath and pulls enough sand out, their own weight can buckle them. If that happens, they can be out of service for a week or two at least while they're inspected and tested, and returned to service. Of course, if the storm is really bad, a lot of the offshore platforms can be damaged, too.

Personally - I never tire of the endless shitstorm of "what if's" these natural disasters tend to bring on.

I think it's wildly amusing.

The Superdome roof will stay intact this time. I guarantee it.