Hurricane Gustav Has Left The State

Well, Hurricane Gustav has finally decided to leave Louisiana and Arkansas alone and move on to Kansas City and Chicago today.

The rains started in Hot Springs, Arkansas just after midnight on Monday morning and didn't stop until about 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night. We had wind gusts up to 35 m.p.h. We lost electricity at my house at 2:45 a.m. on Wednesday and got it back on around noon on Wednesday. Wedesday evening, the news said that 86,000 Arkansans were without electricity. Thursday evening, Hot Springs still had 19,000 without electricity; Little Rock had 14,000. Most of our Entergy electric crews were sent to Louisiana before Gustav hit Arkansas. Entergy was able to re-direct some crews from Missouri as they were passing through on their way to Louisiana. Hot Springs got almost nine inches of rain. We have small tree limbs from our pecan tree and oak trees all over our yard from the winds. Quite a few roads were closed because of flash flooding from the rains.

With all of the electricity off and the flooding that we got and winds, we were still blessed to have not gotten any worse damage than we did from Hurricane Gustav. You don't usually think of a hurricane being that big or that powerful once it has gone inland for hundreds and hundreds of miles but Gustav was huge.

I heard that in addition to the hurricane that Louisiana got over a dozen tornadoes over the past few days. I don't think Arkansas had any tornadoes. It is hard to keep up with weather reports when you don't have electricity. We did have a radio on our local station during the day.

The weather this entire year has been strange for Hot Springs---more rain and cooler than usual for Arkansas. This time last year, we were in a 4 or 5 year drought. We aren't now. We have gotten plenty of rain this year, before this week and Hurricane Gustav. I hope that Gustav is gentler on Kansas City and Chicago than it was on Arkansas and Louisiana.

Can you imagine what the world was like before The Weather Channel?
Patricia