I live in New Orleans. Tropical Storm Cindy hit Tuesday night and moved through the area very quickly, leaving a lot of wind damage ~ plenty of fallen and/or uprooted trees taking down power lines. 200,000 homes were without power for 24 hours, and half of that number (100,000) are still blacked out after 48 hours. That's the worst power outage in this area since Betsy in 1965, and the storm was not even a full-fledged hurricane.

Even though measurable sustained winds were "only" tropical-storm strength, there were many brief surges of hugely accellerated LOUD winds all night long. Tornado warnings had been issued, and maybe that's what we experienced. I've lived here for over 30 years, and have never seen so many fallen limbs and trees. In fact, I saw trees with the bark blown off some upper limbs, something I'd never seen before, and some of our plants had all their leaves blown off, again an unprecedented sight.

The next storm, Dennis, is much bigger and more powerful and is expected to make landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast Sunday night. It could happen here, or anywhere between the Texas-Louisiana border and Tallahassee FL. And it's still early in hurricane season!

Here's hoping we all survive until autumn!