watching gustav go ashore

I've been watching Gustav all day with the radar loop playing on main
monitor and trying to learn how to use vmware on the external monitor
but making little progress. It looks like New Orleans dodged a bullet
and the storm is going ashore just west of port fourchon. In the past
few hours it seems like the storm has moved more WNW than NW, and it
will follow Hurricane Andrew's path straight up highway 90 to Lafayette.

It might be pretty bad for Grand Isle. Fourchon doesn't have much in the
way of permanent structures that aren't built up 15' off the ground. Grand
Isle is also built up, but the storm might just eat away all the sand that makes up
the island, all the buildings could be standing in 4' of seawater after the storm.
There's not much else for the storm to hit until Morgan City, and by the time
it reaches lafayette it won't be much more than a strong tropical storm.
(he says with crossed fingers)

Of course on the morning of Katrina the storm was passed and the nytimes
said that New orleans had dodged a bullet, so I'll wait a few more hours before
I stop worrying. The local stations are showing the industrial canal with the
water to the top of the steel wall on top of the levee. I always wondered about
that as a kid, if those steel walls would do anything...appears so.

updated at 17:21 local time- John Snell on channel 8 just made a good point,
the water is about 1 foot below the top of the levee and some water is spraying
over the top, he suggests that once the category of this hurricane is firmly established
it will make a good calibration point for where the levee system is right now.
If the levees will be close to overtopping every 3 years, then the levees need
to be upgraded.
John Snell on channe