Nate too long ignored, now threatens to become hurricane

As we head into this busy weekend, I am bugging out for New Orleans. I’ll miss seeing you at the Exchange Club Pancake Breakfast Saturday, but club members have assured me there will be plenty of peanut butter on hand for the pancakes. Enjoy.
And the Showoff on the Square? I’ll miss seeing you there also. Unlike New Orleans, where the weekend is also festival-filled, and the Mississippi Coast, where they will be hosting the Cruisin’ on the Coast, Batesville will not be facing Nate on Saturday.
Nate snuck up on us from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as a tropical storm and now is threatening to become a category one hurricane with its sights set on the coasts of southeast Louisiana and Mississippi by Saturday. New Orleans weather forecasters may be partly to blame. They tend to play down threatening weather whenever outdoor festivals or Mardi Gras parades are scheduled. They just hate to have to admit there’s a possibility that rain and wind could curtail the fun.
But by noon Thursday they have had to face the inevitable. Tropical Storm Nate will have crossed the warm Gulf waters which will likely strengthen it into a hurricane.
Now attention in New Orleans has shifted to the city’s pumping system which performed so dismally during heavy rains that swept through the city August 5. Subsequently, heads at the Sewer and Water Board rolled, emergency generators and pumps have been brought in, candidates for city mayor and council posts are trying to outdo each other with their claims about how each can solve the city’s drainage and water problems, ad nauseam.
Mobs of shoppers will have descended on grocery stores in New Orleans — something like grocery stores in Batesville when snow and ice is forecast. The difference is that in New Orleans grocery stores, it’s the shelves containing liquor and chips that are first left bare. In Batesville, it’s the milk coolers and bread shelves.
On Thursday night, I will load up with water, batteries, snacks, a little canned food, maybe a bag of charcoal, a couple of bottles of wine — I’m making my list as I write this — and of course, enough feed for the damncats to hold out until next summer.