Discussing the Superdome in comments on a previous post, Todd observes, “I can not even begin to imagine what a hellhole that place will soon become.” Paul at Wizbang is imagining:

It’s a near certainty the electricity will go out about midday Monday. The Dome has backup power but it is only for lighting - no environmental controls - and the backup lighting is not full power. The Dome is about 20 stories high, but people will be scattered all thru it.

If the worst happens - and at this point it seems implausible that it won’t - the bottom 2 stories will fill with water. Dirty nasty foul water full of chemicals and raw sewerage. Further the bathroom facilities are only expected to function for the first day.

So in rough terms, 40,000+ people will be trapped in a building with no plumbing, little light and no air conditioning. The temps after the storm rolls thru will probably be in the low 90s. Considerably hotter in the building.

There is an elevated paved deck that surrounds the Dome. It will most probably be above water but inaccessible until probably daylight Tuesday. Once the people can get out to the deck, they will still be trapped there because the city will be underwater. They will be an island. We have no idea how long it will take to remove the water from the city. I’ve seen estimates from 10 weeks to 10 months… yes months.

There is a helipad (maybe 2) where choppers can land to drop potable water, food, tents and other supplies, but sanitation will be scarce to put it mildly. We really have no idea how long people will be there.

In theory they can be removed by boat… But how do you move 40,000+ people by boats that will be navigating their way thru a flooded city? And where do you put them?

And this is assuming the building has no structural problems.

These are all guesses obviously- we’ve never done it before. But it is pretty much commonly accepted these people will face days or probably weeks of hellish conditions few of us can imagine.

And to think that some reporters are going there voluntarily! Of course, maybe their news helicopters can airlift them out. (Speaking of which, isn’t that hypothetically an option for everyone? Granted, it would take a while, but…)

Hat tip: InstaPundit, who notes in another post that “Knoxville hotels are filling with refugees from the Gulf coast.”

Lisa Boone, who is riding out the storm north-northwest of Gulfport, MS, about 25 miles inland, checks in via e-mail:

We are watching the weather outside and the news on TV. The weather here is gusting to gale force at times with rain as feeder bands are going over.

I think we are shortly going to see tropical storm force winds and then hurricane force starting, I’m estimating, about daylight. …

So far we still have power; we have a generator that is supposed to kick on when we lose power. We certainly hope it works.

If we lose telephone, I will see if I can get a cell signal and connect to the internet with that.

I know too many people that have chosen to ride this out in the Bay St Louis area, which looks to me like where the eye will come through in Ms. We are worried for friends tonight, the kids are actually worried about their schools, and of course, all the people and places that we love in New Orleans.

I’ll check in later.

Here’s the latest look at Katrina, on satellite and radar:

Again, do not make the mistake of thinking that the southern side of Katrina is weak just because it looks ragged on radar. That’s typical of a hurricane that’s still a ways away from the coast. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I believe the radar can have a tough time penetrating the torrential rains on the near side of the eyewall even as the storm gets closer. Anyway, the satellite is much better gauge of the strength of the south side, which actually appears to be the strongest part of the storm.

Pressure is up from 904 mb to 908 mb. That’s good news, but keep it in perspective: Camille made landfall at 909 mb, and Andrew made landfall at 922 mb. This is still a monster, and there is no reason to believe it won’t continue to be a monster.

I want to thank everyone who’s been visiting my site all day, and everyone who’s linked to me. I’ve had more than 1,000 hits in each of the last two hours, and more than 11,000 total today. I’m sorry that such an awesome traffic spike is caused by such an awful situation, but I’m glad to be able to be a resource for people looking for information on this storm. I took a long nap this afternoon so that I could stay up all night and into the morning and afternoon watching this thing, and I plan to hurricane-blog basically nonstop. So please feel free to keep coming back for the very latest.

CNN still has a reporter in the French Quarter!!! WTF?!? Is he planning to have Scotty beam him up when the levees overflow?

UPDATE: Aaron Brown basically asked him the same question, and apparently his genius plan is to “hunker down” in the hotel. Did he miss the memo about how the entire area is going to be under-f***ing-water?!?

UPDATE 2: Now Aaron Brown is talking about “what these people are going through,” meaning the reporters. Oh, boo-hoo, feel sorry for the poor reporters, the ones who have deliberately put themselves in harm’s way, and who, if they survive the night, will soon go home to their families somewhere else, in a city that isn’t destroyed. They’re the real victims here. … Blech.

The 10:00 PM NHC discussion notes that there is some confusion about the strength of Katrina right now, and also that an eyewall replacement cycle may be starting:

There are conflicting signals regarding the intensity of Katrina. The NOAA aircraft near 00z reported a peak flight level wind of 155 kt…which would normally correspond to 140 kt at the surface. The pressure remains extremely low…904 mb at last report. On the other hand…the stepped-frequency microwave radiometer…or SFMR…suggested winds were in the 120-130 kt range…and limited dropsonde data also suggested something a little below 140 kt. There are enough questions about the performance of the SFMR at these speeds for ME to stick with the Standard 90 percent adjustment for now.

There have been some modest changes in the structure of Katrina over the last several hours. Recent microwave passes show that an outer eyewall is in the formative stages…and the latest IR images show a less well-defined eyewall with more evidence of outer banding. The NOAA hurricane hunters also reported an erosion of the eyewall in the southwest quadrant. These observations suggest that there could be some weakening of Katrina prior to landfall. All this is relative…however…and Katrina is still expected to be of at least category four intensity when it reaches the coast. An eyewall replacement at this point is not all good news…as they are generally accompanied by a broadening of the wind field…so that even as Katrina weakens there could be an increase in the area that experiences major hurricane force winds.

The discussion also notes that “while there is great significance for the city of New Orleans in the details of the track…track anomolies of 30-50 miles are still possible even 12-18 hours out.”

All the cool kids in the comment section seemed to be filling up their gas tanks, so I decided to join the crowd and gas up Becky’s car. I just got back a few minutes ago, and I’d have to say there were definitely more people than I’d expect at 10:00 PM on a Sunday night.

Will there be a New Orleans Times-Picayune tomorrow and on Tuesday? Do they have a back-up facility? What about the rest of the New Orleans local media? Will they be able to continue broadcasting/publishing?

UPDATE: A few minutes after posting this, I saw on CNN that tomorrow’s Times-Picayune is indeed out:

(Click for full-size PDF version.)

As for whether there will be a Times-Picayune on Tuesday, the real qusetion, as squid wrote, is whether “there is still a city of New Orleans that needs a newspaper. It may be renamed the Superdome Island Times-Picayune.” Which would be funny if it wasn’t realistically possible.

Another e-mail from “Dr. J,” a.k.a. Jolie Harris, in Hammond:

I unplugged my computer after I posted the e-mail because the lightning was affecting my computer. Surprisingly, since then, things have been amazingly quiet. We have lost cable but still have electricity. We know this won’t last long though. Wish us luck!

Meanwhile, Harmony St. Charles, in Lacombe, writes:

We evacuated first thing this morning and are now at my father-in-laws home in Lacombe. Packed up what we could, boarded the house and left the rest at Katrina’s whim. At the moment I hold no hope of returning to our house or neighborhood for quite some time.

This really may be a life changing event for so many of us here. My heart is truly in tatters at the moment and I feel so drained emotionally it boarders on numb. I’m sure this feeling is not held by myself alone. All that can be done now is to hang tight and see what happens. I really wish I could seem more positive but I can’t. Tommorow, I’ll pull myself up by the ol’ boot straps and do what must be done to go on. Tonight, it’s pity party time.

And electric mist reports on the scene in Baton Rouge:

By 8:30, most — if not all — of the local stores were closed. There are a few random Circle K types convenience stores open with long lines at their gas pumps. Carl tried to run one last errand, but could not get out of the neighborhood. Hwy 30, (which intersects with I-10), had a zillion refugees from New Orleans. Hwy 30 runs parallel to 1-10 and becomes Nicholson — which, for those familiar with the Death Dome of LSU (the stadium), Nicholson runs right by that stadium. I don’t know where everyone is going. It’s scary to see they’re just now getting out and may still have hours to go before they get somewhere safe.

Most of the gas pumps are empty. I doubt if there will be a tank of gas available here by tomorrow.

Last but not least, Joe B. at Metroblogging New Orleans writes, “All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario.” Indeed.

Still no sign of weakening. Radar here. (Keep in mind, the eyewall is much stronger than it looks on radar right now; the radar can’t see it too well yet, at this distance.)

You can watch live video of the deteriorating conditions in New Orleans here. (Hat tip: Emily.)

As Debbie pointed out, The Weather Channel’s only reporter in New Orleans, Jeff Morrow, has left. He’s now north of Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville. Meanwhile, the cable news networks still have reporters in the Big Easy, which will soon be a toxic lake. Methinks TWC knows what it’s doing, and Shepard Smith & co. don’t.

Katrina has shut the French Quarter’s legendary “hurricane party” bar:

It takes a mean, mean storm to shut down the hurricane party at Molly’s at the Market, but Katrina did it, at about 6 p.m. Sunday.

The French Quarter bar, notorious for staying open during hurricanes despite dire warnings and curfew calls, was the last in the French Quarter to close, said Jim Monaghan, Jr., owner of the bar at the corner of Ursulines and Decatur streets.

“I thought about it long and hard,” he said. “But I don’t want 100 people in here if something happens.”

In the past, the bar has remained open and usually chock full of regulars defying the storm and soothing their nerves with drink.

“We would have stuck it out if it was a category two or three, but there’s 175 mph winds out there, and I don’t want to be liable if somebody does something stupid in here tonight,” Monaghan said. “And there’s a bunch of drunks wandering around here.”

At nearby Cafe Lafitte, Tip Andrews knew it was time to leave when he saw the green shutters on the mustard-colored building close.

“When they close, you KNOW it’s bad,” the Bourbon Street resident said Sunday as he took his two dogs, Gigi and Dijon, for a last walk before heading north. “They NEVER board up.”

On a related note, I got an e-mail this afternoon from Houston Hardin, who said a friend from Louisiana who evacuated north into Alabama ran into a fellow Louisianan at a gas station who was upset that he couldn’t buy booze at that county in Alabama on Sundays. Heh!

But still 904 millbars.

UPDATE: Steve Gregory writes: “Katrina has gone ’steady state’ and has been at this intensity for almost 8 hours. The eye diameter has actually gone up a bit to 28NM which is truly remarkable for a storm of such intensity. There are no indications that the storm is, or will soon, begin any type of eye wall replacement cycle. The expansion from 22NM to 28NM is probably responsible for the slightly lower wind speeds being observed at Flight level near the core, even though the pressure has not changed (167kts vs 160Kts).” But then he adds:

[A]t the moment, satellite imagery and the RECON data shows that the eyewall is clearly expanding. It never was able to get lower than 20NM early this morning. Last night I conjectured that we may have seen an eye wall replacement cycle start this evening, and if it went slowly, the storm would weaken some before making landfall. (This is in addition to the potential for some light wind shear impacting the system before landfall.) At the risk of hitting enter on this, only to see Katrina begin a real eye wall cycling begin, I am wondering if what we are going to actually see is a ‘pulsation effect’ where the exiting eye wall expands out to say 40NM, and then shrinks back down towards 20NM by morning. And because there are absolutely no other known environmental variable (except some light shear in the NW quadrant by morning….) this would result in some additional easing of winds during the next few hours, followed by an increase back up to as much as 175mph winds again by daybreak. If this process actually unfolds,…I don’t think I will be going to get much sleep tonight. …

But even if my ‘eye wall pulsation cycle theory’ I just created out of thin air comes to pass - there still is the issue of increasing wind shear affecting the storm in the last 6 hours before land fall as the developing TROF in the central U.S. which led to Katrina’s curve northward to begin with — could simply over power the storms massive circulation just enough to weaken Katrina anyway. But given the immense size and intensity of this once per century type storm — there may be ‘no stopping’ this storm — since Super Storms, like Katrina, create their very own , self sustaining environment — and can ‘deflect’ small outside influences - such light wind shear, or areas of dry air.

Fellow blogger Matt Drachenberg of Overtaken by Events is deeply worried about his mother-in-law, who is trapped in a nursing home just west of New Orleans. He writes:

I just had a very frank conversation with the administrator of Jefferson Healthcare, (where my mother-in-law is trapped). They were forced to make a decision yesterday as far as evacuation. Mr. Ray was honest enough to tell me that, had he had all of the information, he would have made a different decision, but as it stands, my wife’s mother will be riding out Katrina in a one-story bulding, with a broken pelvis, requiring a serious regimen of prescription medication.

I really wanted to get angry about this conversation. However, once I realized that, should my wife lose her mother, Mr. Ray would also be dead, I found it impossible to be upset. I thanked him for his service and his commitment and said that he’d be in our prayers. There are people in that facility that make less in a year than a lot of people make in a week of Blogads, but they’re staying with the patients to which they’ve made a commitment.

Read that again — they made their decision yesterday, and would have decided differently if they had better information — and explain to me again how the mayor of New Orleans didn’t completely f**k this up. Does anyone doubt that, if he had ordered a mandatory evacuation yesterday morning, the nursing home would have made a different decision, and Matt’s mother-in-law would be safe now?

In other news, Jolie, a Louisianan who commented here under the name “Dr. J” last night, wrote me this e-mail about two hours ago, at 5:39 PM:

We just got our first feeder band in Hammond, LA north of Lake Ponchatrain. Our last houseguest has just arrived, so I guess we can hunker down for a long 24 hour stretch. I will keep you up on things until we lose electricity.

I’m praying for all of them: Matt’s mother-in-law, Jolie and his houseguests, and all the thousands of other souls whose lives are in grave peril.