[UPDATE, Aug. 22, 7:28 PM: More thoughts on the movie in a new post here.]
 
 
First of all, new readers may want to check out this post, which provides some background information for those unfamiliar with my blog and why the heck I was in Spike Lee’s movie.

The quote from “New Orleans in peril” is exactly what I expected. (Speaking of which: As I wrote earlier, yes, I was off by two orders of magnitude in my mention of a possible six-figure death toll — but only because we got very lucky at the last minute. Katrina could have been much worse. Tens of thousands, at least, could have died, with only a slight change in the track and/or intensity of the storm. More here.)

What came next was a little strange: I swear I said a lot more interesting, dramatic things during our hourlong interview that would have gotten across the same point that he was trying to make there. But, oh well. Although I might have picked a different quote, I had no problem with how I was portrayed, contrary to my initial fears that my words might be twisted. And it’s certainly very cool that Spike used me to “lead off” Act I of his movie. My only real complaint is that he cut off the “USC” from my sweatshirt! :)

Anyway… one of my favorite moments in the documentary is how Mayor Nagin rhetorically hung himself (though he didn’t seem to realize it) with a truly amazing, absolutely damning statement that conclusively demonstrates his utter incompetence in the run-up to Katrina. He admitted (he seemed to think it was a defense, rather than an admission of guilt) that he didn’t ask his city attorney to “figure out” a way to order a mandatory evacuation until Saturday night, less than a day and a half before landfall. He’d never thought of this before?!? He’d never, during the first three-plus years of his mayorlty, assigned his lawyers to come up with set guidelines for mandatory hurricane evacuations? Did he not realize that he’s the mayor of New Orleans?!? If you read this article from 2002, or this blog post from 2004, it’s completely obvious that New Orleans needed to be prepared to order a mandatory evacuation — ideally 72 hours before landfall, not 24 hours before! — in the inevitable event that a major hurricane would someday bear down on the city. So, how on earth does anyone give Nagin a free pass on this? It’s completely inexcusable that his administration didn’t have a specific, lawyer-approved plan already in place for this very scenario, which had been anticipated and feared for years!

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Tonight, from what I understand, I’ll be making some sort of an appearance in “Act I” of Spike Lee’s made-for-TV documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, which airs on HBO at 9:00 PM Eastern and Pacific.

I met with Spike on January 27, he interviewed me for over an hour, and apparently I am the first interview featured in the film. (I haven’t seen it yet, but according to a commenter who says she watched its premiere in New Orleans last week, “a prophetic quote from your web log scrolls across the screen, setting the tone for the first act.” I’m not clear on whether my face or voice is actually featured. We shall see.)

I assume that some viewers of the movie will find their way to my website, so I wanted to post this message and say, Welcome to my blog! :) I also thought I’d try to briefly explain, for the uninitiated, why this humble blog became sufficiently prominent that Spike Lee felt it should be included in his movie about Hurricane Katrina.

First, though, I want to give some link-love to Margie Kieper, who is doing an excellent day-by-day rundown of the utter devastation all along the Gulf Coast (not just New Orleans). Definitely worth checking out.

Now then, about me. The Irish Trojan’s Blog covers a wide variety of topics — basically, anything and everything that interests me — from politics to sports to movies to astronomy, and much more. At various times, I’ve gotten a decent amount of attention for each of these areas, and others. But it was my coverage of Katrina last August that really earned me my 15 minutes of fame. How did it happen? Well, on Friday evening, August 26, 2005, two-and-a-half days before the storm’s landfall, my Katrina coverage was Instalanched. I seized the opportunity presented by the newfound audience, and kept blogging vigorously about the strengthening storm. This attracted an ever-growing audience, and more links from major blogs followed, and then more, and more. People started bookmarking me as a go-to source of Katrina-related info. The next thing I knew, I was the Internet’s #1 Katrina blog, with 30,000 unique hits a day (compared to the ~1,250 that I was getting prior to the storm). Before long, the mainstream media took notice — especially as my “get the hell out” pleas began to sound prescient in retrospect — and I wound up on the AP wire, in the New York Times, on MSNBC, in the Washington Post, and more. It was crazy. Ultimately, the whole thing got me nominated for Blogger of the Year — and, of course, it got me a free trip to New York for an interview with Spike Lee.

Having said all that, I want to reiterate one important point that I’ve made over and over again in various TV, newspaper, radio and movie interviews about my Katrina coverage: I didn’t “predict” the hurricane. I merely “sounded the alarm” at a time when publicly available information — computer models, National Hurricane Center forecasts, and years-old scientific doomsday scenarios — made it crystal-clear that New Orleans was in mortal danger, yet the MSM and the government seemed to be asleep at the switch. (Matt Drudge, for example, was still calling for a Florida landfall well into Saturday! And of course we all know about the idiotic statements by government officials.) As I told Tucker Carlson in September, “The real story here isn’t that I ‘called it.’ It’s that the local officials and federal officials, all up and down the chain, didn’t seem to be taking it as seriously as they should have. I don’t think I said anything extraordinary. What I was saying was pretty obvious: ‘This thing is headed towards New Orleans, if the forecast comes true, and we’ve always known that a storm headed towards New Orleans would be absolute disaster.’ And I, frankly, don’t quite understand why more people weren’t as alarmed as I was.”

I certainly wasn’t the only person who was alarmed, however. I owe a great deal of credit to Dr. Jeff Masters and Charles Fenwick, both of whom (unlike me) are meteorologists, and both of whom had excellent Katrina coverage from the get-go. Indeed, it was this post by Masters and this post by Fenwick that inspired my now-famous post declaring that “we could be 3-4 days away from an unprecedented cataclysm that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans.” (And yes, I was off by two orders of magnitude on the death-toll prediction — but only because we got very lucky at the last possible minute. Katrina could have been much worse. Tens of thousands, at least, could have died, with only a slight change in the track and/or intensity of the storm. More here.)

Anyway, I’ve gotten most of the praise, but Masters and Fenwick were most definitely “sounding the alarm” as well. Various other weatherbloggers (see list at right) were also very much on the ball, as was the National Hurricane Center, whose forecasts were downright excellent. The point is, in no way should the attention that I’ve received be seen as detracting from all of those folks’ amazing efforts. If I provided anything unique in my coverage of Katrina, it was that I served as a central clearinghouse of information where people could read the latest from the weatherbloggers, the meteorologists and the mainstream media, as well as see for themselves the latest data from the computer models, satellite maps, tidal gauges and so forth, all in one place. Bryan Woods of The Storm Track told the Washington Post in October: “Brendan really acts as a distribution point for disseminating information. He is like the middle man between the weather experts and the public.” I think that’s pretty accurate.

One final point, since I’m not sure whether this will make it into the movie or not: Ray Nagin is an incompetent idiot. Here’s a detailed explanation of why. Two days before landfall, I predicted that he would be “the mayor who fiddled while New Orleans drowned,” and I was right. Yes, there were massive failures at all levels of government — local, state and federal — but the single person who bears the most blame, in my view, is Mayor Nagin, for failing to make even a halfway-serious effort at implementing the city’s evacuation plan, even though it was 100% clear by the Saturday morning before landfall that if there was ever a time to do it, now is the time. Spike, I gather, intends to focus on Condi Rice’s shoe-buying tendencies in tonight’s movie, and while that might score political points, it’s not the Secretary of State’s job to protect American citizens from hurricanes. It is, however, the mayor of New Orleans’s job to protect his city’s residents by putting long-held evacuation plans into effect when a mortal threat to the city’s survival is less than 48 hours away, and he failed utterly to do so. In my opinion, it’s an absolute travesty that he was re-elected.

Anyway… thanks for stopping by my blog. Please have a look around, and if you like what you see, come back and see us again, y’all hear? :)

UPDATE: More thoughts on the movie in a new post above.

Below normal? Nor for long! Tropical Depression 4 has formed in the far eastern Atlantic, the first Cape Verde storm of the 2006 season. It is expected to become Tropical Storm Debby tomorrow, and to be near hurricane strength within four days. (I bet it’ll get there faster.) Dr. Jeff Masters says it will likely stay out to sea. The Storm Track has more, and Eye of the Storm has a neat sequence of satellite pictures.

UPDATE, 1:13 AM: It looks like Debby may not recurve out to sea, after all. If not, we could be looking at a serious threat down the road — waaay down the road. The Storm Track has more.

UPDATE, 11:19 AM: T.D. 4 isn’t Debby yet, and the NHC is wondering whether it might not strengthen as much as they expect

THERE IS A LOT OF STABLE AIR IN THE ENVIRONMENT AHEAD OF THE DEPRESSION. NEVERTHELESS…BOTH THE SHIPS AND GFDL GUIDANCE INDICATE STRENGTHENING TO AT LEAST A STRONG TROPICAL STORM. GIVEN THAT THE DEPRESSION HAS NOT STRENGTHENED YET OVER THE WARMEST WATERS IT WILL SEE FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS…I WONDER IF THE GUIDANCE IS A LITTLE TOO AGGRESSIVE.

In other news, this morning InstaPundit linked to this post with the statement, “Brendan Loy says more storms may be on the way.” The better post for that assertion is actually this one, which quotes Dr. Jeff Masters from last week:

[B]efore we congratulate ourselves too much on a safe start to hurricane season, it is instructive to look at the plot of typical hurricane activity for the Atlantic. Peak hurricane season starts about August 18 and runs through October 18. The worst part of hurricane season is in front of us, and I do anticipate that conditions will get active. Witness 1998, when only one named storm occurred prior to August 19, and 10 named storms and 7 hurricanes formed by the end of September. A similar pattern of activity occurred in 2000, with only two named storm by this date, and a season total of 15 named storms. So, those of you who doubt NOAA and Dr. Gray’s predictions of 15 named storms this season need to put your skepticism on hold.

A major shift in the atmospheric pattern over the Atlantic began at the end of July, and portends an active hurricane season. … The relatively quiet hurricane season we’ve been enjoying is not going to last. A very active period will start, as soon as the atmosphere destabilizes a bit more. If one believes the long-range 2-week outlook from the GFS model, the current quiet period should last another 4-12 days. Around August 21, I expect it will appear that a switch has been thrown, and the Atlantic will be very active indeed. Expect our first hurricane in the Atlantic by August 26, and a very active September. However, I do expect we will get many recurving storms that will miss land, and that this hurricane season will be similar to the ones we experienced in 1995-2003.

ABC News addresses the August 22 issue with a sober, understated headline: “Is Tomorrow Doomsday?”

While no extra safeguards are in place, U.S. law enforcement are not ignoring the possible significance of tomorrow’s date, August 22, a date that marks an important historic event on the Islamic calendar.

Internet websites have been full of speculation that it could be a target date for terrorists in commemoration of the return of the 12th imam, a supposed day of reckoning for Shiites.

August 22 was rumored by intelligence experts to be a possible date that the London plotters would blow-up passenger planes headed towards the United States, though it is not known if the suspects were Shiite extremists.

This year, August 22 marks the holy day on the Islamic calendar that is the day of reckoning for Shiites. Some Shiite sects believe that August 22 could correspond to the end of the world. And just today, after much hype, Iran has announced that it will continue to develop its nuclear program. To followers of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, this is a well-timed affront to Israel, the United States and the world. The United Nations had given Iran until the end of the month to respond, but Ahmadinejad had made it clear to all Iranians and the world that he intended to respond on the eve of August 22.

Whether or not this announcement is the end of Ahmadinejad’s plans for August 22, one expert says we will have to wait and watch.

“The only thing we can know is that the date was not chosen by accident,” said Robert Spencer, Director of Jihadwatch.org and an adjunct fellow at the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank. “It does seem very likely, very probable, that he has something major in mind, whether only a major announcement or a major attack, we will soon see.”

Drudge is headlining this story, also with characteristic subtlety:

It’s actually already August 22 in Iran right now — 12:09 AM on August 22, to be exact. In Israel, presumably the most likely target (God forbid) of any Iranian aggression, it’s a half-hour earlier, 11:39 PM on August 21. That’s seven hours later than Eastern Daylight Time. By the time I wake up tomorrow around 8:30 AM, it’ll already be 3:30 PM in Jerusalem and 4:00 PM in Tehran. So presumably, if anything is going to happen, it will probably happen while we’re sleeping over here in America.

UPDATE: Michael Totten, guestblogging for Andrew Sullivan, writes from Tel Aviv that Israelis are unconcerned:

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Suspected killer William Morva is in custody, a law enforcement official says. No further details were immediately available. Visit CNN for the latest.

The AP recently reported that the U.S. is reclassifying certain documents pertaining to Cold War missiles and systems. Read about it here.

Most of the discussion around this is based on government secrecy and abuse of power, blah blah blah. I wonder if anyone is concerned, though, about the implications this has with regard to, OH I don’t know, the whole North Korea situation. I mean, that’s worthy of discussion to me! I’m just saying….

From the “How obscure is your sport?” department, I bring you this tidbit from the Washington Post:

The posting on Craigslist went like this:

Join the DC Elephant Polo Team as we go to Thailand for the 2006 Kings Cup Elephant Polo Championships! . . . No previous polo experience is necessary.

With an intro like that, who isn’t intrigued? Yes, the DC Elephant Polo team is precisely what it sounds like. Instead of playing on horses, they play on big gray pachyderms. Of course there’s one big problem (”big” being the operative word): They don’t have elephants. So they practice on swingsets and electrical boxes, with makeshift polo mallets.

No elephants, substandard equipment, and very little polo experience. Expectations of winning? Not high. But they do have goals. And even an early rival:

“We’d like to do well, but I’d also like to just get our name out,” Zenz said. “We like attention, and sponsorship is very important to keep us going until we’re the dominant force in the elephant polo world. The Scottish duke has to go.”

Heh. Go USA!

Waiting in line at Notre Dame Stadium to get our football ticket lottery numbers.

… and come play! Monday from 5-7pm, there will be sporting events for law students on Juniper, near Stepan Center. Horseshoes, volleyball, and kickball will be included in the activites. Come on out and relive third grade gym class!

“While the words in here purport to be English, they’re really not.” –Prof. Mayer, referring to the Internal Revenue Code

The AP photographer who shot the iconic Iwo Jima picture — which in turn inspired the iconic 9/11 picture – has died at age 94. (Hat tip: Dmytro.)