Gustav Watch, Day 6: Contraflow

We have successfully evacuated to Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. Special thanks to our generous host - my wife's mother and father. Despite the long drive, this is a great place to evacuate - familiar, safe, and with family. I believe that all in all, we were in transit for about 10 hours or so.

In general, southern Louisiana appears to have been evacuated pretty successfully and with creativity. These guys may not have made it very far, we saw them on our road this morning.


And this guy packed up a small village and put it in the back of his Kia. Pretty impressive. It is tough to see but that is a complete town made of Popsicle sticks. I am glad the Popsicle people are safe.

Seriously though, witnessing the first ever full scale implementation of contraflow was interesting. I-49 South was reversed and all lanes were headed north. Note below that across the median, the other cars are moving in the same direction as us. And moving slowly. Traffic was good up until the southbound lanes had to merge back into the northbound lanes.


Here's a view of contraflow in my side mirror.


So that's it! We are now watching via the Weather Channel and hoping that all of our friends and family who stayed behind stay safe. It looks like Gustav might hit as a 3 rather than a 4, which is decent news. I think we will all take any good luck we can get right now.