Perhaps my memory is faulty, but when I was younger it seemed like there were a lot of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast that people worried would be "The Big One," that wound up diverting just in time to spare New Orleans from a direct hit. That’s the reason why, when Hurricane Katrina was headed towards the area three years ago, I really didn’t take it as seriously as I otherwise would have as it was nearing landfall; part of me assumed that it would veer off-course at the last moment and New Orleans would be spared total devastation. It was only after Katrina made landfall that I realized that The Big One had struck, and what it meant for the millions of residents along the coast. Then again, I had only started my first teaching assignment less than a week before the hurricane hit, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have other things on my mind. (The fact that I didn’t know how to integrate the hurricane, and news coverage thereof, into my classroom strikes me as one of my earliest mistakes in my teaching career.)

Now it looks as though Gustav will bring the same devastation to the area, long before it has had a chance to rebuild from Katrina. Yes, the political ramifications of this happening just as the Republican National Convention is starting are intriguing, but I’d like to write about those later; I think people need to focus more on the human element of this crisis than the political element right now. This time I’m keeping a close eye on the Weather Channel, keeping tabs on all the latest developments. I’ve always been a bit of a Weather Channel fan since we first got cable; being a weatherperson on local television was the first "What I wanna be when I grow up" fantasy I can remember having, although when we finally got cable in the mid-80s I think I was more in love with the computer graphics of the Weather Channel than with the human presenters. Even today I wish I could emulate the Weather Channel’s graphics on my computer desktop to keep me apprised of the local weather and radar. (The Weather Channel’s best desktop gadget is for Microsoft’s sidebar, which I loathe because, well, it’s Microsoft; do you need another reason?)

I also have to admit to a bit of a morbid fascination with broadcast disaster warnings. Earlier this year I got fixated on disaster notices posted to YouTube, starting with simulations of CONELRAD (our country’s Civil Defence radio back in my parents’ time, the precursor to today’s Emergency Alert System) announcing the Russians were bombing, and then moving on to more modern disasters. EAS was never activated for 09.11 — all the live news coverage on every channel kind of made activating EAS pointless — but of course Katrina was something that was anticipated for a long time, providing for lots of spectacle. Weather Channel local forecasts from the coast in the hours before Katrina made landfall, such as this one, fascinate me to no end; there is something that is at once both highly comical and deeply terrifying about the computerized voice calmly pronouncing that "wind gusts could reach over one hundred fifty miles per hour." (I agree with the legions of other Weather Channel fans who say that the channel needs to bring back that music for hurricane season every year.)

To the residents of the areas in Gustav’s path: Please be safe. We’re all thinking about you.