And Then Katrina came a Knockin'!

The day they anounced there's a tropical storm brewing South of Florida, I was just discussing with Sarah my "dissapointment" for never actually experiencing a typhoon during my years in Taiwan.
A lot of hype has been build up by friends over these natural phenomena on the island and the damage they incur. Fortunately Taichung never experienced more than heavy rain and a few gusts of wind while I was a guest there.

Katrina scraped past the Greater Miami-area barely qualifying as a Category 1 hurricane (Winds stronger than 75 miles an hour).

Townsfolk around us who had lived through Hurricane Andrew (This one flattened half a million homes South of Miami exactly a decade ago - Category 5) were not worried and the force of the storm took most by surprise.
The next morning we listened to reports of power outages in more than a million homes and widespread flooding. We were without power for 4 days in sweltering heat and in retrospect should have taken flight North while we still could. Look at these pictures and just imagine the havoc Katrina as a Category 5-hurricane must have done to New Orleans.

We realised just how helpless we really would be, should a force like that have swept accross Miami. There's nowhere to flee but North and in a stampede, no-one would be going anywhere when the 2/3 mayor highways out of the city were fully loaded.

Here are some pics I took next to our home the morning after. The "lake" in the background is actually a river. At least the birds are happy for the overflow!