4:45pm

What a day!  First day to get out to the area and survey the damage (hence the long time between updates) and it's a mixed bag of tricks out there.  My first issue: leaving my parking garage.  What a mess, that place ended up with people parking where ever they could and the negotiation of getting out became a practice in spatial relations and guts. 

Day started off driving north and east along I-10 to I-12 since most roads to the west were closed due to standing water and the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway was closed as well so the long way I went.  The "twin spans" over the Eastern side of the lake and there was a lot of debris that had been pushed off to the side of the road. I saw a lot of seaweed and wood (that I later learned was crab traps).

Saw some serious flooding from the road way in Slidell, say a shrimp/fishing boat that was half in a tree, half in the water.  I also saw trucks, cars and people floating by them on small fishing boats.  It's a tragic scene really, but you can't help but be awed by the sheer magnitude of it all. 

The North Shore was in decent shape, most grocery stores were open though only partially (no fresh foods, frozen or cold foods though pallets of ice were at the exits and you show your receipt to the man by the pallets and he hands you the number of bags you've paid for.

The New Orleans area is doing well for the most part.  It's all dry and not much standing water from what I saw.  There is still minimal electricity (900,000 homes without power statewide) and non-working traffic lights which is leading to a lot of people running their cars through intersections with reckless abandon and the number of times either myself or other cars avoided being broadsided is high.

Most neighborhoods I went through today had streets filled with tree limbs that weren't very large but there was a TON of leaves everywhere and they are clogging the drains and piling up in the streets.  Driving down streets with this issue is like driving on ice.

Lots of convoys around the city of electrical company trucks.  Largest one I saw was 13 trucks heading into the Metairie area and, reportedly, they are being cheered as they enter neighborhoods.  Apparently this is just the first wave, the next wave from out of state is expected tonight.

So the curfew has been lifted here in New Orleans, you think that has something to do with the Saint's playing tonight in Nashville?

Some pictures below from the day out as well as what the edge of one the remaining feeder bands looks like as it enters the downtown area.