Hurricane Barry: Lessons From a Disaster That Wasn’t

Last Wednesday, I stared at the long thin, shovel that sat in the back of my car. I had just used it to collect cattail stalks that I planned to send to colleagues in California—as a coastal scientist in Louisiana, collecting those samples is a small part of my job. But with a tropical storm system developing, the shovel looked well suited for another purpose: cleaning out the catch basin along my New Orleans street.

With less than 48 hours to prepare for the storm, I had a dilemma. Should I spend my limited time cleaning out the catch basin, to prepare for Barry’s intense rains? Or, fearing the confluence of storm surge and high water on the Mississippi River, should I evacuate? Or should I trust that the drainage systems would function and use the time to work on analyses that I owe my collaborators?