Katrina -an eye-witness perspective

dsm · Post by **dsm** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 4:16 pm

rock and roll wrote:Howdy DSM, you summed up Texas pretty well. I live on a lake north of Houston called Lake Conroe. For many years I had a ranch in LaGrange, home of ZZ TOP, but I sold that and moved here four years ago.

R&R

Are you on the Leonidas side of town (off interstate 45) or the other side ?

One of the things that really surprised me was the number of lakes and the size of them. Until I saw them from the air several times and for great distances, I had always thought of all of Texas being like West Texas or the land around San Antone (obviously conditioned by too many westerns). I guess folks have an impression of Australia colored by Crocodile Dundee - I haven't been to any place like in his films yet but plan one day to give it a go. His films gave a great boost to inland tourism especially a massive wilderness area called Kakadu National Park (it is as bigger than many mid sized states).

The story re the tide in Nova Scotia reminded me of seeing the tide flow around Auckland city in NZ. Auckland has two harbours, one either side. One is called Manukau Harbour & the tide flows through a gap only 100s of feet wide. It is a no-no to be anywhere near that gap when the tide is in full flow, unless in a safe powerful boat.

When the tide goes out, people will walk out on to the harbour bed to gather muscles (shellfish) and it is quite a regular thing to have people drowning because they misjudge how hard it is to run across the mud when the tide races in.

Interestingly in Sydney Australia we don't see these big tidal flows other than on rare occasions ('king tides'). We do see the water move back and forward at the beach but often no more than 60ft or so. I could never quite understand why the tide seemed so big in Auckland & so small in Sydney as they are both reasonably close to the same latitude.

Cheers

DSM

rock and roll · Post by **rock and roll** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 4:37 pm

don't know where the Lionedas side of town is or what it is for that matter LOL but I do live off I45 north of Houston. Conroe is a big lake, even have paddle wheelers cruising it, and I live on the water and feel blessed for it. The sun sets right behind my house over the water and I never cease to be awed by it. Do dread when we get a big storm from the S/W, as don't know how I will fair but I tell you this, they say evacuate and I am in Kansas before the end of the day!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 6:01 pm

rock and roll wrote:don't know where the Lionedas side of town is or what it is for that matter LOL but I do live off I45 north of Houston. Conroe is a big lake, even have paddle wheelers cruising it, and I live on the water and feel blessed for it. The sun sets right behind my house over the water and I never cease to be awed by it. Do dread when we get a big storm from the S/W, as don't know how I will fair but I tell you this, they say evacuate and I am in Kansas before the end of the day!

R&R - I worded that badly Leonidas is right at the bottom of Lake Conroe.

I guess a better wording would be Nth Sth East or West on the lake ? - but I45 being on the East side suggests you are on the East side - then it is top middle or bottom but my best *guess* (no hunch) here is that with Lake Conroe being close to 20 miles long, you are on the East side somewhere above Fm 1097 ?

Cheers Doug

rock and roll · Post by **rock and roll** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 6:21 pm

I am just off FM1047 on the north bank. Still have never heard of Leonidas, LOL

dsm · Post by **dsm** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 6:44 pm

rock and roll wrote:I am just off FM1047 on the north bank. Still have never heard of Leonidas, LOL

R&R
I envy you - living on such a large lake and reasonably close to a major state city and being in Texas makes for a very nice home environment. I guess you are surrounded by large areas of forest and in Walker county ?. My recollection of most of the lakes I saw was that they were in well wooded areas.

DSM

PS Leonidas is onFM 2854 out of Conroe just beyond Sth/Nth Loop 336.

UPDATE: The Internet is an amazing tool. Here is a photo of Lake conroe taken at 8:30 UTC 15th Sep from space. Can see L Conroe plus Lake Travis well to its left. Can also identify location of Houston. Now when they offer better resolution, I may be able to see your house

http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/assets/publ ... atest.jpeg

UPDATE#2
Hmmm, The original image I had was much clearer and showed the lakes - the link above looks black & no lakes shown

UPDATE#3 Aha! this is a dynamic image - the latest one I just looked at was taken at a few mins past midnight & thus was going to be black (no sun) amaaazing Am sure the lakes will reappear in daylight

rock and roll · Post by **rock and roll** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 7:56 pm

Montgomery County. And yes it is located in wooded area. Yes, I am very lucky to live where I do. But, I won't retire here. I really want to move to a cooler climate when In retire.

dsm · Post by **dsm** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 9:07 pm

I have found a color close up satellite image of Conroe & zoomed into capture one image of the whole lake then an image of the montgomery / walker county border area. The other image I 1st posted doesn't show Conroe as clearly as I thought. It looks more like lake Livingston. The new pics are better (try zooming in yourself - here is the map of USA)

http://geology.com/united-states-satellite-images.shtml USA with zoom buttons.

I will post the new ones as links in about 7 hours (I have to load them on my US web server first).

The images are so clear that it is easy to pick out small farmlets. I can see all major & minor roads. I don't know how recent this image is.

I had heard that this type of info was available but this is actually the first time I tried to go look for where someone lived. It really is incredible what Internet comms & images have done for people-to-people communications.

After posting the 2 links to Conroe I will leave you at home in peace

I hope others have as much fun finding their homes as I did zooming in on Conroe.

Cheers

DSM

UPDATE - I just zoomed in on I90 out of Seattle (where another member here lives) & was able to keep zooming in until I was able to identify an oil tanker driving on I90 ! - I could also identify individual items as cars but no so close as to pick a brand or model but I could see the gap between the oil tanker's prime mover & body. !!

rock and roll · Post by **rock and roll** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 9:21 pm

They are amazing. If I were to give you my exact address (I'm not), you can see my exact house on the lake. I have played with this before, it's pretty incredible.

Never had so much intgerest in where I live before

dsm · Post by **dsm** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 9:28 pm

I too just went back to that link & went in so close I could see people's swimming pools + the boats parked in a marina (west side of L Conroe) plus the rooves of some houses (but they looked pretty big for houses).

The quality of the map varies - the left side of Conroe is very detailed (the shaeded part of the image) while the right is more colorful but much more blurry in close.

This has been a 1st for me and has a WOW factor.

The maps of I90 & I97 out of Seattle are very detailed & I am sure I will be able to actually see this other member's house.

DSM

PS seeing how easy it is to use the link _ I wont bother posting the extracted images I have. Interestingly I can't find my house in Sydney. In fact I am having trouble finding Sydney & that is a big worry

UPDATE Well I took another go at looking for my own home & realised that when you see an area on the larger map that is slightly darker than the surrounding area it is usually hi-res maps & these coincide with town cities & other built-up areas & thus while not as colorful do show intricate detail. I was able to pick Sydney out using this logic. Then as I zoomed in I was lucky to find my part of our suburb was also in hi-res.

I saw my house plus several around it built in the past couple of years.
I was not able to tell though if the image was very recent (tried looking for a grapevine that is presently leafless, that sits outside our back door but it was too hard to pick it out due to shadows).

I think a lot of folk are going to have fun with that website

wading thru the muck! · Post by **wading thru the muck!** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 5:26 am

Is you'all go to google maps you can get great satellite images and also have the option of super-imposing the streets and names over the top.

BTW, our old friend Liam works manipulating the data for these maps.

gracie97 · Post by **gracie97** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 8:26 pm

Kirk wrote:Wow! Just like a Canadian.

Kuwait $500MIL
Saudi Arabia $250MIL
Even India gave a few Million.

Canada----a big fat ZERO

The US is the richest nation in the world: It should not need or expect foreign aid from a relatively small economy such as Canada's to deal with consequences of Katrina.

Half a billion and a quarter billion for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia respectively is like pocket change to those governments -- and given their dependency on US military muscle, I'm surprised they didn't cough up more.

(India? Probably just an inexpensive way to buy good press/will.)

Grace
(US citizen)

rock and roll · Post by **rock and roll** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 9:54 pm

I refuse to get sucked back into this,

Why would you want to start it up again?

dsm · Post by **dsm** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 10:42 pm

gracie97 wrote:
Kirk wrote:Wow! Just like a Canadian.

Kuwait $500MIL
Saudi Arabia $250MIL
Even India gave a few Million.

Canada----a big fat ZERO
The US is the richest nation in the world: It should not need or expect foreign aid from a relatively small economy such as Canada's to deal with consequences of Katrina.

Half a billion and a quarter billion for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia respectively is like pocket change to those governments -- and given their dependency on US military muscle, I'm surprised they didn't cough up more.

(India? Probably just an inexpensive way to buy good press/will.)

Grace
(US citizen)

Gracie, As R&R says - that theme in this thread is now deceased

Cheers

DSM

unclebob · Post by **unclebob** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 11:43 pm

Hi gracie97,

Shame on you! Just cannot understand why on earth you would want to make a post pertaining to the original topic of this thread when a few of the really active posters have managed to turn it into their own sacred travelogue. You'll just have to belly up to the bar and join the chorus - truth be damned, who needs it anyway! If anyone gets in our way or sings out of tune we can cuss at them and by all means use our home grown vulgarity. That will get rid of em and if all else fails we can just change the subject and vow never to get sucked in again - baited or not. We are men of our word!

I know, you thought as I did, that the quote regarding Canada was exceptionally ignorant and entirely untrue. But that is no reason to rock the boats full of supplies and personnel we sent. Who the hell cares if hundreds of thousands lives were torn to threads just so long as nobody quibbles with our perception of the events and dares to shed another viewpoint. So lets just all get on the very same bandwagon and be one happy family - no argument here.

I had not read this thread until yesterday and was shocked to see the degradation of responses and crude language. Katrina's tragic devastation was a global disaster that happened to hit America. No civilised person anywhere should use this horrific loss of life, family, home and freedom to joust over the semantics of what really happened. You can bet blame will come, but lets bury the dead and build homes for the living first.

Bob F

PS - Thanks WillSuceed for your genuine concern with the original post and remaining a gentleman throughout.

gracie97 · Post by **gracie97** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 3:21 am

rock and roll wrote:I refuse to get sucked back into this,

Why would you want to start it up again?

Oh I didn't read this message board for a couple of weeks and then only read the first few pages of this thread.

Had no intention of reviving whatever was going on that people are jumping on me for starting up again!

I wasn't part of whatever it was that happened on this thread. In fact, I just very quickly skimmed past a number of pro- and anti-Bush posts and other material that looked passionate but didn't interest me enough to read.

My intention was just a very minor and, I thought, innocuous observation. Sorry if it seemed wrong or distressing or even an attempt to revive something I was only vaguely aware of.

Grace

Katrina -an eye-witness perspective

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