[Fishtalk]

Seriously, it's great the storm dropped in intensity, but nobody's out of the woods yet.

I'm also confused.

All morning I've been hearing about breached levees and that P lake spilling over.

And yet I keep reading that NO dodged the bullet.

I am totally unfamiliar with NO. I'm not proud of that fact.

I do know about hurricanes being from Merryland and now living in Delaware.

But it sure doesn't sound like a dodged bullet to me.

[HairOfTheDog]

It's all relative.

[RobFromGa]

All morning I've been hearing about breached levees and that P lake spilling over.

One of the Mississippi River levees was breached, haven't heard that any Lake P levees were breached (yet). Did I miss something.

NO dodged the bullet from the standpoint that the storm weakened just enough before landfall and started to break up enough to escape complete and total flooding and devastation that would have resulted from a Cat 5 forcing a major breach of Lake P levees. Plus it shifted a little east rather than direct hit on the city.

SO "dodged the bullet" is relative to total catastrophe. It will still be very bad. And worse for other areas.

[colorado tanker]

It seems to be a "dodged bullet" in the sense that the old sections of N.O. weren't completely destroyed, which seemed to be a possibility when I went to bed last night.

[monday]

"But it sure doesn't sound like a dodged bullet to me."

They all expected the whole city to be under thirty feet of water. So far only one area is under water so it's better than expected.

[Steve_Seattle]

"All morning I've been hearing about breached levees and that P lake spilling over. And yet I keep reading that NO dodged the bullet."

It depends on what you mean by "dodged the bullet." Even though there is some major flooding, some collapsed buildings, etc, the damage seems to be falling short of the doomsday predictions - 50,000 dead, city swamped with toxic wastes - that the city would be virtually destroyed. But it remains to be seen what the extent of the damage is; the reports so far are fragmentary and laced with rumor. Chances are that the emphasis on NO has distracted attention from worse damage elsewhere.

[Torie]

As a generalization, the north half of NO near the lake is below sea level. The south part of NO nearer the river is above sea level. So I would assume that about half the city is underwater, with the depth depending on how far below sea level it is.