Gustav is Cat 4 and strengthening. Hurricane evacuation information is online for Texans, Louisianans, and Mississippians. Contraflow for the New Orleans area begins at 4:00 a.m. Sunday morning affecting I-59 south of Poplarville and I-55 south of Brookhaven.

If you don’t hear from me for the next couple of days, it’s because I’m building an ark in my back yard.

In case you need more than just the headline, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has thousands of words to reiterate that point for you.

All of the snow around here is disappearing at a shockingly rapid rate. Not that I’m complaining, mind you; it’s just really freaky to see it all disappear in a matter of a few hours in what I’d hardly call balmy weather (although, I suppose by St. Louis standards 56 is balmy for mid-February).

Global warming (or typical Florida weather, depending on your ideological preferences) went after a bunch of people in Lake County, Florida today, just a few miles to the south of where my dad lives in Ocala; as is the typical pattern of such things, most who died were in mobile homes and trailer parks.

See, I knew there was an upside to not getting the job in Frozen Tundra country, it just took me a month to realize it. The concept that there’s a temperature below which it is too cold to snow, and that people in Wisconsin have empirical evidence of this fact, is truly frightening to me.

Obviously, the unseasonably warm weather couldn’t last until I actually get back to Jackson later this month. Grr.

Of course, it’s the same everywhere; it was in the 80s in the part of flyover country where I was yesterday (and here too), and the floor will drop out here sometime tonight.