Muggy Louisiana

Well, 'tis the end of another hot muggy day in Louisiana. I'm still not absolutely settled with the weather here. Being a proud Mountaineer I still find the weather here at times unsettling. The storms here are hard for me to bear. I try desperately not to be fearful of them but sometimes it seems like the thunder rolls about 2 ft. above my head and the lightning is fearsome. Next month starts the beginning of hurricane season and it continues to November 30th. Arriving here the day after Katrina and living thru the aftermath for weeks was like moving to a foreign country after a war. It actually looked like a war zone in many places. Not only the destruction of property and nature but even to visit the hospital we were escorted by armed guards. Buying medicine at Walmart required standing in long, long, very long lines outside in the parking lot in intense heat only to be once again escorted by armed guards into the store and watched while prescriptions were filled and then walked back out again. Gas lines were unbelievable. Heat was unreal. Love bugs were swarming. Communication was all but none. After we made it thru all that mess then Rita blew into town. That was frightening to say the least. The winds howled all night long, rain beat so hard against the windows we thought they would break. A tropical storm at night is not a nice experience to Yankees in a strange land. Then of course there was Gustav...another horrendous storm. Well not all storms here are of hurricane or tropical force but they do get nasty. Seems like every time we get some kind of storm system passing thru up go the tornado warnings. There is something else I'm still not used to...give me a good old snow storm...I can handle that! Anyway, all we got this evening was some hard (wasn't in the forecast) rain that sounded like hail coming down. It didn't last too long...just long enough to make the muggy, humid air feel like a steam bath. Sometimes I really miss my hills...sometimes I do like it here. If I had my rather's then all my family would be somewhere in Almost Heaven West Virginia and we would live happily ever after.