Hi All,

I probably haven't heard as much about Hurricane Ivan as you have on the
news, but here's a small part of the big picture.

Doug Shelton and his folks are all right in Mobile, Alabama. The phones
continued to work although the power has been off for several days. About
9/10 of the city was blacked out but power is being restored at a rapid pace
(weeks).

East of Mobile Bay, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach (and Pensacola, Florida)
were hit hard -- water got a half-mile to a mile inland at Gulf Shores and
reduced the lower buildings to wreckage on the shore. Part of Interstate
Highway 10 collapsed at Perdido Bay, west of Pensacola. The high-rises did
well enough, so the condo crowd will be back.

West of Mobile Bay, at Dauphin Island, there was "extensive damage" but the
main complaint I've seen so far is "sand everywhere", so it sounds like the
buildings are still there to be repaired.

Farther inland in Alabama, more than a million "customers" were left without
power, which translates to more than 2 million people, about half the
population of the state.

In Tuscaloosa, damage was relatively light despite the fact that the storm
was here for several hours. For most of the duration, the city was in the
northern part of the hurricane, where the winds blow from the east. About
1/10 of the city lost power due to trees falling on power lines. The sound
of a transformer blowing is rather like a trombone blast, and I heard a few
in the distance. But my apartment house fared unusually well; the building
paralleled the wind and part of a covered walkway didn't even get wet
despite the fact that the wind was blowing the rain at a steep angle.

In fact, for me the experience was curiously surreal. The wild started up,
then light rain was added, then the wind and rain increased in intensity,
but I could stand outdoors on the walkway watching sheets of rain come down
and trees waving violently with about 1 km visibility and almost no
lightning. The western edge of the storm was gusty and caused a great deal
of damage, but I didn't experience that.

Afterward, the air was as clear as I remember from my youth. Edges were well
defined, colors were vivid, contrast was sharp, and for a glorious day or
two the air looked clean, even if it smelled a bit moldly.

I was curious about what happened to the butterflies. The day after the
hurricane passed, they were numerous and their wings looked fresh, not
frayed or lightened, and they were hungry, avid for nectar. Evidently a new
batch had emerged. I don't know how they timed it.

Surely the mollusks offshore have their own adaptations to cope with storms.
Oysters clamp shut, mobile mollusks bury themselves, and so on. And many of
them die. What are some of the other ways that mollusks deal with storms?

All the best, and with a great deal of sympathy for the citizens of Florida,
Andy

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama

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