Word: rain
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...wind continues to howl in New Orleans though the rain is coming in patches. A few fences are down but there is no sign of large-scale flooding - yet. However, just before noon, Maj. Tim Kurgan, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers' New Orleans district, said there was "overtopping" (that is, spilling over) on the western side of the Industrial Canal which has three main tributaries: Lake Pontchartrain, the Intercoastal Water Way, and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, commonly known as "Mr. Go." Gustav's heavy winds have apparently pushed water into the Industrial Canal from those three areas...
Earlier in the morning, the wind pounded the rain into the windows of my hotel room in Metairie, down the highway from New Orleans on Lake Pontchartrain. You could barely see out the windows, the wind was so strong. Just a few minutes earlier, the branches of trees were barely moving. It's certainly a strong storm, but not nearly as powerful as folks feared. And so Gustav arrived with a somewhat diminished bang, the first bands striking just before midnight. For much of Sunday evening, the city, and region, had been bathed in the odd silence that usually precedes...
...most significant and widespread inundation of Florida since five hurricanes smacked the state in 2004-05. Aside from knocking fruits off trees, the combination of wind and rain exacerbated citrus canker, a disease that infects leaves and causes fruit to drop prematurely. Fay is likely to have increased the spread of the disease. Canker has destroyed more than 16 million trees in Florida. Despite $600 million in federal and state money spent to eradicate it from 1996-2006, the United States Department of Agriculture deemed eradication impossible after Hurricane Wilma blew through in October...
Beyond the sogginess and damp, however, is a more dangerous threat: greening, a condition caused by the Asian Citrus psyllid, a sap-sucking insect invader from overseas whose depredations began three years ago. Unlike canker, greening spreads from tree to tree without the aid of heavy winds or rain. Greening, also called huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, creates misshapen and bitter fruit and eventually renders the infected trees useless for commercial cultivation. As soon as the insects appeared, greening was detected in all 32 citrus-producing counties in Florida, as well as in Louisiana and Texas...
...Will it rain...