Closing Decision To Be Made Monday Morning (Hurricane – part 5)
August 31, 2008 by Dr. Roger Parrott
Gustav is all over the news now, but it is still too early to know what the hurricane will mean to Jackson. The hurricane forecast tomorrow morning at 9 am central time should give us a good understanding of the impact here. At that point, we’ll try to make the best call we can about whether or not to close school for Tuesday.
A few points in the interim:
- Some students are home in Louisiana for the holiday, and because of the contraflow (the highways being turned to one way traffic for evacuation) it is nearly impossible to get back to campus. We understand, and our faculty will be forgiving and helpful with students who cannot return to campus on time because of the storm. We don’t want anyone to take a risk in their travel.
- Right now it is projected Jackson has a 32% chance of tropical storm force winds on Monday (37 to 57 mph winds). We will not have classes meet on Tuesday if we are likely to have winds of that speed. Again, we’ll know better tomorrow morning.
- If we close Tuesday, we will include Monday night classes as well.
- We would rather be overly cautious and safe, than get in the day of class time.
- The Red Cross is needing volunteers, and they are right around the corner on Riverside Drive – on the walk to the Center for the Arts. If students are available to help, just show up and they will put you to work preparing materials to go to the coast.
No matter what, be praying for those who will be impacted by the storm. This is a huge hurricane that will cause a great deal of damage no matter where it comes to shore.
I was sent a storm projection web site that is probably the best I’ve seen. Here is the link to stormpulse.com
From their web site, this is what the current map is showing – as you can see, the worst of the storm is unlikely to come toward us in Jackson, but hurricanes do change direction at the last minute and thus will not be sure of the path until tomorrow morning.
