In a charming thread entitled Hurricane Risk for New Orleans at MeFi, posters expand upon similar concerns of Editor B.

UPDATE: Of course, never ones tomiss a chance to fan the soggy waves of hysteria, CNN reports:

“Those folks who remain, should the city flood, would be exposed to all kinds of nightmares from buildings falling apart to floating in the water having nowhere to go,” Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Public Health Center, said Tuesday.

LSU’s hurricane experts have spent years developing computer models and taking surveys to predict what might happen.

The surveys predict that about 300,000 of the 1.6 million people living in the metropolitan area would risk staying.

The computer models show a hurricane with a wind speed of around 120 mph or more – hitting just west of New Orleans so its counterclockwise rotation could hurl the strongest surf and wind directly into the city – would push a storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain over the city’s levees. Ivan had sustained wind of 140 mph Tuesday.

New Orleans would be under about 20 feet of water, higher than the roofs of many of the city’s homes.

Holy shit, notwithstanding that those maps show Ivan (not Ivor) hitting to the east of the city. The article also highlight the potential for serious chemical contamination due to factories and refineries in the area. What, no active nuke plant?

(Confidential to Editor B: consider maerking the location on the maps, we’re American, and geography is not our strong suit.)