Sunday's Gustav Update

Gustav's track remains the same, if not having slightly shifted to the east overnight. Before reaching Cuba yesterday, the storm reached category 4 status. Once over Cuba, the eyewall collapsed and Gustav lost some intensity. Now that he is back over water fully, intensification will begin again once the storm reaches an area called the warm loop current. Although Gustav is back down to a category 3, he could reach category 4 over the next 24 hours. Here is the latest track:

Landfall is expected to occur sometime Monday afternoon and the storm should then shift northwest. As drag is created over land, the storm could bring several days of rain to portions of west and southwest Mississippi, an area which already had plenty of rain from Tropical Storm Fay just last week.

Meantime, we are under a tropical storm wind watch and hurricane wind watch. This means winds could be gusting up to 39 mph-60 mph with sustained winds of the same for a period of time. As I said last night on WLBT, we could begin to see the rain bands move into portions of the state tonight along with the windy conditions.

I continue to believe we won't be any worse off than Katrina. Everyone has their own Katrina story and we all went through different effects; some lost power for 7-10 days, some had flash flooding and we all encountered tornado watches and warnings. Although this could obviously get rough at times until the storm has completely passed, we will make it again.

Find your county on this map and see what you can expect today:

We are all more prepared this go around than last time. With Katrina, we had 2 days to prepare. This time, we have had 7 days to prepare. Do you think God is trying to tell us something this time? Hmmmm....Let's be thankful for that!