Not a pretty picture: New maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that Baton Rouge could be inundated with the storm surge from a worst-case Category 3 hurricane, The Lens reports. The interactive maps show a Category 3 hurricane could cause a storm surge of 9 feet, stretching all the way from the coastal parishes and north of Baton Rouge. The maps are part of the Storm Surge Inundation web page developed by the NOAA to help coastal emergency managers and residents assess their maximum vulnerability to storm surge. They also allow residents on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts to check the extent and height of potential surge from the worst-possible hurricane in each of the five storm categories on the Safford-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Read the full story and see the maps.
This land is your land: North Louisiana may be getting two new wildlife areas. KNOE-TV reports that the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Wildlife has reached a tentative agreement with Molpus Woodlands Group on behalf of a client to acquire 8,755 acres of land in Morehouse and Union parishes that would be managed as two wildlife areas. The tracts are along Chemin-A-Haut Bayou (3,842 acres) in Morehouse Parish and Bayou DeLoutre (4,913 acres) in Union Parish. The television station reports that the lands could become part of LDWF’s wildlife management area system as early as next spring. LDWF manages 1.6 million acres on 55 wildlife management areas throughout Louisiana. Read the full story.
It all depends: Since Congress and President Barack Obama agreed last week to lift the ban on oil exports, the government’s energy forecasting arm decided today to highlight a recent analysis it did on the topic. As FuelFix.com reports, the Energy Information Agency concluded that how the ban’s end plays out varies with overall U.S. production projections. A key figure identified by the EIA is about 10.6 million barrels per day. If U.S. production remains below that level, allowing exports won’t have much of an impact at all on the economy or oil and gas industry. But if production climbs above that level, oil exports could mean an additional boost to domestic production, reduced refined products exports and slightly lower gasoline prices in the U.S., according to the EIA. Read the full story.
