On March 28, 1963, Mr. Whitney Bartie filed suit in United States District Court, Western District Louisiana the Lake Charles Division against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act for the death of his wife and children in Hurricane Audrey. His case was based on the assertion that the U.S. Weather Bureau was negligent in warning the public about the deadly hurricane, than killed 390 people in Cameron Parish in Louisiana.

The plaintiff's attorneys claimed that the Weather Bureau was negligent in failing to five adequate warning concerning the nature, intensity, location, path, velocity, speed and storm surge as well as the time it would strike the Louisiana coast.

Bartie and his family went to bed on the night of June 26, 1957. They believed that they could get up the following morning and evacuate before the hurricane arrived. Broadcasts from Lake Charles were geared for residents a little further inland and statements such as “there is no need for alarm tonight and you can rest well tonight,” did not apply to coastal residents who could nonetheless hear the broadcasts.

The Bartie family awakened early on the 27th to flood water already lapping under their home. Their story was played out dozens if not hundreds of times in the low lying area. As the storm surge inundated their home, they were forced to the roof where one by one, Bartie’s family was ripped from his clutches and drowned. Bartie finally found refuge in a tree as was there for nearly 12 hours.

Negligence by the defendant was not established. No expert would testify that the Weather Bureau had been negligent. Dr. Noel Edwin LaSeur gave the most significant testimony, declaring that the failure to forecast the acceleration and intensification nof the hurricane in the hours before landfall was simply due to the state of the art in weather forecasting at the time. ?

The Court held that the evidence failed to establish the requisite negligence on the part of the Weather Bureau and ruled for the defendant.

Check out this map and note the huge contrast from west to east across the good ole USA.

http://www.wunderground.com/severe.asp

Numerous counties in the NE under flood or Flash Flood warnings.

Red Flag Warnings in the west for high fire danger

* Up to 200,000 ordered to evacuate in and around Wilkes Barre in NE Pennsylvania. That is near and just south of the Scranton area. That would be like having all of Huntsville to evacuate.

* As many as 200 roads closed in Virginia due to flooding.

Meanwhile, Alabama staying dry for the next several days...

...Life goes on, drought or flood, hot or cool.

Sure was a nice early morning walk in My Tiny Corner of the World with Little Miss Molly. The 59-degree temperature felt great.

When we have these rare cool morning in summer, I always want to throw an illegal Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Poptart block party. Here are some lows from this morning. We will probably get later reports of even cooler temperatures. If so, we will include them in the afternoon edition:

59 in Pinson and DeSoto State Park
60 in Tuscaloosa
61 in Muscle Shoals, Decatur and Crossville
63 in Anniston and Cullman
64 in Fort Payne and Albertville
65 at Birmingham Airport

WHAT IS AHEAD FOR ALABAMA
Mostly dry weather for the next five days at least. A few isolated showers or thunderstorms possible by this weekend. Don't see any 100-degree heat in our near future..

More discussion later this morning.

Lots of e-mail messages from folks missing our map discussion videos... didn't know it was so popular!

I am on vacation this week... I will be back in service on Monday July 3. Brian Peters is in Chicago; he will begin the map discussion videos on Thursday.

Everyone have a great week... I will post some pictures tonight if I have time....