Shreveport, LA

It's been another surreal day.

The sun has been shining, as usual, and we've been doing all the things a family does on a Sunday at home: reading the papers, playing board games, swimming in the communal pool across the street. I went for a run, but it was too hot and I ended up walking for much of the way.

The Weather Channel has been glowering at us all day from the corner of the room, an ever-present reminder of what's happening to our home town. I wondered irreverently whether they'd called all their advertisers and said sorry, we're having a major weather event and our audience figures have skyrocketed, so we're doubling our rates.

This is when the channel truly comes into its own, with the country's top meteorologists enlightening us about the finer points of surface water temperatures, storm surges and tornadic activity. But it all seemed so abstract. I found it hard to relate to all these fancy graphics and colour-enhanced satellite images, until about 7 this evening.

Gustav's wispy outer fringes had just started to stalk New Orleans, and the reporter was standing in a very familiar location: Canal Street, the city's slightly down-at-heel main shopping street. With 95 percent of the population gone, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew in force, it was eerily deserted.

In the background, rain-lashed traffic lights cycled pointlessly from red to green and back again. The long rows of stately date palms, planted to cheer the place up after Katrina, were already straining at their hurricane tethers.

A tornado warning was in progress, which means that tornadoes have actually been spotted in the vicinity. And already, long before the full fury of the storm erupted, the reporter was lost for words and struggling to stand upright.

I'm glad we're well out of it, and I know we've made the right decision, but part of me wishes I could experience Gustav at first hand. Pam's best friend Toni is staying, together with many of her friendly and supportive neighbours, and at least one person on our block has decided not to evacuate. When we go home, all we'll see is the destruction, not the cataclysm that wrought it.

Another thing I'm very aware of is our good fortune in having relatives with whom to take refuge. The storm has displaced some 1.9 million people, many of whom will end up on makeshift dormitory beds in shelters just miles from here, surrounded by noisy, anxious and sleepless strangers.