No link, but I’m told the government’s storm survey folks think the storm surge at Waveland, Mississippi may have been over 30 feet. My information suggests that’s measuring from mean sea level (never thought to wonder about that before).

Thirty feet—isn’t that in the neighborhood of the height the water reached in tsunami-struck areas at the peak of the wave? Had New Orleans borne the brunt of a surge on that scale, we wouldn’t be arguing about who screwed up the rescue efforts because there wouldn’t have been anybody to rescue.

Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is pushing the National Weather Service to stop using its logo, and to start calling itself “NOAA’s National Weather Service.” NOAA honchos are actually prodding NWS agencies to remove the NWS logo from its websites even as the service works overtime to support hurricane relief efforts and several NWS offices in the hurricane damage area have been damaged themselves—and NWS personnel deal both with Katrina’s aftermath-related workload and their own property losses.

Interesting priorities, NOAA.