While most of the media watches the terrible flood waters spawned by Irene begin to recede, and wonders about Tropical Storm Lee’s rain around New Orleans, those of us along the Missouri River continue to deal with record flooding. It’s been over two months since portions of Interstate 29 in NW Missouri were closed, and they’re still under water.

Iowa Republican Congressman Tom Latham came back and viewed the damage in Council Bluffs, and was surprised by what he saw.

It’s no surprise to those of us along the river, Congressman. We’ve been looking at it all summer, and we’re just hoping it’s gone by Halloween.

I come from a family of academics who are actually intellectually intimidating.

I’ve been live-blogging the storm from my blog all weekend and I have to say that Irene has been behaving pretty much the way I thought it would go for us here in Upstate New York: lots of rain and wind starting last night once the eye of the storm got to the Delmarva Peninsula.

According to a very cool map up at the LIPA storm center page, we already have power outages in Hempstead. Levittown, Long Beach and on the north fork.

The loud sound of the first deluge woke me at 4 AM and I can’t get back to sleep, so I thought I would start a liveblog.

When my power goes out–any we’re pretty certain it will, I’m gonna lose internet. We are expecting to lose cell service if the winds are bad –no wind here so far– because out repeaters are on the watertower on the top of an exposed hill and–wait for it–at the beach.

Hurricane Irene, while “only” a Category 1 hurricane, still poses significant risks to folks from North Carolina up into New England. The National Hurricane Center warns of high sustained winds spreading across a very wide area, with heavy rains, a strong storm surge, and possible tornadoes.

This makes for a golden opportunity for people with bad news to release, and at least a couple have taken advantage of the media’s focus on Irene to put that bad news out where it will get blown away by the storm.