Katrina's First Landfall

I've been looking over the times Katrina first made landfall on the Broward County coast, the 50-mile diameter of the eye, and the time I arrived home. When I drove back from Vero Beach into the hurricane last Thursday, the eye was just making landfall where I was driving as I finally got back.

It seems I either drove through the eyewall itself, or through the last rain band next to the eyewall. That's the very dark pictures toward the end.

This series of pictures was shot blind. The viewfinder on my digital camera was broken. Even if it weren't I wasn't about to take my eyes off the road. They were shot through the windows of my car, mostly through the windshield ahead, holding the camera in the air as l drove, often at 80 miles per hour.

So overlook, please, the reflections, rain, salt, and dust on the glass, and the bits of car that got into the pictures. I left them uncropped, unlightened, unstraightened virgin pix.

The pictures begin shortly after I left Vero Beach on the 110-mile drive home, and continue to the ficus tree that totally obstructed the street a half block from my house. They finally cut away enough tree limbs to reopen that road earlier today, Tuesday, five days later.