In article 6BDRe.7684$__1.2678@trnddc07, "sfb" wrote:

The challenge getting folks on the bus three days in advance is an
exercise left to the reader.

Friday morning, Katrina was a cat 1 just south of Naples, Florida some
600 miles from New Orleans. The west coast of Florida was still on
hurricane watches and warnings so motivating anybody in New Orleans to
evacuate would have been difficult.


You beat me to my thoughts. If you go through the NOAA archives you'll
see that even at noon on Saturday there was a 5% it would strike
either Cedar Key, FL or Galveston, TX. The chance of it passing within
65 nm of NO at that point was calculated as only about 20% (admittedly
it was at the top of the list at 20%). I don't think anyone outside a
Usenet heel digging contest would seriously propose evacuating 20
million people every time a cat 1 storm wanders into the gulf.