This is a good post over at the Times-Picayune’s Hurricane blog on why Mayor Nagin was right to declare Gustav “the mother of all storms” even as it looks like it’s weakening. I know it’s early, but it looks like Nagin got things right. The post:

Let me begin this jaunt into the back rooms of hurricane preparedness by explaining that I have not talked to Mayor Ray Nagin, nor asked for a comment from him for this blog entry. But then, it’s not needed. The mayor used his bully pulpit Saturday evening to urge in no uncertain terms — in no uncertain terms — that residents of New Orleans should listen to him and his emergency planners, state emergency planners and federal emergency planners when they announced the beginning of an evacuation and the expected declaration of an emergency evacuation. In that discussion, Nagin declared Gustav “the mother of all storms,” and in a bit of hyperbole warned that it would be twice as large as Katrina. He said Katrina was 400 miles across, but actually, the storm was 450 miles across when it made landfall. So did Nagin go too far? I think not. If he was shown the same storm surge model map I was shown today, his words were too weak. I would have borrowed a line that former Gov. Kathleen Blanco used in the run-up to Hurricane Rita’s landfall: If you don’t plan on leaving, please write your Social Security number on your arm in indelible ink so we can identify your body.

There’s more to the post and worth a read.