Senior economics student Chris Duffy picked up a frisbee, reached back and let it rip Tuesday afternoon on LSU’s Parade Ground.
The white disc rose vertically, traveling about halfway to its intended recipient before catching hold of a wind gust and boomeranging backward straight over Duffy’s head.
“Throwing into this wind is not fun,” Duffy said, as 25 m.p.h. gusts swirled around campus, according to figures from the National Weather Service.
The winds are on the outskirts of Hurricane Isaac, which is expected to reach Baton Rouge sometime Wednesday afternoon as a tropical storm, according to WAFB’s forecasters.
But the Parade Ground looked just like it would any other Tuesday afternoon, with students playing pick-up soccer, football and frisbee as Isaac roars toward Louisiana’s capital.
Students said hurricane parties, board games and sleepovers will likely pass the majority of their time during the University’s two-day “hurrication.”
“I’m actually pretty pumped for it,” said Duffy, an East Campus Apartment resident who said an 18 hour drive home to Michigan wasn’t an option. “We’ve got board games and cards, and if the power doesn’t go out, we’ve got XBOX and movies.”
BIology junior Ben Xie said his parents wanted him to come home, but a 14-hour drive to Lubbock wasn’t happening because he didn’t think it would be that bad.
“On a scale of 0 to 10, I’d probably say a 4,” Xie said of his worry level regarding Isaac. “If it were a higher category, I’d be a little more worried.”
New Orleans native and accounting freshman Lee Babst knows the drill, since Hurricane Katrina pushed him up to New Jersey with family for three months. But he’s not worried about this hurricane.
“It’s pretty cool not having classes,” Babst said. “I’ll finish some homework I guess.”
Freshmen roommates Ashley Pikes and Nicole Butler said they were having a sleepover in Herget Hall, where they’d mostly be eating and playing card games.
“It’s just a storm, just a little wind and rain,” Pikes said.
The storm is expected to make landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River Tuesday evening, according to the NWS.
____ Contact Ben Wallace at [email protected]