PROFESSIONALS STUDY LOGISTICS. At the swap meet, I ate lunch with a trader whose military buddies had extensive experience with disaster management. He was impressed with the way something like 2 1/2 million people evacuated south Texas and western Louisiana. We were hard pressed to come up with any way to prepare for such a situation better than the authorities did, especially with half again as many people evacuating as were originally anticipated. (Oh, and the Superintendent is still waiting for those individuals who made invidious comparisons of the troubles evacuating New Orleans -- where the actual results outperformed a drill -- with the Chinese evacuating 25 percent of the population of Shanghai -- to commend the local, state, and U.S. authorities for evacuating nearly the equivalent of Shanghai despite some troubles managing the use of the roads and the absence of any passenger rail capacity. You know who you are.)

Blogs for Industry has been thinking about the effectiveness of reversing the inbound lanes on the expressways, noting that the inbound lanes might be of some value for bringing fuel or breakdown crews toward the cities being cleared. He also recommends some history from Austin Bay. (And although the Germans might have pioneered counterflow, using their Autobahnen to shift resources from front to front, the picture that sticks in my mind is the U.S. Army's adaptation of the practice, using four lanes eastbound, with long columns of prisoners marching west in the medians.) What amuses, though, is the news of the well to do evacuating all their cars (Dad drives one, Mom the other, each of the kids with a driving license ...) as well as everything that can be towed. Tradeoffs. On the one hand, fewer damage claims for destroyed vehicles and adult toys. On the other hand, more congestion and a greater likelihood of people getting caught by the storm.)