Wxman RIchie, I also read reports of a 30 foot storm surge and heard them mention this high of a surge on TV reports as well, yet to be confirmed IMO.... but trust me, it was tremendous... I guess it doesn't matter if its 20 feet or so, if you have 10-20 foot waves added to it.... still catastrophic, no question about it, from what I've seen on TV, the damage inflicted by Ivan's surge is eerily similar to what I remember from Camille.... it just didn't do the wind damage that Camille did....

Scott, the eye of Camille went into western coastal cities of Bay St. Louis and the Pass Christian areas ... that is approximately 25 miles west of my house, thus I was in the right/east quad of Camille... I'm in the central part of the MS coast.... Biloxi, a wonderful place to live on the beach...

Terri, thanks for the prayers... this is a great web site... I just got home from mass, everyone was counting their blessing along the coast in MS... we dodge a 44 magnum bullet with this one... I almost feel guilty because we went unscathed, and poor eastern AL and the FL panhandle has been devastated...

some of the stories coming out of the panhandle for those who rode out the storm are unbelievable... still 14 or so unaccounted for at the moment