Boing Boing reader Ken says,
Just got back from 5 days at Perdido Beach, FL, which is just slightly to the east of Mobile, AL. Perdido and points east are pretty much undamaged and operating normally, though we saw significant straight-line wind damage inland (trees, damaged roofs, etc.). Some of our party drove in from Shrevesport, LA via Hattiesburg. Hattiesburg is a disaster.
Of interest — There were a very large number of military helicopters flying almost directly overhead heading mostly west (toward Mobile) and some back east (probably 80-20 West-East). I mean something like one or two every few minutes during daylight hours, continuously. Most of them were what looked like US Navy cargo variant UH-60 Blackhawks. There were some number of what looked like SH-60s (rescue version of the Blackhawk helicopter…open sides with overhead winch), and significant numbers (maybe 20-25% of the total) of CH-53 "Sea Stallion" heavy transports.
There were also a small number of older heavy transport 'copters I think were UH-3 "Sea Kings" (most with orange-and-white Navy or CG rescue paint jobs, unlike the olive drab on all the others).
Looked like there is a *lot* of stuff being moved to the west by military helicopter, and not that many of those helicopters immediately moving back east.
For the conspiracy theorists, none of them appeared to be combat variants (and there weren't door guns visible through binoculars, and no 30mm chin cannons or anything like that).
Even more interesting, there were at least 2 Kearsarge-type hovercraft amphibious assault ships going west. Couldn't really tell what was on them (looked like containers…they can land an awful lot of tonnage), but they never came back east while we were there.
