ReggieChatman.com

Day three of the popular VooDoo Music and Art Festival in New Orleans was rained out 

Sunday, leaving fans and performers disappointed. 

Rain water flooded the festival grounds as organizers cited "dangerous weather conditions, 

including forecasted persistent rain and flash flood warnings for Orleans Parish for 

Sunday" as the reason for the cancellation.

After a rainy Saturday night with performances by artists such as Ozzy Ozborne, day 

three was expected to be the pinnacle of the weekend featuring Deadmau5, Post 

Malone and many more. Festival participant Cynthea Corfah described the cancellation 

as devastating news when she saw the announcement on Twitter.

“It was supposed to be a rain or shine event,” Corfah said. “People had mentally 

prepared themselves that it was going to be wet, muddy and rainy, but it still wouldn’t 

matter. We just wanted to go.”

Corfah said she felt the rain added to experience and explained that seeing everyone in 

a Halloween costume made it more exciting. She also recalled there was only mud and 

no lightning that Saturday.

While refunds will be issued for the day, fans and performers took to twitter to find 

venues for artists to perform. Corfah said, day three performer Chance the Rapper was 

in the French Quarter watching a magic show.

“It looked like he didn’t know what he was going to do with himself,” Corfah said.

The festival cancellation isn’t the first problem with Louisiana weather this year. On 

Sept. 5 lightning strikes canceled the first LSU home football game since World War I. 

Baton Rouge streets also flooded from excess rainfall on Oct. 25, leaving students 

stranded from their homes and parked cars sitting in in the flood water.

LSU student Austin Hebert said he went to get groceries that night and found that some 

of the streets had been blocked off by police. Determined to get home, Hebert found a 

gravel side road he thought would bring him around the blockages. 

“What I thought was a small puddle when I went to turn in was actually a ditch,” Hebert 

said. “I ended up putting my car right in the middle of it. My back tire was three feet off 

the ground, and I had to wait six hours in the rain for a tow truck to come and pull me 

out. It happened to be in a cow pasture, so it smelled like cow poop.”

Fox 8 New Orleans meteorologist Bruce Katz said the weather this fall is different from 

other years as there has been major climate change. 

“The first game that was a rained out from a lightning event was an anomaly,” Katz said. 

That was just afternoon and evening thunderstorms near the stadium. Over the 

summer, we developed a strong El Niño pattern.”

Defined as the above-average warming of Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures and 

atmospheric conditions that change the places where storms go, El Niño has already 

had a great effect on the climate in Louisiana. 

“El Niño is great in the summer for hurricanes because it creates a jetstream wind that 

potentially shears off the top of any hurricanes trying to develop,” Katz said. “But as you 

get into the fall and the winter months, it's more of a nuisance where you can get a lot of 

rain.” 

This strong El Niño pattern will give Louisiana systems every three to five days and it 

can last for up to an entire year, bringing a great deal of rainfall.

A Category 5 hurricane named Patricia made landfall along the coast of Mexico on Oct. 

23 and caused an estimated $283.2 million in damages. Remnants of the storm also 

caused a drastic change in weather in the U.S.

“As Patricia weakened when it made it over land, the moisture still moved over Texas 

and Mexico inland and affected us,” Katz said. “It created a lot of moisture that just sat 

over Louisiana for two and a half days. When the remnants of Patricia came in two 

weeks ago, we had a lot of wind and rain with it because it was part of a tropical system 

with still some rotation. It also developed little lull in the gulf that merged with remnants 

of Patricia, which led to the weather being so bad.”

The weather also has a direct correlation with what LSU facility services must do on a 

day-to-day basis. Assistant Director of LSU Facility Services Tammy Millican said 

preparing for the weather is a group effort.

“When we have heavy rain, roof leaks and sometimes some flooding affect some of the 

buildings on campus. We’ll come out and make sure the drains are clean, and that there 

is no water accumulation,” Millican said. “We have a campus that has buildings that 

were built way back in the 1930s. We know there are some buildings we have to watch, 

so it’s part of our normal routine to deal with weather issues.”

With the recent cuts in funding, Millican said custodians are covering more square feet 

because of reductions in staff over the last couple years. 

“We haven’t received deferred maintenance dollars from the state since 2008, so some 

of the things we like to do we have to sometime put on hold and address emergency 

situations of critical issues first,” Millican said. “This is Louisiana. We know the weather 

changes all the time, so we just have to be prepared for those conditions and be able to 

respond quickly. We are just trying to do more with less.”