CARL AZUZ, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, I`m Carl Azuz. And welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. Yesterday, we showed you what it looked like before Isaac made landfall. Today, you are going to see what happened when the storm reached the shore.
Relentless waves of rain, some serious and dangerous flooding and more than three quarters of a million people without power. That is the impact of the storm named Isaac had along the U.S. Gulf Coast. This is what it looked like. These are images of the storm that were taken from the international space station. When Isaac made landfall on Tuesday night, it was a category one hurricane, it was downgraded to a tropical storm yesterday, but that didn`t mean that things eased up on the ground.
Part of the reason is that Isaac is moving really slowly, and the slower it moves, the longer it has to pound the Gulf Coast. Check out the conditions that some of our reporters were in from Tuesday night through Wednesday morning.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The wind is just whipping these trees, a huge danger of flying debris. I`ve got to kind of keep an eye out. My brave photojournalist Ken Tooey (ph) and I are going to be taking you through some of the -- an illustration of some of what they are dealing with here.
ROB MARCIANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You`ve got a huge warehouse behind the camera, you`ve got the huge ballroom to my left here, and kind of the outdoor part of the facility is this canopy structure, which is coming apart with the winds of this storm.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right now, I feel like I`m being attacked by a swarm of bees, the rain. It`s coming in really strong, it`s just stinging as it blows up against you and hits your skin.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This city has been buffeted ever since last night, but definitely with sunrise it has gotten harder and heavier to stand out of this weather.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: In a lot of areas around New Orleans, the levy system that was rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina helped deal with the all the downpour, but water went out over the top of one levy that wasn`t part of that upgrade. That led to sever flooding and more than 150 calls from people needing to be rescued. Ed Lavandera was in another house that was trying to hold back the rising waters.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We`re in the midst of going through Hurricane Isaac here in Grand Isle, Louisiana. We`re going to come and give you sense of the conditions that we are battling against. Right now we are in the garage of Dean Blanchard`s (ph) home. This is ground level. And you can see now the storm surge and the water is now starting to come into the garage here, and this is where things start getting a little bit dicey. And this is what the water does, it moves slowly. Look right over here, as each wave kind of comes in, it gets - creeps closer and closer.
This is the entrance into the house, into the ground floor.
I wanted to show you this shot. You can`t keep this door open very long, the wind is just too - too much. What we are dealing with here is the water gets - creeps closer to where we are, it`s hard to keep this door open, work with me, but this is the storm surge. This is the - ah, sorry. See how fast moving the water is all around us. We probably got another two feet here before water starts coming inside the house. It`s hard to keep the door open with the wind, but just look at how powerful that water is coming across the yard. We gave you the ground level view of the storm surge and the water pushing by the house, but this is what we needed to stay away from, we just don`t know how high this is going to get. And obviously being on the ground floor is too dangerous, and being down there with all our equipment is not smart either. And then one last thing I`m going to show you, I`m going to show you the one - the room that has basically kept us on the air and able to do all the reporting we`ve done all day.
We took one look at this generator here, we knew that we`d be in good shape. This generator is able to power up the house and keep it on. No problem here, it`s absolutely amazing. It`s gone out a couple of times, you know, kind of been struggling a little bit, but you can`t complain. We`ve been able to stay up through the worst part of this storm. So, thank God we have that with us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: Ed did that report at about midnight on Tuesday. For the next morning he said the house did flood. There were three to four feet of water in the garage.
This week we`ve talked about Isaac. Its projected path, its wind speeds, when it might turn from a tropical storm into a hurricane. These are some of the people who helped figure all that out, the hurricane hunters. They work for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and this animation shows what they do. These hurricane hunters fly into the storm and then they fly all over around it, crossing over the eye, hitting the outer bands, you see all those labels here. What the hurricane hunters are doing, as they fly around, is dropping off probes, they measure things like temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction. And then the probes use satellites to send that information back to forecasters on the ground.
All right. We are going to leave the Gulf of Mexico now, and travel across the Pacific Ocean to eastern Asia. In this part of the world, hurricanes are called typhoons. And right now, the Korean Peninsula is recovering from a major one. We told you about Typhoon Bolaven earlier this week, as it moved across the Japanese island of Okinawa. That island made it through the storm without too much damage, but it was a different story in South Korea. You can see of the damage from Bolaven strong wind and rain, at least 16 people were killed. And hundreds of thousands of people lost power. A lot of transportation was cut off as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: See if you can I.D. me. I was established in 1850s, my symbol is an elephant. Abraham Lincoln was my first member elected U.S. president, though 17 others from my party have served since then.
I`m the Republican Party. And I`m sometimes called the GOP, which stands for Grand Old Party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: Next week, we`ll be focused on the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, but right now it`s all about the Republican Party in Tampa. Tonight, Mitt Romney, the man Republicans hope will be the party`s 19th president, takes the stage to accept the nomination. His running mate, Paul Ryan, accepted the nomination for vice president last night. These speeches are happening pretty late, usually after we produce our show. You can check them out on our homepage, cnnstudentnews.com by clicking on the link for the election center.
Mitt Romney`s wife Ann gave one of the main speeches on Tuesday; she talked about how husband`s personal background shows why he is qualified to be president.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN ROMNEY, MITT ROMNEY`S WIFE: Mitt will be the first to tell you that he is the most fortunate man in the world. He had two loving parents who gave him strong values and taught him the value of work. He had the chance to get the education his father never had, but as his partner on this amazing journey, I can tell you, Mitt Romney was not handed success.
(APPLAUSE)
ANN ROMNEY: He built it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: Tuesday`s keynote speech, the last big speech of the night was given by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. He discussed leadership.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R ), NEW JERSEY: Leadership delivers, leadership counts. Leadership matters. And here is the great news I came here tonight to bring you. We have this leader for America. We have a nominee who will tell us the truth and who will lead with conviction, and now he has a running mate that will do the same. We have Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan, and we need to make them the next president and vice president of the United States!
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s time for the "Shoutout." Which of these words describes someone who was absent without permission? If you think you know it, then shout it out! Is it, tardy, tedious, truant or tenuous? You`ve got three seconds, go!
Someone who was absent without permission is truant and hopefully, that`s not you. That`s your answer, and that`s your "Shoutout."
AZUZ: There is a new study out on truancy. Getschool.com interviewed about 500 8th to 12th graders, who said they skip regularly, and found out that about 7 million American students, about 15 percent miss at least a month of school each year. Those who do usually spend the time hanging out with friends, some just sleep. They are also less likely than their classmates to graduate high school, go to college or get any kind of college degree. Skippers don`t think a lot of people notice when they are out, and when asked what could make them want to skip less often, they said they wanted school to better connect to them in their lives, and that they were influenced by teachers, parents and celebrities. You probably know some people who skip school. What else could influence them to be there? It`s what we are talking about on our blog today at cnnstudentnews.com. You know it can have some bad effects down the road, so tell us your ideas on what can be done to stop skipping. And please, remember, the blog is first names only.
Now, before we go today: is a tomato a vegetable of a fruit? When one is flying right in your face, who cares? Look into the annual Tomatina festival in Spain, where the streets run red with tomato juice. The thing looks like one massive food fight, and that`s supposedly how it started. Some kids started tossing tomatoes at each other, and they showed up the next year to do it again. Now, tens of thousands of people take part every year. Some might call it a festival, others just say it`s a giant food fight. Tomato, tomato. We`ll catch up with you tomorrow for more cnnstudentnews, have a great day.
END