In my neck of the woods, it’s been a steady downpour since I woke up about 6 hours ago. Practically everything is closed (except I saw a Dunkin Donuts with a line this morning, and a gas station open but only selling diesel, since that’s all they had left).
The wind hasn’t been particularly noticeable, although I did feel that it was starting to pick up when I last took a walk a few minutes ago. But, right now all I see are some treetops rocking back and forth. No gusts.
@Moriarty: if you don’t mind a mini-dox, what landmark town/city are you near?
I’ve heard of an approaching hurricane as being like being pursued by a tortoise with a 1000 lbs of TNT on its back. And a lit fuse.
I’ve also seen it called “A snow day; Southern Style”.
Here most stuff is open normally now, but I expect a lot of places to close around dusk. Looking at the traffic I can see, both live & online, it seems like about half of the greater Miami metroblob is doing business as usual, and the other half is just sitting at home waiting.
Here at ~2:30pm Wed it remains intermittently cloudy, the breeze is up to 20 gusting 38, and it has only spit a bit of rain all day.
@LSLGuy Moriarty mentioned Pasco County yesterday; I noted it because I have relatives there, 30 miles inland and currently battened down.
And @Crafter_Man that ventusky site is awesome. I’ve been playing with it for 10 minutes. It shows Milton’s wind speed at around 76 MPH near the surface, but 110 MPH at 250m above ground.
Watching the Weather Channel and there’s a guy reporting from some waterfront, forget where, pointing out how the water’s receded to join with the oncoming surge, then the camera pans left…
To a group of people, including children, standing on the seawall gawking.
There are no words…
ETA: Oh, and they’re reporting tornado warnings now, including of wall tornados, forming on the southern and eastern side.
There have been a couple of small tornadoes over on the east coast side Both out in the rural parts / Everglades, but that long rain band / line of tstms running more or less north/south is slowly translating eastward and will eventually overlay suburbia.
In general Florida tornadoes are very weak sauce. And short-lived with correspondingly short tracks. An F2 is an extreme outlier. I’m not qualified to say if that comment properly applies to tornadoes driven by a hurricane. OTOH I am sure if we get any sharknadoes or alligator-nadoes that will be a very grave sign.
Right now I’m out to eat near the shore in southern Palm Beach county. NWS sez the wind has picked up 26 gusting 48 ate a nearby airport, but I’m just not seeing that here. Still no rain. The line I mentioned in the previous paragraph managed to almost stay entirely out in the rural / everglades while going northbound until it had missed almost all of the metroblob. The high-lightning areas are going to slide out to sea in a mostly uninhabiited stretch of coast. Yaay,
Florida is the lightning capital of the USA (really) and the lighting rates in that line are something to behold.
Here’s a live streaming beach webvid near me:
Right now some surfers are standing there and others are surfing.
There are usually tornadoes associated with most hurricanes but most of those are short lived and not especially powerful.
But there are always exceptions and even “weak” tornadoes can wreak havoc on homes. The Eyewall just posted their afternoon update, and I’m very surprised by how many tornadoes have spawned this far ahead of the storm. Given climate change, who knows if this will be the new normal?
Checking in from a bit south of LSLGuy. We’ve had two little rain showers so far here in central Broward county. Been overcast all day, and a little bit windy. We expect this evening to be a little more active, but not tremendously so.
Things are quiet and boring, just like I like my hurricanes. I still work from home, but my office decided to close the physical building mid-afternoon. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow - they just texted me to tell me they will be closed. (And they gave me less than 24 hours notice!)
There have been a lot of tornado warnings in the state, as others have mentioned. I’ve had a few for my area, but they were all for storms out in the everglades, 20 or so miles pretty much due west of me.
There are currently about 150k customers without power in the state. Only 2800 of those are in my county. Much of the rest of the state is going to get much more activity than we are down here.
Key West is not in the direct path of the storm, but the water and wind are whipped up good, and people just have to get that photo at Southernmost Point!:
So far that looks like a normal day near the end of a jetty in Southern California. Hardly something to be afraid of. Now kick it up about eleventy hundred percent and that concrete buoy is in danger of disappearing into the sea. But not yet.
Here the saturating rain plus windy night equaled a vast number of large trees rotating 90 degrees on the Y axis. (With “windy” being gusts above 70 mph.)
Wow. Now at 7pm there is zero rain anywhere in the entire peninsula south of a line from Fort Myers on the west to Melbourne on the east. And none on the wat from farther south or west. North of that line is a LOT of soaking rain. But down here it’s dry. Pretty much as advertised, but still kinda surprising to see.
After eating my slow meal I went outside and saw fresh raindrops on parked cars and barely damp pavement. That’s it. The wind does seem to be picking up a bit, but it’s certainly not scary strong, just interesting-strong.
My lights just flickered (but I still have power…for now).
My phone reports winds here are 33 mph, with gusts into the 60s. Occasionally you hear a sheet of rain hitting the windows, and they have shook a few times.
If anyone wants to keep up-to-date with a particular city in the path of the hurricane, check to see if a local TV station has a streaming app. If they do, you can watch their weather coverage to get detailed info as to what’s happening there. Using a station’s app is handy when you have relatives in the path and want to track what’s happening in their region.
