Ugh. 12 hour tornado watch for the east central counties. I’ve never experienced a watch for that long.
“Station failed.” :eek:
I’m not overly concerned here, because we’ve been through worse (with little damage) than this, but my customers today, yesterday, and the day before were all a little freaked out. I work in the grocery biz, and over the past three days we’ve done almost as much in sales as we usually do in a week. We sold through 22 pallets of water (4 gallons per crate, 45 crates per pallet = 3,960 gallons) in approximately 4 hours. Absolutely insane, and of course, my job these three days was to run the cash office, meaning I had to count every single penny worth of sales we made in those days. My only consolation is that we closed early tonight and that we are not open tomorrow.
Just time to wait and see. Orlandoans and Ocalans, watch out. This one is heading straight your way.
I just saw a graphic on CNN that said Frances is roughly the size of Texas. :eek:
Well let’s see, we get about a week to recover, then we have to deal with Ivan. :smack:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_astorm9+shtml/050318.shtml?
Let’s hope he isn’t related to Ivan the Terrible!!! 
ccwaterback, are you in a safe enough place?
Well I’m in south Pinellas county (St. Pete), it’s not supposed to be too awful bad here, but you never know. I am expecting a lot of rain, so I parked my car in the highest spot I could find near my apartment. I suppose I could lose power for awhile, that will be the biggest hassle, but I’m all set for whatever may happen. As long as my windows don’t get blown out, and my car doesn’t drown, I will feel good about the whole ordeal.
Thanks for asking, I appreciate it. 
You guys be careful down there!
And Ivylass, happy birthday, even if it isn’t the best of times.
Archergal, who also has a birthday today
Dave The Roommate and I are refugees again. No damage to the house (except rising damp in the rear wall) but we don’t have power. No matter, we’re at a powered friends’, and I have a giant bottle of Bombay Sapphire and an equally large bottle of tonic.
My worst injury is a hole in my foot where I stepped on a large screw pre-storm. I’ll live.
Good luck everyone!
We lost power twice, each for about 12 hours. It went out about 8am Saturday, came back about 8pm Saturday, went out again at about a quarter to ten Saturday night, and came back this morning at about 8. I think we’re through the worst of it. My SIL and BIL are going home to check on their animals, and we’re going to take my MIL home. She never lost power (grrrrrr).
I tell you what, I was about ready to French kiss the electrical socket when the power came back on. Our trellis fell over, but that was about it.
My sister is in Tampa, and she doesn’t have power.
I am done “hunkering down!” 
I’m going to take a shower.
Get a tetanus shot as soon as you can.
OOK! Ditto what ivylass said, RNATB. That sounds really painful, and it could cause an infection.
This is my fourth day at my parents’ house and I’m starting to get cabin fever. Yesterday, when we started getting tropical storm force winds, the 'rents headed out to the new house they’re building to make sure it was secure (did I mention they’re insane?). The wind lifted mom almost completely off the ground at one point. She says it means her diet is working.
We’re just getting the worst of the storm now. Originally I’d planned to head back to Palm Beach County today, but think I’ll be here for at least another day yet. I seriously doubt my office will be open tomorrow. Even if it is, my boss told me last week to work from Inverness until it was safe to come back. Judging by Ivan’s predicted path, it looks like I might be right back here next weekend.
Hope everyone is safe and making do as best they can. 88.9 FM in Tallahassee went off the air in the middle of a storm briefing at 9:15, so that source of information is out until the engineer can get to the transmitter to assess the problem. However, they are still streaming on the web at http://wfsu.org if you have power and need to know the latest.
Please disregard my earlier post, the station is back on the air as of 10:20.
We’re getting our butt kicked here in St. Pete this morning, today is MUCH worse than yesterday. Lots of wind and rain going on, my lights have flickered and actually went out for a few seconds, but so far, so good.
I went out for a drive this morning, dumb, but my apartment is real sheltered, I didn’t think it was too bad out there, until I got out there. All the gas stations around here that I saw had their pumps turned off, no gas. I managed to find a half gallon of milk, but you can forget about finding any bread. Hopefully tomorrow we can start cleaning up, and supplying up, before Ivan stops by.
Yes, much worse here today. My power is out, I drove down to Largo this morning to my folks because they have power so I brought the more expensive items from our freezer. Power went out sometime between 6 am and 7:30 (times I woke up and looked over at the clock). Bayshore Blvd in Tampa is underwater, downtown Tampa is flooded, most creeks and other water sources are at flood level or higher. Lots of strong rain and some wind, but not as bad as it could be. Oh, Shore Acres (NE St. Pete) is well flooded.
Mrs. Shibb and the Shibblets have been down in Sarasota/Venice area since Friday noontime. They’re itching to come back home but it’s obviously not time yet. I’m guessing no school in Pinellas or Hillsborough tomorrow. Work should be interesting.
And this is next up on our hurricane roster. If this one slams us too, it’s gotta be some kind of record for hurricane hits in a small timeframe.
Downtown Tampa is underwater, half a million (out of 2.3 million or so) in the Bay area are without power, “Acidic, radioactive water spills into bay”, all in all, it’s just a mess.
Forgot to add: if you want to see pictures of what’s going on, go here. That’s our largest local newspaper, and they’ve got some good shots of the damage around here.
Got a booster shot last month, and it didn’t really break the skin, more separated the bones in my foot. I have very thick soles.
On a happy note, power is back already, unlike last week when we waited a week.
We lost power from midnight-4AM on Sunday, then from 8AM Sunday until 1:40 Monday afternoon :eek:. People just down the road from us never lost power 
. My Mom has COPD, and right now she is practically married to her nebulizer (sp?).
Other than the power being out for that long and having to throw out some food, our other problem is the patches of wet carpet we have along some walls. I have no idea where the water came from (yes, I know, the rain, but how did it get inside?). Who do I contact, the builder or the insurance company?
We also have a tree leaning like this: /.
BTW, I grew up about 15 minutes south of where that acidic water is. Cargill (the phosphate company) has been bad news for the environment for as long as I can remember.
Off to use the Shop-Vac …
Just got our power back and I sure hope it stays on. Yeah, we had the generator so were able to run some lights, the TV and the fridge, but, Florida is really sticky and smelly without AC.
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, IVYLASS!!!
I have to tell you I think Frances was much scarier than Charley. First of all Charley went through in about an hour and it was night time. Frances was mostly in the daylight and hours and hours and hours! :eek: We have a clump of 60-foot oak trees in our backyard that you could actually see lifting the ground up. They are going to have to go. They are still reporting an incredible amount of tornadic activity.
I’m afraid we’ll go down with the count if Round 3 (Ivan) gets here.