OIA is shutting down at 5 pm on Saturday. Flights before then will take off as scheduled. Anything after that will be cancelled.
ETA: ninja’d.
Just relocated from Reno to Orlando; it was a long drive, and I’ve been here about a month.
My long-term girlfriend is living here as 4th year medical student. After 10 years, we decided to take that next step and move in together. Most of our friends would have been married four times over by now, but better late than never.
I quit my job right before leaving, and managed to land a software job at Lockheed within a week of arriving. Got a nice raise, and a sign on bonus too.
All just in time to die in a hurricane. Typical. 
I just remembered that my newer cordless drill has a USB port on the battery. Charging that up for phones. And I’m going to totally enjoy pulling it out of the truck and saying “This is only a drill. If it had been a real emergency…”
A lot of those portable 12-volt car battery jump starters also have USB ports. Probably a good idea to charge those up if you have any along with any other rechargeable things you have.
Mine and wife’s parents flew in from South FL. yesterday late at night. Most of their friends are still there but have hurricane shutters/windows. The biggest immediate problem will be if power goes out for days since they all live on 10-20th floors and are in their 60s-70s. I wonder what the evacuation % is in Miami-Dade and Broward. Probably way below 25% from what I hear.
The smart play with chargers/electronics too is that if you have two phones, turn one off and only use the other.
Then, when that phone dies, turn IT off, use the other phone and charge the firs phone while it’s off. It’ll charge quicker and you’re only using one power source at a time.
Also, the more portable charges you have the better obvi
My daughter and son-in-law are now in Ocala with my husband’s parents (who are in their mid-80s.) Their house is block construction, so as long as the roof doesn’t blow off, they should be fine. Once Irma blows thru, we’ll figure out if we need to go help them. I wish they’d just come here in the first place…
Tempting people who are already under extreme stress is not a good idea.
We’re safe home from our staycation in Cocoa Beach. The hotel was calling people to cancel their reservations as of 3p Friday, since they were under a mandatory evacuation. I was woken up around 1am with thunder and lightning and we decided to hit the road. Traffic along 528 and north on the Turnpike was no issue.
We’re in the middle of the state, north of Orlando in South Lake County. We’re far enough inland that flooding will not be a problem. We’re stocking up on water and will fill the bathtub tomorrow. Ivylad is doing a final yard cut once it stops raining and we’ll bring in the outside items. Gas tanks are full and we have some gas cans in the garage.
I think we’re ready.
All the theme parks are closed Sunday and Monday.
I want to say this is only the 4th or 5th time or so in it’s history that Disney has closed, and they’ve done it two years in a row now!
We’re gonna hit Magic Kingdom after work today just to say bye to the castle before Irma kills it 
East Orlando (10 minutes away from University of Central Florida), got water, food, booze, batteries, grill. Couldn’t find charcoal though. I’m on a second story apartment so I’m not worried about flooding. Apartments were build after last set of hurricanes so management assures us they are up to code. And if not, my car and renter’s insurance is paid up. If power and internet stays on, I’ll try to post some updates if I remember to do so. I hope everyone stays safe.
BTW, is the storm scheduled to hit Florida on 9/11? Geez.
Thanks (to RNATB as well) for the info. Don’t know the time of his flight, but hopefully “afternoon” means before 5pm.
Hopefully the hospital itself is solidly-enough built that it will withstand the storm. Are they planning on being at the hospital during the storm? They might want to check into the possibility of doing that - I imagine hospital management is actually making plans for staff to ride it out there. If I worked at such a place I’d definitely try to stay there - they’re likely to have backup generators and so on, so probably more comfortable than being at home in some ways.
I live in Broward. The portion of the county under mandatory evac is about 10% of the residential units, including mine. And at this time of year ~30% of those are vacant anyhow with their snowbird owners already up north.
The goal has never been to depopulate the county. It’s been to depopulate the half-mile closest to the ocean. If anybody further inland wants to leave and avoid putting up with no electricity for a week or two that’s gravy from the Emergency Manager’s POV.
As long as those optional evacuees don’t end up clogging the highways to the point that 100K people ride out the hurricane in a car in a traffic jam.
Hunkering down in Ft Myers. I’m in a ground floor apartment but am not expecting flooding. Still put everything I could up high, though. I can’t help but notice that now, EVERY prediction track has the eye going over my town.
As long as I get power back quickly, I should be inconvenienced more than devastated. I hope.
Because you want the place to look good just before it blows away? 
Well, and because snakes and skeeters love tall grass!
In other news, a whole bunch of my friends and relatives are participating in a Facebook prayer chain now, so we can quit prepping! 
And my 5-year-old: “I bet Aunt Irma (my father’s sister) is happy that they named the ‘hermicane’ after her. She’ll be famous!”
Nah…overgrown grass bugs him. 
Work is closed on Monday.
At work I knew both a Sandy, who understandably didn’t seem affected that a major storm by chance shared her name, and a Haiyan, who I was surprised seemed to be a little embarrassed when I mentioned the typhoon that hit the Philippines in 2013.
To show how seriously people are taking this storm, here in central North Carolina the local supermarket had sold out its gallon containers of water yesterday, although it was mostly restocked this morning.
Good luck and stay safe.
My daughter just told me my in-laws are evacuating from Port Charlotte and are going to pick her up in Tampa on the way north.