FWIW, those who have seen the morning national map may have noted the cold front that moved through my city last night (low of 70 or so)-you’d think the cold front would deflect the 'cane east, but we shall see.
That sounds good. I started another thread about how Puerto Rico might come out ahead with FEMA if they get disaster $ to rebuild infrastructure assuming the people themselves do OK. It sounds like for most of the island the damage isn’t catastrophic. That is great news. Irma is a dangerous storm. I hope everyone rides it out OK.
I woke up to wind and rain from the south, meaning that the worst part of the storm has passed. Everything is normal otherwise. We had minor water damage last time around, but so far we’re ship-tight.
Let’s see how the North fares.
Thanks.
I’ve second and third guessed myself…but the die is cast at this point. Evacuating will start to get hard even for me as a single guy - traffic and gas would be rough. I do have cans of gas for the generator, and could take them on the road if I tried to leave. But there’s no way my parents would leave. And my sister with her two dogs aren’t going anywhere. Plenty of my friends have evacuated - some locally to places like my house, some out of town. For the most part, the single people have been leaving, and the families have been sheltering in place.
I expect this to be bad, but hopefully not deadly. “Run from the water, hide from the wind.” I’m well inland - the storm surge maps don’t come close to touching me, and I’m in one of the areas that isn’t even required to carry flood insurance. (I have it anyway, because I’m sane.)
As long as a tree doesn’t fall on my roof, I should be ok. The latest forecast track - and I say this in jest because I know not to trust the narrow black line of the forecast - has the hurricane missing me by a good 10 miles.
After Wilma, I was only without power for two days. Most of the county was much worse off. I’m on a major street, with mostly burried power lines. If they bring up a few lines to keep power to the school on one side, and the fire station on the other side, they get thousands of houses for free. So I’m hopefully there too…but I do have five days of gas for my generator. More, if I don’t run it all day - I only really NEED it to charge batteries for tools, and to keep the fridge cold. I can make that decision after I see what the new reality is.
Right now, my challenge is how to move a bunch of stuff from my garage into a spare room in the house, so I can fit a second car in there. The garage. I’m not putting a car in the bedroom. Although I do have a friend’s motorcycle in the garage right now, and it might end up in the bedroom. 
That’s the thing that will eventually force the sharp turn north. But for that frontal passage Irma would drive straight through the Florida Strait south of Key West and into the Gulf.
The key mystery upon which the fate of millions hangs is just when and how sharply Irma will follow that front’s lead & make that big right turn.
Grumbacher Red, I’m in Statesboro, and it looks like lodging is limited. Since we live in a mobile home, we’re bugging out to North Bulloch, with all the supplies we can muster, to my parents’ little farmhouse. It will be primitive, but we can offer a “Portal” in the storm if you need a place to be. Hopefully, we’ll be grumbling a lot Wednesday, as we drag groceries and generators back to town. But Matthew was ugly enough that we want to get a few miles and a little more elevation between ourselves and Irma.
PM me if you need a spot. (And that’s ditto for anyone else stranded nearby. We might all be sleeping on the porch, but that is better than by the roadside)
We’ve got friends who, in a case of spectacular bad timing, literally just moved to the Bahamas last month. They’ve got three young daughters. Last we heard the family were hunkered down in the house, but by now they may well have opted to evacuate instead. It’s not looking good.
But all the models have Irma bumping into the equivalent of a wall, either as it approaches or as it enters the Gulf of Mexico, and being forced almost due north. So I assume that means a big high-pressure zone over the Gulf that keeps Irma well away from Houston.
Miami, OTOH…
Glad to hear you’re OK!
A lot depends on where in the Bahamas they are. The archipelago runs roughly NW-SE. Islands on the more southwesterly side of the Bahamas could get extremely clobbered, but some of the more northeasterly islands may be missed entirely.
I appreciate your generousity so much! At the moment, since I have a good bit of family there, they are willing to put us up for a few days. I hope this all winds up being just a big inconvenience as well! Stay hunkered down in your “Portal” ;)!
Well, my in-laws finally made it to Savannah last night - at 11 PM. They left Palm Beach just after noon for what even then Google said was a 6.5 hour drive. They hit Jacksonville at 7:30. Google Maps still claimed the roads were OK, but the in-laws said that was not so.
Their plan is to go the rest of the way up to Asheville, NC today. We encouraged them to consider staying in Savannah an extra night depending on their fatigue level (as of last night, the hotel still had availability). But I think they were continuing on. Hopefully the roads (and gas) will be OK for today. As they’re getting further from the coast, I would imagine so. Of course, Asheville is right in the projected path right now, but I’m hoping the storm will have lost a lot of steam by the time it gets there, and flooding should be less of a problem (well, no storm surge at least!!).
I’m glad they didn’t wait a day to go - even Google is admitting the roads are a mess today.
I wish they would all decide to keep on going and come up here to the DC area; we’re here, and the Asheville relatives have a daughter here as well.
I just found out a co-worker is in the Miami area (we’re DC-based but the project team is all over, as we all work remotely). She’s been told to hunker down - between the traffic and gas shortages, there’s no way to leave at this point.
Speaking of which: you probably already know this, but when a hurricane was forecast to hit the DC area, we were told to get the cars in the garage, but get them as physically close to the garage door as possible - touching it, if we could. The reason for that is it will make it harder for the garage door to be blown inward, and therefore harder for the wind to get in and under the roof there, and therefore harder for the roof to be ripped of from underneath (same logic that hurricane-resistant houses are supposed to have minimal overhang from the roof).
Savannah evacuations have been ordered today.
I guess that makes sense. My garage door is hurricane impact rated - it has additional cross bars that I engage for extra protection. I had it installed in 2005, and it’s up to current code. But it never hurts to do extra, and I hadn’t thought about that part.
Watching Irma evacuation videos on the highway: they show standstill traffic on one side of the highway - three lanes. And no traffic whatsoever on the other side of the highway - again, three lanes. Why NOT open the other side’s 2 lanes for evacuation traffic, and lower speed limits to like 20 mph to make it safe? All it takes is a crapload of orange traffic cones.
The SE quadrant of Georgia is officially under a state of emergency, mandatory evacuations east of I95, along with some low-lying bits west of the interstate. Fuel is becoming a bit scarce around here, so I imagine it won’t get better closer to the get out zones. The Guv has activated the National Guard, and I expect that I’ll soon hear a lot of helicopter traffic, as the DOD starts moving those from Savannah to Augusta. And Interstate 16 will be contra-flowed to westbound only Saturday.
Locally, the university has cancelled classes and moved the football game to Birmingham, a the Board of Education will announce plans for the k12 schools tomorrow.
But the good news is that jury summons has been cancelled for Tuesday!
Stupid question: what happens to prisons/jails in vulnerable areas? Though I suspect they are built stronger than your average home.
Holy crap, and there’s another one brewing right behind Irma, Hurricane Jose. It’s already Category 2 and has time and room to get worse.
Found this site:
latest update from Vieques (Vieques (PR) - Local Reports (Caribbean Hurricane Network))
[QUOTE=kate]
Vieques fared really well. Trees down of course. The major roads are already cleared. There is minimal damage to the power lines ( they have been maintaining a green space underneath them for months). The Malecon suffered only salt burn on the plants. A good friend told me that North side only suffered fallen trees (he was out cutting trees off the road to help folks). So all in all our island community was blessed this time and don’t we know it. We are grateful. Beyond grateful. Lazy Jacks opens at 5:00 tonight and El Blok is offering free WiFi as many communications towers are down. Our hearts are with those folks piecing their lives back together and for those folks in Irmas path.
Beyond thankful,
K
[/QUOTE]
Brian