Dopers living in the affected areas: what preparations have you done?
My brother lives in or near Sun City Center (inland between Tampa and Sarasota) he sent this in an email:
Here is the good news. Earlier this year we added permanent accordion hurricane shutters to our windows. Last year we had to put up steel panels which had to be bolted to the house. Now we just have to close the shutters and lock them. I will do some of them today in preparation for what is coming. This should take about 15 minutes. The shutter on the lanai slider can be locked from the inside and will be the last opening closed.
We have all the supplies we need as I buy several cases of bottled water before there is any run or panic at the stores. We usually have enough food in the kitchen refrigerator, garage refrigerator and the freezer
Brian
Yet another reason I’m glad my inlaws left FL last year. My MIL is safely ensconced about 7 miles from us instead of still in Ocala, which looks like it’ll feel the storm. Merrylande probably won’t notice it.
My In-Laws are north of Fort Meyers and still haven’t recovered from the last storm thanks to the shitty insurance company.
Not sure what they’re doing for this one, my wife is checking in with them later today. I hope the storm leaves them alone this time.
I’m awaiting activation by the County to work in a storm shelter.
A guy I know decided “no more winters” three years ago. Sold his house in PA and moved to Florida where they first rented then bought a house.
After a year in Florida they decided “no more hurricanes”; they sold their Florida house and moved back to PA.
We have some old friends who retired in St. Pete’s. Looks like they may finally get hit broadside, if the storm continues to track towards Tampa. The wife is the more pragmatic of the two and I would suspect they’ve already packed up and left.
I hope not. Just watch for those storm surges up the Patuxent!
We just had a new roof put on the house a couple months ago, and also built ourselves a small pole barn with our own little hands. Guess we’ll see how it all holds up.
Good luck. Is it one of those new stronger roofs?
I truly don’t know, but we did pick out the shingles with an eye to longevity. I feel good about the roof. About the pole barn I have doubts. 
I’m in the county north of St Pete. I might get smacked good.
If I’m being honest, I have this sort of bleak fatalist outlook that makes me okay with a big storm. I’d enjoy the disruption of my routine. On the other hand, I don’t want to be without power for a week.
As it is, our office (and the courts in the areas I cover) are closed tomorrow and Wednesday. I’m actually looking forward to catching up on some work.
I stopped at the grocery store tonight, and it seemed normal and calm. They told me that so far they expect to be open, although they might close early tomorrow. I expect that most Floridians are pretty inured to the risk of hurricanes; I’ve sat in my room and watched them come through.
However, I’ve heard that we may start to get wind gusts tomorrow. When the weather gets eerie (a drop in barometric pressure, leading to cool breezes, plus swirling clouds) and you start to get “feeder bands”, I won’t be surprised if people start to line up for gasoline or clear out the bottles of water.
(Me? I’ll pick up a few gallons of water, and cook up some extra chicken in case I lose power)
I’m in Broward County in SE Florida. Feels weird being in the little corner of the state that shouldn’t get too much impact. I’ll count myself lucky this time!
I’ve seen a lot of storms, but this one is actually scaring me a little. I’ve never been through one that was going to be this strong when it reaches where I am (just outside Gainesville). Nothin’ to do but hunker down.
My son lives in your area. I’m always concerned, he’s always meh.
I’m glad you understand the technique.
For anybody who might be new to Hurricanes, you’re going to hear a lot about hunkering.
When you hunker, it’s vitally important that you hunker down.
If you hunker in the wrong direction, you might get caught in a crosswind.
Gainesville (where I went to school) is pretty far inland. The worst effects are at the beaches (they are talking about a storm surge over 10 feet); as it hits land, they progressively weaken.
One year in law school, Florida had like 4 hurricanes. Gainesville lost power (and I recall the Chinese buffet being jammed, since they had a generator), but we never suffered any major destruction.
I’m presently living about 4 miles inland, in New Port Richey. I’m tentatively optimistic (about what, I haven’t decided. I actually think it might veer slightly south and hit pretty close to where I’m at).
So far, it’s overcast, and about 5 degrees cooler than it’s been (which is to say, it’s still topping 90 degrees). But there’s no signs of any impending storm.
ETA: Hunker hunker hunker. It’s my favorite part of hurricane preparedness.
Hunker in your bunker gettin’ drunker.
Only way to do it.
I’m a few miles north of you. Same.
Tuesday dawned totally clear and slightly breezy from the South. Now at 2pm it’s 18 gusting 24 knots and the sky is slowly gaining puffy clouds in a hurry to get someplace north of here.
That should as bad as we get.
I’d be looking at places that have no winters AND no hurricanes…
I have no experience with hurricanes but that’s surprising to me. I would have thought pretty much the entire state would be experiencing severe weather, with the actual hurricane path simply denoting the worst of it. CNN is currently having hysterics over what they’re describing as a “once-in-a-lifetime event”.
CNN is always full of hysterics.
A strong hurricane is a non-trivial problem. And consists of 3 very distinct hazards: wind, rain, and storm surge.
For very round numbers with a typical hurricane, the truly dangerous part for wind is about 75-100 miles wide (37-50 miles in radius), and the extremely dangerous part is more like 25-50 miles wide (12-25 miles radius). It’s like a floor buffer 100 miles across: As it drives across the floor at 5 to 20 mph, whatever it runs over gets beat up, damaged, or destroyed.
Right now the center of Idalia’s buffer is about 200 miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico. The fish out there are getting their hair mussed, but Florida is OK. The buffer will eventually close with the shoreline over the next day or two. If it hits shore square on, a small area gets run over quickly. If it closes on the shore at a gentle angle, a very long stretch of shore and nearby inland areas will get buffed for a long time. For this particular hurricane and the particular shape of Florida, the latter scenario is unlikely, but cannot yet be absolutely ruled out. And was considered rather likely a couple of days ago.
The farther out you go, the less severe the winds. I’m 250 miles from the center right now (5pm Eastern), and it’s a persistently breezy day and nothing more. At 125 miles from the center you might be losing occasional tree limbs. At 75 miles out a few flimsy houses and sheds will sustain damage, and a few unlucky folks will have unprotected windows broken by flying debris. At 20 miles from the center you might have flying roofs, stop signs, and the occasional flying shed or badly constructed house or mobile home. Cars will be have their paint sandblasted off by rocks, leaves and dirt. And yes, this being Florida, sand.
All the excitement for the news media is that somebody is going to be in that 20 mile wide by X miles long path-of-significant-destruction. Who will it be? Millions at risk but just hundreds will suffer. Such Drama!
That’s wind.
Rain is far far more widespread and far far more destructive. A hurricane is basically a giant water pump that picks water up out of the ocean, hoists it up 6 or 8 miles, then drops it again somewhere else. The heavy rain can extend 200 miles out, while the dangerous winds are more like 50 miles out, and the mildly damaging winds are 100 miles out.
if a storm like that stalls just offshore (as Harvey did to Houston a few years ago), or rakes along the coast for a long distance, as Idalia was once feared to maybe do, it just keeps pumping ocean water onto the land. Pick it up over the water, rotate it around 90 or 120 degrees until it’s over land, and drop it again.
You can get torrential major thunderstorm level rainfall lasting hours, or even days or more. More typically 4-8 hours. That will often utterly overwhelm any/all man-made floodwater management systems, and most natural drainage basins, rivers, estuaries, etc. Imagine your entire hometown with 2 or 3 feet of water teleported there instamagically. Like a river bursting its banks, it’s everywhere with nowhere to go. Except into every building and underground man-made thingy. Quite the expensive mess.
Lastly is storm surge. Which is the real property destroyer and killer, although wind gets all the airtime. If the nearshore sea is shallow and a couple other things, the hurricane will push a hill of seawater 2 or 10 or 15 feet deep up against the shore. And hold it there for hours. If the shore is a 100 foot bluff (white cliffs of Dover?), not much happens. If the shore is flat and 15 feet of elevation first occurs 15 miles inland (AKA all of Florida & much of the other US southern states) , well, that hill of seawater will spread over the land.
Where, of course, it meets the rain-driven floodwaters coming the other way.
Lotta stuff drowns that way. Houses, cars, cattle, people, whole cities. And a house that can withstand 150 mph winds for hours isn’t going to last 10 minutes with surf breaking over it too.
For the really unlucky folks who live on a long narrow bay, you get a Bay of Fundy effect where water a couple to few feet high gets shoved in the wide shallow mouth, and gets stuffed up the far end of that long narrow funnel where it ends up being 15 or 20 feet tall, but real narrow as it blasts out the inland end. That’s a lot of what did for Fort Myers last year with Ian.