Weather hype

I know, this is serious! They have closed most all of the local schools! We are expecting up to 1.9" of rain tomorrow! I've seen pictures of a grocery store in Arab, AL (just south of Huntsville) wiped completely out of bread!

You do know that 1.9" of rain can ruin your shoes, right?  I mean, if you have loafers on it could surge over the top of them and cause nearly total devastation to your socks.

Edited by Left Brain 2017-09-11 12:09 PM

My favorite is the reporter standing in ankle deep water so he/she can tell you about the flooding. And standing in the wind with safety glasses and hard hats to demonstrate how strong 100 MPH winds are. All of this going on while the electrical lines are swinging in the background, just waiting to land in the water.

And then said reporter throws it back to the studio who tells the reporter how brave they are for standing in these conditions and then chastises the folks walking in the background for being outside, because "they could die". What a world!

I overheard someone on the elevator this morning say "Jefferson Country schools are all closed today....but the school busses are running."

LOL What a CF. What we have heah is a failure to communicate.....

You needed to have a discussion with that person:

Edited by Left Brain 2017-09-11 1:16 PM

Ok, fine the media went a bit overboard in the round the clock coverage. But, remember Katrina, and the people that died because of 1) stupidity, 2) bad government execution, 3) poor preparation. We didn't see that happen here and if the media had some responsibility in that outcome then I say "well done"
I would like my power to come back on so I can take a shower. I expect the media to be here soon to televise my hardship

Oh, and the phrase "ex military" like that is some sort of survival badge. My bro is ex-navy, highly challenged assembling a PBJ

Yes, people left because of the coverage. A+ for that. But criticizing people for not leaving while standing in the very same spot you expect others not to be is a special kind of stupid.

Eh.....you can take a cold shower, that's what we did in the military when we had no hot water. .

Edited by Left Brain 2017-09-11 7:48 PM

You mean like the MSNBC reporter saying "if you do not evacuate now, you will die!"? That kind of hype/scare tactic?

This was really a helluva storm. I have lived through several hurricanes and they have always been a 24 hr or less event. We had cloud cover on this one for >36 hrs and 2 days of straight rain. Looks to me like Cuba took one for our team on this one, but the VI will need our help for a while

I don't even know where to begin responding to this. Maybe you just weren't paying attention, but here are a few of my random thoughts.I was watching and preparing for this since Labor Day weekend. The wind gust hit highs of over 200 miles per hour. Sustained wind speeds were in the 165 and 185 mile per hour range for days. The hurricane force winds extended 80 miles from the center. That means that if it came up the center of the state no part of the state was safe from Hurricane force winds. A great deal of the Florida peninsula 160 miles wide or less. There was nowhere to hide on the peninsula.I think it was Monday night maybe Tuesday night at the latest I was online at 2 a.m. looking for hotel in Tallahassee to escape to. Within 20 minutes the hotels were booked up. I was not the only one who had been reading the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center apparently. I looked in Cairo Georgia and Valdosta, they were also booked. By the next day I heard that Atlanta hotels were full. And that's because hurricane was so big and everybody knew there was no safe area between the east coast and the West Coast. People here didn't wait for the government to tell them to get out, they simply put their evacuation plan in place and got out. I'm glad for that. 16 million Floridians we're going to be in the path of the hurricane.By Monday of this week 64% of the state did not have electricity. As of today 37% of accounts do not have electricity. That doesn't mean 37% of the people, but 37% of accounts which equates to many more than 37% of the people. Haha haha take cold showers, except for the people in nursing homes and assisted living facilities who have no power and are suffering a great deal in this heat. There are many nursing homes reporting that their generators aren't working. 6 people died in a nursing facility from the Heat so far. Generators at gas stations aren't there even though the gas is so people trying to return home can't get gas where there is gas. Other gas stations are simply out of gas. We are still being told to minimize our water use I'm not to flush the toilet too much or take showers because the water plant is not at capacity and the sewage made backupFlooding has been devastating Miami Jacksonville St Augustine and now Gainesville. In fact I-75 is in danger of being closed due to a rising River in Alachua County. In Hillsborough County where Tampa is located the Alafia River is flooding and it is flooding the Lithia Spring as well people homes are underwater. And of course Marco Island wasn't just flooded along with the keys it was just devastated like a bomb went off a very big bomb. This is what we were worried could happen where we live because we're right on the coast, as well as Tampa Bay or anywhere it made landfall. So we're very very very thankful and grateful that it didn't make landfall in one of our big cities because it would have just been the very definition of catastrophic.I am very lucky as are my neighbors that we had very minor damage with branches down and minor damage to our screen on a pool cage. Our sailboat which I fully expected would be demolished if the hurricane came up this Coast is just fine. The power was out here for about 18 hours I think but we had planned not to be able to use it anyway. What a treat that the air conditioning is actually on. We have friends in Pinellas County which is north of here and includes St Petersburg who still do not have power. We have friends in Tampa that don't have power. We have family in Palm Beach that don't have power still. This becomes a problem when you can't keep food cold but restaurants are opening, so where there is no electricity there are no traffic lights and that has been a problem.Hurricanes are unpredictable. For days it looked like Irma would skirt the East Coast then it was going to skirt the West Coast then it was going to go straight up the middle then it was going to hit the keys then skirt the West Coast, then it looked like it would go un the middle and up into Atlanta. At about 11:30 at night after everybody had gone to bed except for me and my dog I realized that Norma had shifted further east, bypassing Tampa but slamming into Polk County which is where Bartow and Lakeland are. That put Irma's Northeast quadrant - the most powerful part - right where we were, having evacuated and staying with friends in Champions Gate. I got up and positioned some essential items in the bathroom and put the leash on my dog and the cat carrier in the bathroom so that we could all huddle in there in the event it came right at us within the next 3 hours. Then we waited until the I was north of us.Had the hurricane actually skirted the West Coast and slammed into Tampa we would have had significant surge and it would have destroyed not just our sailboat and the yacht club but also our home would have been flooded. Before evacuating we removed our artwork and put it in the laundry room and we took some things that had such sentimental value we didn't want to lose them. When I left the house I expected it to be a wreck when we got back. All it takes is for one window to be broken and the wind to rush into the house which lifts the roof causing the walls to fall in. 80% of wind damage to a home comes through a garage door which again lifts the roof and the walls fall in. Fortunately we have a brand new, strong garage door. I am still recovering from the physical exhaustion from our ordeal, I wasn't even sure what day it was today. I'm having back spasms from the flurry of physical work it took to prepare the house. And yet I am one of the lucky ones because we have no damage to speak of and we have electricity. I feel so sad for the people who lost everything. My thoughts are a little disjointed because I am dictating this on my tablet instead of typing on my keyboard for my desktop. I have not reassembled my computer which I had stored away before we left. I think two nights ago was the first night I slept through the night since Labor Day weekend; for a week I was up three times every night checking the NOAA website. This has been the most harrowing ordeal I think I've ever experienced. This wasn't my first or even second evacuation but it was the scariest by far. But we're safe and I'm grateful.............. I don't know why my paragraph marks disappeared. Sorry for the massive paragraph, but I can't seem to fix it on my tablet.

Wow Renee, I can't even imagine having to deal with all that.  Your perspective form somebody who wasn't catastrophically effected (didn't lose house) helps us all understand the impact a lot better.

I'm really glad to hear that you and your fur babies are safe!

On a side note BT really sucks on mobile devices.  The only way to to get a carriage return to work is to manually type in an html line break "BR" inside a greater than and less than symbol.
If you edit your post and put in double BR BR, each one inside a less than/greater than < >, where you want paragraph breaks it will clean it up

like this: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_br.asp

 

Edited by tuwood 2017-09-13 1:42 PM

Over 7 million Floridians evacuated their homes. I don't think anyone died during the evacuation. People couldn't have been nicer or more helpful to each other during this period, what I saw. My husband, Alan, who is still a relative newcomer and has never evacuated for a hurricane, was so impressed by the way people behaved and the way the state responded from the First Responders to the Emergency Management to the utilities planning. South Florida government does take hurricane preparation and evacuations very seriously and they're very good at making it happen. With social media I was able to follow a number of meteorologists and I was very impressed with their diligence and seriousness. Twitter was a very efficient platform for following Emergency Management, meteorologists, the National Hurricane Center, First Responders and traffic news.

Renee- since you referenced my shower comment, I ing will just say that I'm happy most people in Florida are OK....truly.

I'm glad your screened in pool was barely damaged and your sailboat is ok. I am sorry you have to post this on your tablet since your computer isn't hooked up.....that's horrible.

I once stood in the street at 630 am on a Sunday with my 7 week old boy in one arm, and the other around my wife, and watched our home burn to the ground. I can't describe the feeling to this day. It ended up being one of the best experiences of my life.  I learned that bad things happen and you can lose everything you own in the blink of an eye.....including your life. I also learned that I really didn't have any problems at all, the next weekend, when we were watching the news and saw a story of a fire where an entire family perished. I have lived every day of my life since that day like I didn't have a single problem. I learned to do that by losing everything and being so grateful for the two things I didn't lose.  (we once had no electric here, for a week after a tornado that hit close by, in August in the midwest!!... and our pool actually turned green, so I know the devastation you feel)

A hurricane hit Florida...as they have been doing since that piece of land existed.  That's the trade off for living on a beautiful coast in relative luxury.  I know you know that, and I know in a year or so most of it will be rebuilt and life will go on, just like it always has.  I know you will be grateful that nearly an entire country has mobilized to help you and your neighbors.  I know you will be grateful that fathers and mothers have left their children to go spend weeks helping people they never met.....I know they are there because some of them are friends of mine.  I know you will feel devastated that people will die from all of this.  That is horrible.....truly.  Hundreds more are dying around the country every day from a variety of reasons....all horrible for those who love them. I could go on and on about the feelings that go through your mind when you go through a traumatic experience and your life is turned up side down. You'll be fine. You'll be better than fine.

Believe me, I realize that some who read this, and maybe you, will have a "how dare he" attitude about this post, and I get it.  In a while, you'll get me too, and go on with your life stronger for your experience.  That's how life goes. Luckily you all live in the greatest country in the world and the calvary is on it's way. Be grateful.....you really don't have a single problem.

 

Edited by Left Brain 2017-09-13 11:56 PM