Ian's Track Shifts Southeast!

The 11pm Tuesday (much) updated track has Tampa Bay mostly out of the cone & we will miss the worst of Ian.

24 hours ago our county was ground zero.

Tonight our county is NOT even in the cone. But still a large rain & wind event for us Wednesday into Thursday.

As you can see, others in the state are not quite as lucky….

The Real Deal - Facing Ian

For those friends elsewhere asking or wondering about how & what we’re doing:

Our house is in the highest "evacuation zone" that is not being asked to leave so we will follow the "run from the water and hide from the wind" plan that we've had in place for the past 30+ years and hunker down at home with our son & daughter-in-law.  And 2 dogs.  When Irma came through in 2017 we spent the night in our windowless 50 square foot interior "safe room" where the biggest issue was the little dog peeing on one of the mattresses overnight.

A lot of people that live closer to the water and are in the lower topography are facing mandatory evacuations due to the threat of the storm surge. We should not face that issue. We've taken all the precautions we can and while we don't have hurricane windows or a generator, we have lots of ice and a swimming pool.  Power outage is the only sure thing we know we will face.  How long is the question!  For Irma it was about 30 hours.

The past 7 years, our backup power plan had been our motorhomes.  They had generators, water, refrigeration and most importantly, AIR CONDITIONING.  Since we sold our RV in March, we do not have that option this time.  As a matter of fact, for Irma, after about 24 hours of no power or A/C, I went & retreived our motorhome from it's safe enclosed storage facility and drove it back to the house to live in until the power was restored.  Literally, just as I was backing it into the driveway, the power came back on!

Other than power & no A/C, our biggest threat is wind and rain.  Hopefully the former will just create alot of debris to clean up and our property tends not to back up with water flow.  However, once the power goes out, we won't be able to lower the pool water, so that creates an issue.  We have one low entry into the house from the pool but we've used those sandbags you may have seen me pickup Sunday.

This area will get hit.  This is the real deal.

Thank you for asking.  We'll try to update as the week goes on or until the power goes out......

Watching Fiona.....

 

Put up or shut up!?

Excellent piece on betting odds for the rest of the 2022 Hurricane Storm Season (and why):

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/weather/2022/08/25/florida-hurricane-forecast-august-september-dust-track-models-waves/7882923001/

Hurricane Andrew struck 30 years ago today

30 years ago Hurricane Andrew came ashore in South Florida.  

You can read all about here

We were living in Charlotte at the time which was recovering from Hugo.  A year later we moved back to Southwestern Florida and watched across the state for the next 10 years (and more) as Homestead recovered.

We were fortunate to miss both.

My biggest takeway is not to be fooled by a quiet season.  As the first named storm of the season, it was late August before Andrew hit.  And while 1992 was a below average season, there were 7 named storms, 4 hurricanes and, the catastrophic Andrew

And, so many new requirements for future storm preparedness became Florida law in the aftermath.

Today, we have been very quiet but things are heating up.....

Early wave….

 

And so we begin…..

 

Our best source for accurate information during Hurricane season :  https://www.abcactionnews.com/hurricane

First band of Elsa rain just hit....

We've been watching and prepping for the past few days.  

This storm breaks my theory of it being favorable to be "in the cone" early (like 5-7 days out).  

Elsa's cone did not change much over the past week and so far hasn't been negatively impacted by the wind sheer that is supposed to be in the Eastern Gulf.

Storm has intensified from 50 to as high as 70 MPH winds and will be the most signifcant storm since Hurricane Irma passed EAST of us in 2017.  This storm will pass west providing us with the "bad" side of wind and rain.

Storm surge seems to be the biggest threat right now.

Frozen fun from Hot Tampa Bay....

 

Laura & Marco sitting in a sea.....

A couple of anxious early days here in Florida have turned into relief and memes while the gulf coast braces for double impact. 

And decisions have to be made....