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They have this guy down fifteen miles from the eye of the storm, standing in the midst of stinging rain and light debris, you can barely hear him over the howling wind, but by God, they are sure getting some Dramatic Footage.
He sounds scared, too.
And now they cut to a shot of a briefing by Governor Jeb!, where they had a box in the lower corner with a sign language interpreter . . . but you could not see her because her hands were obscured by the print at the bottom of the screen!
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Well, as of noon, the storm was predicted to miss us. If we tried to evacuate now, we'd end up weathering the storm on the road. And we're not, technically, in an evacuation zone.
The eye is projected to go right over Orlando now. Sigh. Though, now that it is over land, it's anyone's guess where the frack it will end up.
Regarding stupid people, I am suprised they haven't shown any surfers out trying to get that last big wave. Normally during these things, you get some shots of those. I'd take that over what I've been seeing for Dramatic Footage which has been breathless reports of a downed tree. If they keep that up, they're going to be pretty busy in a couple hours.
"More downed trees here, Bob! Jim?"
"Yes, I have a bunch of downed trees where I'm at, too. Poor bastards. Why, mother nature? Why?! Sue."
"Thanks, Jim. We'll have more tree coverage right after this commercial break."
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It may not seem like a big deal to you, but I expect that those downed trees are pining for the days when they stood upright.
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This band just passed through. It's quiet again now. We're setting the AC on full blast, so it won't get too hot too fast if we lose power.
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Wow! I hope the CFC members are all safe and sound!
I learned to not fear the hurricanes there so much as the tornados they spawned. I hope you all are in a safe place.
Remember to go to an interior closet and put a mattress over you if the storm passes over your place.
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It got much worse than this while I was watching before . . . in fact, a few minutes after this, he got hit in the head by part of a roof flying off. No serious injuries, though.
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Watching all this junk nonstop as I update stories. It's a Florida tradition that some idiot news reporter must go out in the howling storm to tell people not to go out into the howling storm.
Which is why I love Dave Barry's novel "Tricky Business," where wave after wave of newscasters keep dying, followed by more newscasters who come to report on the last newscasters...
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I've seen newscasters out in the intensity of a hurricane before, but never while buildings were demolishing around them. I've never seen one get hit by a flying roof before.
btw, I think there would be a lot fewer people braving out the storm, throwing parties on the beach, surfing, etc., if the media did not give them so much attention.
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It just passed over my parents house. Lake Wales was directly in its path. They're OK, but they did lose at least one big tree and the power.
Since we'll probably be losing power too, if anyone wants to tape Stargate and Stargate:Atlantis for me, I'll be really, really grateful.
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I'm in a small argument with my mother over whether the Storm of the Century was a hurricane or not. I say not. I mean, if it was, it never got a name. Anybody got an idea? I haven't found a single reference to it being a hurricane, although one site said it was a cyclone, which I thought was a waterspout. ???
The map looks like the eye is right over Orlando...of course we already determined that weather.com stinks.
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A cyclone is a hurricane. Which storm of the century? There have been several called by that name.
-o-
We went out during the eye. We have some standing water in front of the front door, but nowhere else that we can find. One of the two trees in front of our house is over. Hopefully we can simply replant it in the morning. We still have power, although frequent flickers, and we still have cable and (obviously) internet, but no satellite signal.
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A cyclone is a hurricane? And a typhoon is a hurricane in the other hemisphere?
The Storm of the Century that I'm talking about was a cyclone that came out of the gulf practically overnight in March of '93. It was worse than any hurricane I ever stayed through, although, admittedly, I left Savannah before Floyd hit.
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There is a seam visible in Mango's ceiling (between drywall pieces), but no sign of water or water damage, so maybe that seam was there before, and we just never noticed . . . ?
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Cyclone is a generic for a tropical storm. Hurricanes and Typhoons are both cyclones, depending on which coast. At least, this is my understanding.
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Ah. Okay. I remember that storm. That's the one I think of when people say "Storm of the Century." Except I was in South Carolina when it hit.
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I was in Savannah in a trailor. I was pretty young so I didn't know that it was supposed to be a catastrophe, so I wasn't that scared. My mom sent me next-door to feed the animals during a "calm" point in the storm...I think it was 3 am. All I can remember is that the sky was red and there was constant lightning in the clouds, and tons of wind, but no rain. It was really creepy.
Two trees fell on our house the morning that storm first hit. They both landed directly above where my mother was sleeping. *shudder*
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The storm's pretty much a dud for us. Thank God. Coverage was basically of the breathless downed tree type mentioned earlier. Lots of people lost power, but that appears to be the worst of it around Orlando.
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CFCers, please check in! Can anyone link a map to the path of the storm through Florida, so I can see who got it worst? I have yet to hear from Saudade and Andrei, though I called at 5AM yesterday morning, and again today, to check on them. Was Tallahassee in the storm path?
Also, I think Rahul's in Okeechobee and that looks way too close for comfort to Fort Meyers, where the storm went ashore. Plus it's on an enormous lake. Grrrrr, you people! Why didn't you all evacuate up to my house way ahead of time?
[ August 14, 2004, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Nah, Okeechobee is relatively safe. The stormtrack center (where the wind and rain is stongest) went north-north-northeast from (the first town north-northwest of Ft.Myers) PuntaGorda on the Gulf to DaytonaBeach on the Atlantic
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Okay, thanks! And it looks like Tallahassee didn't get hit badly either. There was a Tropical Storm Warning for Lake Okeechobee last night for a while, though.
Wow all those beaches and lakes are so pretty when the weather's nice. The whole state is only about a foot above sealevel, though. I fully support those who want to live there, but sheesh, guys. I love house guests! Come on up for the week at the first sign of one of those things. I'm close enough for ease of access (4 hours north of Pensacola) but far enough inland to be safe from pretty much anything. Don't make me come down there and get you!
[ August 14, 2004, 09:27 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Anne Kate, thank you for your kind offer. However, the drive to your place would take us about ten hours, with kids and dogs. And that would be without hitting traffic. The most common thing that happens to people who try to flee a storm is they end up weathering it in their cars in a traffic jam.
This far inland, we weren't really too worried about personal safety. We were more worried about the potential for damage to our property, and the likelihood that, in our case, insurance would not have covered our loss.
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ak, Tally was fine. We got some rain from a lingering front. Even our tropical storm was a bust.
Which is just as well. The morons up here can't drive under normal conditions. We'd lose half the city trying to get somewhere in a hurry in a real storm.
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Apparently there is a fair amount of damage around here, just not to us. So all those good vibes people sent must have worked!
The only damage we have is a couple of trees (harmlessly) downed, some venting pipes slightly bent, and *gasp* our DirectTV dish is wiped out. That should cost around $100 to fix. One of my neighbors had a tree go through their house.
We live on a wooded preserve, and many of the trees behind our house have fallen, but none fell toward us.
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I just went out and drove around the town. Seems like half of the trees planted in the last eight years are down (including two of ours). But the houses and other buildings seem to have weathered the storm well. The main damage I see to houses is if a tree happened to fall on one, and even that is rare. Most trees seem to have fallen into the street. The tree that burst through the house of one of my neighbors is from that preserve behind me, and it's fifteen or twenty feet from my house, and maybe forty feet from theirs. The tree even used to lean slightly toward my house . . . bizarre luck that it hit them instead.
The only other damage I see around here, other than tree damage and tree-caused damage, is the occasional loose shingle or bit of flashing, and some ripped awnings. But most of the houses look perfectly intact, shingles and awnings and all.
I can see from the TV news that not all the local communities fared equally well. My community is a distant nephew of Country Walk in South Florida, which got smashed by Andrew, so I'm just glad it was built better than we suspected.
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Found out firsthand last night that there is nothing more useless than a webmaster in a power outage. Couldn't publsh anything more than a new front page before we lost power, so I'm back at work updating again, on three hours sleep.
On the plus side, my house, though surrounded by debris and bordered by one massive uprooted tree, is entirely unharmed. Dark, hot, and stuffy, but unharmed. Life is good.
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I'm glad you all managed to come through the storm okay. Poor Icarus' neighbor, though.
That and I wonder how my Aunt T and her family are doing? Every single time they go on vacation there's a hurricane. Never fails. They've been evacuated on probably 80% of their trips so it's become a bit of a family joke that we should alert the coastguard whenever T has plans to go to the beach.
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Maybe she should consider a trip to the Ozarks.
I mean, if she keep s taking trips to the beach during hurricane season, her odds of having her trip ruined by a hurricane are kinda high. Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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We usually go on a trip to the beach around now, too, but... heh, the only time we ever heard anything about a hurricane was the time my Aunt went on vacation the same week. Posts: 1548 | Registered: Aug 2002
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