I'm betting, BTW, that Miami sees surprisingly little damage. Andrew wiped out all their poorly-built homes, and the reaction about entire neighborhoods being wiped away resulted in a demand for the strongest building codes in the country. A few years later there was a movement to standardize building codes throughout the state of Florida and Dade County fought fiercely against standardization because they didn't want to weaken their codes that much! In the end, Florida arrived at a standardized set of building codes that required much stronger construction in coastal counties than inland counties, with the coastal counties basically adopting what Dade County already had on its books. That means that anything built since the 1990's will probably do fine, but areas with older buildings that haven't been hit by a hurricane already may take serious damage.

Ahhh dang touchscreen! I certainly was not aiming to hit rude!! Lots and lots of hugs.

Press it again, and it toggles "off".

It's funny you say that because when I touched it again, it toggled right on up to 2! But when I navigated away it was at 1. Maybe someone else had stubby thumbs at exactly the right moment...

I'm safe up here in NY, but my aunt and cousin just moved to Florida. They're freaking out, but working on getting prepared. They have three cats and a dog (who is terrified of storms), so it's going to be a challenge even in the best of circumstances.

As someone recently evacuated by boat, I disagree with this statement. It's also in the timing. You can't just show up to someone else's sturdy building and tough it out. And there is really no way to know for sure. It's the storm surge, downed power lines, strong currents, lack of medical and emergency services, in addition to the obvious problems of clean food, sanitation and water. Sure, I could technically have stayed in my house, $#!%%ing in a floating bucket as the water flooded my powered-down electrical and the sewers backed up.

I watched Harvey come in on realtime radar. Anyway. My 'hood had not flooded in over 30 years. Residents were informed that they no longer were required to carry flood insurance, in fact. Since that one-time flood 30+ years ago, they put in huge drainage ditches and a 3 1/2 acre retention pond. When water does come up, it drains quickly -- on Friday morning water entered my yard, drained away, and was still draining efficiently throughout the night -- until it wasn't. Between 1 AM and 3 AM, we were fine. Then, we weren't. Based on my best judgement with the data available to me at the time, including past experience, watching the radar tracking a trajectory that seemed like it would miss us, and the fact that our city website pretty much told us to stay put and be prepared with food, water, etc., I stayed. I don't know how you "prepare for the worst," when the worst is not surviving. If someone has advised you to leave, do it. I needlessly overburdened the system when I could have gotten out. It would also have saved my car, which would have been nice. No one could have predicted what happened in Houston, and we didn't have storm surge to deal with.

It's not the number you should be looking at, it's the bold. If it's bold, you have checked this box. If it's not bold, you have unchecked it.

We visited a Walmart this evening, and there were people there that planned to stay there through the storm! I'm not even sure a Walmart is that sturdy a building. The question, apparently, is whether the Walmart plans to stay open. This one was telling people that it planned to stay open, but perhaps that was based on reports that the storm would pass well east of us. Unfortunately, that prediction has changed.

The projected path keeps inching westward -- closer to me! Aaaargh! The worst thing that could happen is if the projected path moves far enough west to miss the Florida peninsula entirely. If it stays offshore in the Gulf, it'll stay a Cat 5 until it gets to Tallahassee! We'd be toast. We got hit with Hermine last year, but it was only a Cat 1.

I have nieces in St.Augustine, Jacksonville and Orlando...the girls in St. Aug are evacuating. Scary!

They are telling people to bring their pets to the shelters. Many of the shelters are at highschools. They dont want people dropping pets off at the Humane Society and evacuating, which is what some people did.

Even my hospital is allowing cats and dogs for families that spend the night there.

So hopefully all pets have a place to go. Maybe not the best place, but better than left at home.

Wry Me, my cousin lives in Kingwood. Her house was lucky, the river came up to 2 blocks away when the floodgates opened. But many of her neighbors just 2 blocks away were flooded. She is 5 miles away from the river, and she was never advised to evacuate. So don't blame yourself, Harvey was unprecedented. I'm so sorry you went through that hell.

I'm in Clearwater, at the moment, we are expected to get CAT 3 winds. I'm in a zone C, which is voluntary evacuation. We are going to spend Sunday night at my husband's work, because he has to be there Monday morning. Many if his coworkers and families are staying there, it is CAT 4 resistant, and next to the Sheriff's department, so that's calming.

I work in a hospital lab, and I'm on the after hurricane "Team B". So I have to be at work Tuesday morning. (Normally, i would be there Monday, but Team A is spending the night tonight through Monday.)

I was going to have a hurricane party at my house tonight, but my husband still has a few more shutters to put up, which require power drilling, and he's pretty grumpy already. So I'm cancelling the party. We will have to party Monday night, if our house is still ok!

Many if us in Florida are being criticized if we stay in Florida. Please think about how impossible it is for an entire state to evacuate up 2 main highways. My brother in law left last night and took side roads, but they did have to veer to the highway once, to find gas.

Many older people just cannot drive all the way to Georgia, plus bringing pets, etc. Not easy. 3 days ago, we were just going to get a breeze... some east coast and Miami Floridians evacuated to Tampa area...

And now it's coming to Tampa area, which is where I live.

Anyway, that night, I will be in Largo, and I also work in Largo.

Thankful my parents are still in Michigan, and don't have to deal with this.

Many if us in Florida are being criticized if we stay in Florida. Please think about how impossible it is for an entire state to evacuate up 2 main highways.

This is true. How can everyone leave? It took my aunt almost 9 hours to get from Broward to Disney, since when they left they figured Orlando would be fine.

Not everyone can leave. Not everyone can fit into a shelter. We have stayed put. We weathered Andrew in this house. the whole yard is packed up (dammmmmm we have a yuuuge porch!) and a bunch of junk finally went to the dump before the lines got redic.

Anyway. I'm finding amusement in storm memes. ::raises the Florida flag and an eagle screams over it::

Yeah, that's true. I was kind of holy-crapping myself in that anxiety-riddled moment and just wanted the rudes to stop accumulating. In panic mode my logic dictated that perhaps the "rude" button works differently than the others in that it doesn't toggle off but rather just keep ticking up. Obviously not the case. Just my panic mode. Last night I dared to click it again and it went away. It's all good.

I hope you guys on the West Side are watching the news... just a while ago it was announced that the storm is headed up that way in projections... good luck...

Doug 7rxc, up in wildfire country, wishing we had some rain.

Even Governor Scott says evacuation doesn't mean to get out of the state. It just means to get somewhere safe. There are shelters in every county except Monroe. If you live in Monroe county (the Keys), you should have left the county by now.

We went to Wakulla Springs yesterday -- free admission for Literacy Day. We met a couple there who were from Jacksonville, they had booked a week at the Wakulla Springs Lodge to wait out the hurricane. Since then, of course, the projected path of Irma has moved from Jacksonville to -- well, to Wakulla Springs basically. We told them to get the %^&* outta town, obviously the hurricane is out to get them!

According to the projections up today (Saturday afternoon) the eye will be passing over my brother's 2 houses on the N side of Tampa, and it'll probably still be a Cat 3 when it gets there. And the local weatherman is now saying it may be "stronger than a 1" when it gets here to Tallahassee. Great. We had enough trouble with Hermine, which was a 1.

I'm not looking forward to the mess that the FPS will be after this. Assuming I have an office to go back to. If I don't who knows where I'll be sent. If the southern parks get spared, some of the staff will go north amd west to help the parks that took more damage

Please be safe

A whole BUNCH of my letterboxes are planted between Tampa and Tallahassee, since I live in Tally and my parents -- recently deceased -- lived in Tampa. Just LOOK at that projected path! NONE of them are likely to survive! One of them was just recently replanted, having gone missing during Hermine, found by a cleanup crew, and returned to me! It's gonna go for another wild ride! I tied it down this time, but I doubt if my string can withstand 120 mph winds.

SWMBO has her own religion, summarized as "God is a hoot!" She says the whole reason that hurricane is taking that path is because I've been planting too many letterboxes in that lane. "It's all your fault!" she says.

The eye of the storm was getting too close to Ft Myers for me. So I have evacuated to Orlando. Isabeau's sweet sister is letting us stay at her place. My husband stayed at home with the dog. Will let you know how we are when it's all over.

Many if us in Florida are being criticized if we stay in Florida.

We were actually discussing this yesterday--how easy it is to judge others from up here in Ohio where any remnants fro hurricanes are minor in comparison. Such difficult decisions based on so many factors, so many unknowns. Keeping everyone in our prayers right now

I'm figuring all my Sanibel Island and Ft Myers boxes are going the way of the dodo. I don't get down there but around every couple of years, so I'm hoping people will report back, I know if I need to recarve, retire, or just bang my head on the desk.

Hope everyone and their families made it thru. They are saying days, not weeks, in terms of rebuilding the power grid. Lets hope so. Having been thru an extended power failure myself, its a rough experience, but it does end; hang in there (of course, you are not reading this, but hopefully you will be soon).

The forecasters were pretty accurate about the track Irma would take but underestimated how quickly it would fizzle. By the time it reached the Tallahassee area, it was barely a serious rainstorm. We lost power for 8 hours (our house is waaaay out in the boonies, we lose power all the time!) and we had one small tree fall across our driveway. All is good now.

Those folks down Ft. Myers way took hits, though. My grandparents lived in Naples, that area's about six inches above sea level. And it looks like Key West won't be the same for a while, either.

Miami had a bit of damage, too.

As for us, many of us in the Pinellas County area (Palm Harbor, St. Pete, Clearwater, Largo, etc) have no power and they told us to expect no power for up to a week. I'm hoping less than 3 days, so far it has been 24 hours. For some odd reason, my husband bought 3 gallons of ice cream, and that's all melted. The meat and everything else stayed frozen so far. Expecting weather back to the normal low 90s and humid tomorrow. Today was in the 80s and breezy, so not too bad.

We have a generator, but will wait until tomorrow to set it up, it's never been out of the box in 14 years! Too tired today to drag that out, and we only have 7 gallons if gas.. I did hear you only need to run it for an hour every 4 or 5 hours to keep the freezer frozen. Oh well. I'll be more ready if this ever happens again.

Tomorrow will go check on our condo that a on the beach. It has Cat 4 windows and sliders, but who knows what the above units have. We got about Cat 1 with higher gusts, depending who you talk to...

Saw a few houses with trees on them in Largo, which is where we bunkered down.

Street lights and stop lights not working, it was scary to drive home, very confusing at some of the intersections.

Ok, off to bed, I have to relieve the hurricane on call team at the hospital, at 630 am.. yippee.

Yup.... the eye went right over our side of town from what we hear. We have no idea the status of the house yet.

BB
in Four Corners....

How did you fair the storm Florida Four? I evacuated from Ft. Myers to Orlando and the storm followed me there! We didn't have damage in Orlando or at our house in Ft. Myers, thank goodness. We drove home yesterday. I-4 was a mess. Bumper to bumper and took us 2 hours to get to I-75. But then I-75 was a breeze. We finally got power back here this afternoon and I'm appreciating the air conditioning. Now, we wait for the gas stations to open. It was a stressful weekend and I'm glad it's over.

I live in Seattle and several rescues along with Seattle Humane brought up shelter dogs so that space could be opened up for dogs lost in the storm. The rescue I volunteer with was already bringing up dogs from Louisiana so that was good timing. The first thing I thought of were the pets. I was glad to see that pets were allowed at shelters but I'm sad that I still heard reports of pets tied to trees or fences.

We dodged a bullet, that's for sure. One screen broken on our lanai, and some leaves down off of the trees. Phew!

BB