Hurricane Irma

[miami_fan]

Y'all play too much Noles fans!

Shots Fired! pic.twitter.com/Wh7l3nFX7L

— J. Williams (@DontHateBeHated) September 9, 2017

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by CrimsonFox

Maybe you could move INTO its path. Go on! Be daring!

Be like Bill Paxton!

Ah No

[Neon_Chaos]

The storm surge warnings bring back memories of typhoon Haiyan when hit us four years ago. 15 foot surges went inland as far as 2km in and wiped out the city of Tacloban.

[Ben E Lou]

Here's something that should give you an idea of the size and scope of Irma. My home town is well inland, over 4 hours from the ocean. Here's their forecast.

[miami_fan]

We are as prepared as we can be. Similar to my previous experiences, it has been pretty cool watching everyone helping each other out getting things taken care of and showing appreciation for the help they were getting. Just have to get the sinks and tubs filled with water and then wait.

[CrimsonFox]

Filled with water? What does that for? Water for bathing and washing?

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by CrimsonFox

Filled with water? What does that for? Water for bathing and washing?

Baths? We don't need no stinkin(pun intended) baths during a hurricane. Seriously, you could use it for a couple of reasons. You could lined your bathtub with plastic(preferred) or sanitize it with bleach(less preferred) to use for drinking. We have bottled all of our drinking/cooking water. We will be using it mostly for flushing the toilets and things of that nature.

[CraigSca]

We bought a $20 100-gallon disposable bladder that sits in your bathtub. Rather than buying 50 pallets of spring water, we just use that. We will use swimming pool water for toilets, if need be.

[JonInMiddleGA]

{scratching my head}

On the one hand, the latest NOAA stuff has me sitting in the 3-5 inches of rain zone & on the outermost edge of the 50 mph wind zone.

Local sheriff's office, on the other hand, just issued a statement telling residents to be prepared for several days without electricity.

Something isn't adding up here at all tbh.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Something isn't adding up here at all tbh.

Everything's a con.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Everything's a con.

They're definitely seeing info that isn't matching what I'm seeing ... and we're ostensibly seeing the same stuff.

Keep in mind here that there wasnt' any water on the shelves here last night.
We're not going to flood to the extent that water service is threatened, we're hundreds of miles inland, and we don't have that many people using wells.

A lot of folks just seem to love a good panic.

[JPhillips]

Gusts will be higher and the winds will last for hours.

edit: And crews will be scarce because power outages will be so extensive over FL and GA.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Gusts will be higher and the winds will last for hours.

But it still has nothing to do with the water buying. That's just gotten comical.

For some reason this hurricane season here has turned into the winter-storm-hysteria of massive milk buying ... even by the lactose intolerant.

The risk of tornadoes, yeah, that's a real & legitimate concern to me.
Any loss of power (or at least internet) is certainly always an issue to me.

But barring some bizarre chain of events, we ain't gonna be out of water.

edit to add: amusing sidebar from the local Walmart last night. They were all out of water in any configuration you can think of, except one: the Sam's Choice gallon jugs. Apparently there's only so far down the brand chain that the locals are willing to go for water

[JPhillips]

I was just responding to the first post about the sheriff's warning.

Panic buying is just people trying to take control over something they can't control. Even here in the NE, a couple of inches of snow coming will clean off the shelves.

[JPhillips]

dola

Why in the hell weren't cranes lowered in FL? They've had at least a week to prepare for this.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

dola

Why in the hell weren't cranes lowered in FL? They've had at least a week to prepare for this.

I was just wondering that same thing.

edit to add: apparently it takes two weeks to take down one of these monster cranes

[PilotMan]

They actually had a story about them on TV this week. They are designed to spin like weather vanes and withstand like 125 mph winds. They can't be locked down or they will break things, and it takes like 7-10 days to disassemble and remove them.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

They actually had a story about them on TV this week. They are designed to spin like weather vanes and withstand like 125 mph winds. They can't be locked down or they will break things, and it takes like 7-10 days to disassemble and remove them.

The increasing worry for Miami atm is that the winds hadn't hit the advertised speed yet.

I smell ... litigation.

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

The increasing worry for Miami atm is that the winds hadn't hit the advertised speed yet.

I smell ... litigation.

TBH, litigation was probably coming either way.

Crane damage= litigation
Economic loss due to shutting down operations to disassemble the crane on to be safe not sorry = litigation

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

Crane damage= litigation
Economic loss due to shutting down operations to disassemble the crane on to be safe not sorry = litigation

I read a little about the situation with them, apparently they took down as many as possible - but the large cranes take two weeks to dismantle and they only have so many teams available to do so, hence not all of them could be done before the storm hit (if you think about it, that is probably a hugely specialized profession and once assembled they stay up for months so they probably only have a few people available to do it).

PS - Some flooding here, but apart from that all is well here on the east coast.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Here's something that should give you an idea of the size and scope of Irma. My home town is well inland, over 4 hours from the ocean. Here's their forecast.

The scope of this storm is like nothing even locals here have seen, I'm on the far east coast of Florida and the storm is on the west coast.

We've got flooding here (not huge but worse than last years hurricane) and we've had a good half dozen or so tornado warnings for my area today alone ... and the darn storm hasn't even really gotten close our level of the state yet, its meant to be hitting 'peak' late tonight/early morning I believe ...

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

{scratching my head}

On the one hand, the latest NOAA stuff has me sitting in the 3-5 inches of rain zone & on the outermost edge of the 50 mph wind zone.

Local sheriff's office, on the other hand, just issued a statement telling residents to be prepared for several days without electricity.

Something isn't adding up here at all tbh.

I think they wouldn't be doing their due diligence if they didn't tell people to be prepared for that many days without electricity. When Superstorm Sandy came through New Jersey, there were people who got power back quickly and there were people who had to wait 3 to 4 days and in some cases even longer, and that's in a relatively small area.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

edit to add: amusing sidebar from the local Walmart last night. They were all out of water in any configuration you can think of, except one: the Sam's Choice gallon jugs. Apparently there's only so far down the brand chain that the locals are willing to go for water

Hehe a friend of mine in Houston said a similar thing before Harvey hit. Said he went to Target and found all food products gone except for unsalted, organic kidney beans. His presumption of their thought process re: the beans: "No thanks, we'll just die."

[CrimsonFox]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Hehe a friend of mine in Houston said a similar thing before Harvey hit. Said he went to Target and found all food products gone except for unsalted, organic kidney beans. His presumption of their thought process re: the beans: "No thanks, we'll just die."

yeah i've been seeing pictures like that on facebook. Everything gone except for the organic tofu section. Or every biit of soda gone except X. It's losing its humor the more i see it but it works

I just heard it used regarding sam's club water too

[tarcone]

Just got off the phone with my Dad. He is in Ocala. They are getting waves of heavy rain. Expecting 80-110 mph winds depending on the tv station. The big thing he is worried about is the tornado warnings.
He still has electricity.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by General Mike

I think they wouldn't be doing their due diligence if they didn't tell people to be prepared for that many days without electricity.

Except they aren't really the point of contact for this info. (this is the department well known for their very entertaining social media presence).

I've seen a lot of hurricanes pass through GA, never even a tenth of the hysterical stuff I've seen about this one.

It better be one hell of a impact or else there's going to be some serious mocking of a lot of places in a few days. And that's problematic, because this has been so incredibly over the top that it's going to be a memorable cry-wolf incident which diminishes the chances of future events being taken seriously.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

It better be one hell of a impact or else there's going to be some serious mocking of a lot of places in a few days. And that's problematic, because this has been so incredibly over the top that it's going to be a memorable cry-wolf incident which diminishes the chances of future events being taken seriously.

Well its covering the entire sodding state and nearly half the homes within it are now without power so I'd say that's fairly sodding intense myself - then again the eye passes me in the next couple of hours and my house has already flooded and lost shingles from its roof (as well as having one of the doors warped by the wind) ... so perhaps I'm a little biased?

PS - And I'm one of the luckier ones, I'm in Melbourne away from the eye and only catching the outer rim, wind speeds are gusting around 105-110mph around here, I'm hoping that I get lucky and it doesn't take down any of the larger trees near my house but we've located to the safest room in case as one of the ones at the front of the house is already listing because its under a foot of water at its base.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Well its covering the entire sodding state and nearly half the homes within it are now without power so I'd say that's fairly sodding intense myself - then again the eye passes me in the next couple of hours and my house has already flooded and lost shingles from its roof (as well as having one of the doors warped by the wind) ... so perhaps I'm a little biased?

PS - And I'm one of the luckier ones, I'm in Melbourne away from the eye and only catching the outer rim

Sorry you're getting pounded ... but this isn't FL I'm talking about.
I can be in NC in just under three hours however. THAT is how far from FL I'm talking about.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Sorry you're getting pounded ... but this isn't FL I'm talking about.
I can be in NC in just under three hours however. THAT is how far from FL I'm talking about.

Fair enough - that being said its meant to be cat 1 even when it exits Florida from the projections I've seen and this thing is spitting out tornados at a ludicrous rate (I've lost count of the number of warnings locally here and have had one pass my house close enough to hear which scared the shit out of me) ... if its still doing that when it reaches elsewhere its still going to be a damn dangerous situation because of the size of the storm itself.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Fair enough - that being said its meant to be cat 1 even when it exits Florida from the projections I've seen and this thing is spitting out tornados at a ludicrous rate (I've lost count of the number of warnings locally here and have had one pass my house close enough to hear which scared the shit out of me) ... if its still doing that when it reaches elsewhere its still going to be a damn dangerous situation because of the size of the storm itself.

The tornado threat, ironically, hasn't even gotten the usual amount of play here.
Hell, actual tornadoes on the ground in waves don't get the play this has gotten as a local threat.

It's downright bizarre, fully into Snowpocalypse mode.

But for the benefit of anyone else reading, my bewilderment has absolutely nothing to do with coverage of Irma as a national thing, nor with its impact on any of the affected areas. It's about the considerable fear mongering going on in areas that aren't even in the tropical storm watch area at this point.

[miami_fan]

Checking in. Just waiting for the sun to come up to assess the outdoors.

[tarcone]

Good luck. Waiting to hear from my sister.

Dad says the worst has passed him by.

[Thomkal]

Irma related weather has started here-nothing bad. I have a brother living near Orlando-he called yesterday afternoon-when Irma really hadn't reached him yet-they already had a lot of rain from it though. Still had power then, which I suspect changed overnight.

[Edward64]

Drizzly rain only so far north of Atlanta, no big wind or heavy downpours. Pics show alot of red coming to us but ajc.com says its down to Cat 1.

[miked]

Some rain near Emory, but our neighborhood loses power with a breeze so I assume we will be in the dark soon. All schools closed Monday and Tuesday, and they actually made the decision yesterday around lunch, so maybe they are getting somewhat smarter...

[Ksyrup]

My wife's parents are without power in Jacksonville and her sister lost power earlier yesterday in Port St. Lucie. Her brother is FHP down in that area so he's been working the storm (although I believe once winds got to tropical storm strength, they were required to take shelter).

[CrimsonFox]

A friend lost power in Tampa.

[PilotMan]

I don't think I could live in FL again without a home generator or some sort of emergency power setup.

[Easy Mac]

They closed all the schools around us because.... I'm not sure.

For our work, they closed our Charleston office but left the other offices open, even though the other offices are closer to the hurricane?

[miami_fan]

Already seeing reports of people being stuck in their homes in the Lakeland area. Ugh.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

They closed all the schools around us because.... I'm not sure.

Apparently rainfall causes that these days.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Apparently rainfall causes that these days.

My wife is a school teacher. She said you don't really want kids waiting out in possible bad rain/wind and school buses don't drive well in strong wind. I'm okay with it due to the unpredictable nature of Irma's path (e.g. yesterday I though it was headed much more west of Atlanta area).

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Edward64

My wife is a school teacher. She said you don't really want kids waiting out in possible bad rain/wind and school buses don't drive well in strong wind. I'm okay with it due to the unpredictable nature of Irma's path (e.g. yesterday I though it was headed much more west of Atlanta area).

Note where EM is though.

There's a better chance of my kid in MS having weather issues related to Irma this week than there is in his area.

[Edward64]

Ah sorry. I was relating to schools closing in Atlanta area today (and prob good chance for Tue also)

[Easy Mac]

I blame our local news guy, who gets like borderline depression if the weather doesn't rain down frogs or snow 38" during the winter.

[miami_fan]

Just took the dogs for a walk to the neighborhood. I think we made it through pretty nicely. The neighbor across the street had a tornado tear a path through his backyard taking several trees down but no damage to his house. We seemed to have several houses with screen damage. Four street signs are down including one that is about 10 feet from it was standing yesterday. The lake in the cul-de-sac behind is higher that I have seen in the three years we have lived here but other than that, things are well.

[Edward64]

Trees normally blow left to right in my backyard. They are blowing more right to left now. Kinda weird.

[Thomkal]

Flooding in Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, and probably Myrtle Beach too.

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Flooding in Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, and probably Myrtle Beach too.

Hang in there Thomkal!

[JonInMiddleGA]

fwiw, intermittment internet connection since about 7am.
4 relatively brief power outtages during the afternoon.
As Edward64 mentioned, I'm also basically seeing trees that rarely move blowing, trees that commonly move in storms doing little.

Random tree down reports across Clarke/Oconee County, linemen have been pulled off the job in the past 20 minutes pending a decrease in the winds, so any outtages coming up will be extended somewhat.

That's basically northeast Georgia for the day.