Just wanted to say there are too many storms coming down the pike. I am on the national disaster medical team and will leave tomorrow to stage in Texas in anticipation of the storm. Will be gone 2 weeks...Hopefully they will not need my services too much, that would mean things were bad. I spent 6 weeks in new orleans with Katrina, 2 of them at the airport right after the storm. Don't want that to ever happen again...I will check in when I can..I will miss this site while I am gone..Sandy
Sandy D - take care of you!! I am from Miami (now in TX) and keep in close touch with those in FLA still in my circle...know how unpredictable these storms can be & you are so so kind to be in a "help others" mode!! Be safe!! Look forward to hearing from you upon your return. D
My daughter and my husbands sister and her spouce will be watching over DH. I will be careful..I do feel I need to be there for those who need medical care after the storms. I'll check in when I return..and while I am there if there is time.
Sandy D - How nice that you can help with something besides AD for a while. I'm looking forward to getting back to volunteering at something soon...stay safe.
I hope all of you living in Fl,GA,SC,NC are preparing for more rain and wind later on this week. Hanna keeps on coming. Bluedaze, Are you ready for the pj party?
Hannah seems to be going more north than west. There is a website called Storm Pulse that is fantastic. It's interactive so you can bring up what you want to see (haven't figured out how to make the storm go away but I'm working on it). LeeLyle I'm always ready for a party. I hope you all never know the terror of a hurricane but friends and wine sure do help. Thanks for caring about us.
I am going next door at this very moment to ask my neighbor if I can hire him to put up my hurricane shutters if we need them. Hopefully, we won't need to do it, but there are 3 storms in a row heading this way.
When we moved to Florida 2 years ago, Sid and I put them up on the house we were renting - BY OURSELVES. He is no longer in any physical condition to do that. And neither am I. And this house is much bigger than the rental.
good luck everyone who is in the path of any coming storms. joan i am sure you will have luck getting help- Sandy D you will have payback for you good deeds.:) divvi
yep, so many new storms on the horizon any of us can be next.
Joan-I don't have shutters, can I bring the boys (pussy cats Dennis and Meeko) and some wine and come to your house. My nerves are getting frazzled. Nora
Supposedly they don't have hurricanes on the West Coast. One day we were out on the patio outside of the office I worked at. The trees were whipping in figure 8s. I said, "If I was on the East Coast I'd swear that was a hurricane." It turns out that it was a rare Pacific storm that headed to our coast instead of the ones to the Far East. It missed Orange County, headed south, hit Mexico, ran up their west coast in the Sea of Cortez and landed in Arizona. There is this tiny strip of land that belongs to Mexico that is actually what would have passed as a beach front if the US had kept it after the War with Mexico. When it hit Arizona it was still hurricane force.
Here we go again-Hanna has arrived with just rain so far. The next one is on the way and it's a category 4 which is bad. Do storms affect your LO's? Ike is the one coming
Well, yeah, I know, but I'm not having the patio furniture in the living room til November. September is usually the worst month.
Sid will do fine in the storm. I'm the one who is a claustrophobic nutcase. We have been in Florida for 2 years, and we have only had to put the shutters up once - the first summer we were here. It was awful - I felt like I was in a coffin, and we were lucky with that storm - it fizzled, and we never lost power.
We are going to buy a few of the clear shutters to put in the middle of one of the patio doors, so we can at least see outside.
I'll post a hurricane update on the website, probably Sunday, to let everyone know that if they don't hear from me for awhile, it means the power is out.
Our power has been off sporadically for three days now while Gustav worked his way through the state. 6 inches of rain and a LOT of wind. It will take a while to dry out. We have drizzle still. Some of my friends are still without power. So I have been off and on here and just looking at a few discussions while I can. Maybe I can catch up this weekend. You guys have obviously been typing like crazy!
I hope Hannah passes you by quickly and that Ike goes away. We are just getting started, and they are coming hot and heavy. Not a good sign. My prayers are with all of you in the paths of these hurricanes.
I think that they have to start early in order to get the Federal funds and National Guard and roads going one way - inland! Have a shelter picked out to take cover, Kitty!
stormpulse.com is an interactive web site that gives present, future and historic storm paths. Best info I have ever seen. Please let me know what you think of the site if you visit.
No, we're too far inland. I always follow them though. We get tornadoes. So those Gulf Coast hurricanes produce a lot of tornadoes for us. We lived in Houston for 17 years and were hit almost every year. Alicia did the worst damage to us personally. Tree in roof from tornado two weeks before, another tree down with hurricane and no power for almost two weeks...which meant no water either...in August...in 100 degree plus heat. I was HAPPY to go to work! Evenings were spent at the malls and movie theaters, and friends let us use their showers! It was a time we'll never forget....that's not true....my husband has forgotten it! <grin>
Thanks for the website, bluedaze...we live in Arlington, TX, but my sister is in Ft.Lauderdale & had told me IKE was on the way to her house...looking @ the site, it appears it will be a direct hit. I'm already praying it will go another way, AND, die down some! A "4" going in there would be devestating! I also have a sister in Titusville, best friend in Miami, and mom in Daytona Beach...the only really good way for IKE to go is BACKWARDS!!
We are south of Myrtle Beach and I don't THINK we are going to get more than high wind and rain. It depends on how close Hanna comes to the coast. I just read a bit in the newspaper and they think Hanna will make land in Brunswick NC. I just hope everyone stays safe and any damage will be minimal.
I'll check out that site. Since we've moved here, Steve Weagle is my hero. Love him. For those of you not in this area, Steve is our Channel 5 weatherman. He's the best.
Sure do wish we didn't need it. Forcast for Ike is getting much worse. We are being told to expect evacuees from the Keys at the same time we are being told if we flooded during Faye-and I was-we will be flooded again. Difference being the ground is so soaked that it can't hold any more water.
Joan and bludaze, I hope Hanna was kind to you folks in Florida. It looks like SC/Myrtle Beach got by without much damage at all. Now I will start to pray that Ike doesn't become a big problem....stay safe.
Hanna is skimming up the coast and will go right up into the Canadian Maritimes. If it actually does what is expected the center of the storm will be over water and then hit Long Island. With any luck it will stay a tropical storm and not get enough stronger to become a hurricane again. But it isn't over guys and won't be until after Prince Edward Island.
If it moves quickly, it will just be a bad storm. Lots of rain and some flooding. Beach erosion. If it stalls all bets are off. I'm enough inland that I'm not in a place where there will be trouble, but they are having problems keeping people off the beaches in New Jersey.
Here comes Hanna, to RI. Lots of rain, which we need, a breeze, which we also need, and lots of humidity. But I have to pull the windows down fairly far, and the cats mind that! They love to sleep in the windows in the summer. THIS is my kind of hurricane.
It is 10:00 now. About an hour ago the rain had stopped in the Allentown, PA area. It was pouring in New York City, and the leading edge had hit Boston. We got a huge amount of rain. I'm avoiding our creek for the next couple of days.
Here I am sitting in Houston, staring at Ike. This will be the 3rd time we have to shut down at work for a possibility of a storm. DH and I started with the shutters yesterday, we figure a couple of them a day, we should be done by Friday.
I'm so sorry it will hit in the Gulf, but at the same time I'm so glad it didn't follow Hanna up the East Coast. It has been so long since a storm did what Hanna did (never went inland) that the whole idea of a Stage 4 Hurricane doing it is really scary. They couldn't keep people off the New Jersey beaches! Hanna, which never got downgraded below Tropical Storm was bad enough.
Hanna could easily have gone out to sea and then hit again at any time. In fact it did go out over water between Boston and Canada.
This has been the worst Hurricane season on record. 6 storms have already hit the US this year.
Starling, There are always idiots who are on the beach when storms come in. The police here, around Myrtle Beach, were yelling at people to get off the beach. Some were even swimming and I don't know how many times they put out warning about the rip tides. When the police told one man to get out of the water he said "What's this". Well DUH it's trying to save your life.
I grew up in RI - the Ocean State. I grew up body surfing. I LOVE the ocean, BUT I also learned great respect for its power. The hurricane can be 100's of miles away, but the beach near you can still be dangerous. Last year, my sister was visiting here in August, and we went to the beach. A hurricane was down in the Bahamas, pretty far off shore from here. Our weather was clear and beautiful. We looked at the surf, and knew it would kill us, so we sat in the sand at the water's edge, and you know what? The waves that broke on shore were so powerful, they kept knocking us over. We picked ourselves up, walked up to where our chairs were, and sat there for the rest of the afternoon. Doesn't pay to fool with Mother Nature.
Everyone: I'm exhausted but happy to report that here in Houston, my 18 year daughter and I survived Ike. I went through Alicia (a cat. 3) in 1983 in a house 4 blocks from my current one, and this seemed worse---maybe the winds were not as strong but they lasted longer. Thankfully, no damage to our house, but several trees were uprooted on our block, with one going through a neighbors' roof (fortunately, those neighbors had left town). And the best news is that we have our power back(thus the internet back) and water working, although most people in Houston do not, so be thinking of them. Unrelated to the hurricane, my EOAD husband is safely in Atlanta with his parents (since he's only 56, he has parents to visit!) but I got upset (I should know better!)that he never called today to find out how we were. So, when I finally had time to call him, after the power was back on, he never asked how we were, but started complaining about the fact he has to fly home on Monday instead of Sunday (because we were not sure the airport would be open!!!!!) So, I'm SO thankful we're okay, but SO sad that due to his disease, my husband wasn't even worried about us. I know there are several other posters from Houston, and hope all of you are okay too!
Thank you for writing to let us know you're okay. The pictures on television are of incredible destruction. So many storms this year; so much devastation. They're still pumping water out of our lakes, hoping to keep the levels down in case we get another one like Fay.
Texasmom - Glad you weathered the storm AND that you have electric/water back!! The pics we've seen on TV of the area are really awful! Such damage!! We live in Arlington & had about an inch of rain & some winds that were not too bad, but as I watched the trees blowing out back, kept thinking "wow, if they are blowing this much & we are 6 hrs from Houston, imagine how bad it was there"!! Thankful to hear some "good news" from you about your situation. Sorry to hear about your DH though...it's something we will never get used to, no matter how long the disease goes along...Hang in there! Hugs, Debbie
Sandy D - I wonder if you already returned home or are you helping with Ike? I hope everyone who posts here is safe. Last December we had winds on the Oregon coast to 140+ MPH. It is hard to believe the destruction - so many huge trees over like matchsticks and lots of damage to homes and businesses.