its too late to get out within Florida, N0 gas. No hotels in the whole damn state.

Gas is on the governor. Prior governors used police escorts to get the gas to the pumps. Its one if the most crucial items, You cant flee the storm without gas, He decided not to this time and its made things way worse.

It's weird they think it's going to come in at a 3, it's literally going to spend 8-10 hours in the warmest part of the Gulf.

Yeah but I bet he picked out a bitchin pair of white boots for after the storm.

Sent from my SM-S916U1 using Tapatalk

Hope you are doing well. I would hate to go through that. Prayers.

I've seen multiple news videos on Twitter today showing police escorts for gas tankers all over the state. Is that not actually happening or just not as much or as soon as would have been ideal?

"Avoid this area"

(Checks Map)

"THE ENTIRE ****ING STATE"

So....how about the state be helpful and offer up a suggestion that doesn't require something as unlikely as the entire state vacating.

Agreed, it's fun to stay there. They have everything

South Florida… Miami/Broward/Palm Beach will have minimal impacts.

You can get yourself clean and have a good meal.

Damn, glad to hear she made it out and didn't have too much of an issue.

Very true. Have a friend riding it out. Very smart, very liberal, and makes more than I do. They just don't want to leave and think they are properly prepared. They just respond this isn't their first rodeo.

I guess it's a little like Kansas and tornadoes. One was coming down my road and I am out there taking pictures. You kind of getting use to them and can very easily underestimate their power.

Milton has been upgraded back to a cat 5. Sustained winds of 165 MPH is ****ing bananas. 165 mph is the very top of an EF3 and only 1 mph off an EF4. Thats crazy to me.

Just saw that the mayor of Tampa has declared that anybody who stays is going to die.

Tornados are easier to avoid and you rarely get one that is over a mile wide. They don't do near the destruction that a hurricane of this magnitude will do. Tornados don't cause every house in town to be under water. Anyone trying to ride this out is an idiot and will be lucky to not end up waiting on a helicopter to pull you off your roof.

They also don't give you time to evacuate. If the weather forecast told me with certainty that in three days my house is going to be hit by an F4 tornado I'd be somewhere else that day.

That is what I told him. But people are going to make their own decisions. But was responding to the fact it has nothing to do with money, political affiliation, or intelligence.

The gas is on the way to the stations...just not making it fast enough

Outside of Katrina, tornadoes cause more deaths and injuries per year than hurricanes, but that's also because there are a **** ton more tornadoes per year.

As mentioned though, you don't get 3 days' notice on a tornado... yet, it can be coming down your street and at any time you can jump in the basement if needed; compared to a hurricane being 900 ****ing miles wide.

Insurance companies kind of tell the story though in terms of destruction.. they've been pulling out of hurricane states and wild fire states, but AFAIK haven't been as concerned about the midwest and tornadoes.

Seems like a good opportunity to loot, steal and plunder.

Grab a WR down there while you're at it

I have a bunch of friends/family who made the drive from the Tampa-area today to Miami.

Once you get out of Tampa/Sarasota area and get to Naples finding gas is not an issue. It's a little more sporadic in Fort Myers, but can still be found.

This is the thing. In the Midwest, sure, we're going to have the occasional tornado. Even up here in northern Illinois, we get them. But they are rare, and while the damage can be horrible, even the worst of them are isolated to relatively small area. That offers cold comfort if it's your shit that gets blown away, but it's not like these monstrous hurricanes that can lay waste to everything for hundreds of miles.

I truly will never understand why people deliberately move to places like Florida. When my previously mentioned friends first told me they were relocating there, I told them then that I thought they were both nuts. You've got the oppressive heat and humidity and dinosaurs crawling through your yard, and that's on a good day. On a bad day, you get this. And they happen regularly. You live there long enough, you're going to get hit by one, there isn't a goddamn thing you can do about it, and you can only hope that it will be a glancing blow and not some shit like Andrew or Katrina. No thanks.

Yeah, the weather sucks up here; summers can be awful, winters can be brutal, but we're mostly safe, except from each other.

Just think of all the golf courses you can play for free right now

i guess he got so much blowback yesterday that he changed the policy. Glad to see the peoples anger still moves a politician.

wouldn't recommend that in our neighborhood, Most have 5-6 guns and know how to shoot.

Hope it's not too late. Hate the thought of a bunch of people wanting to evacuate, but not being able to.

Good luck down there to the locals. Stay safe.


Sure glad I didn’t book the surprise trip for my wife next week….

This is partly true….but insurance companies are pulling out of the Midwest also…..my insurance rates went up over 40% this year and I’ve never had a claim on my property and haven’t had a car claim since the 90s. Doracho, hail, tornadoes…..

I just got my statement - something something about high wind claims

Glad you got out of town. Was thinking about you and your wife. Shouldn’t be too bad over here on the Treasure Coast so we are staying put. Glad we have the leadership we do down here with all the prep and transparency. Y’all stay safe!

Yeah. The agent for our local coop is singing the blues. Apparently there are only 2 companies left insuring commercial elevators. And those are big ass policies.

They use a system called an “AquaFence”. And it’s amazing. Don’t understand why this isn’t used in other areas.

* I see BRC touched on it already.

I guess i.missed where the Governor had a policy in effect that made the delivery of gas troublesome.

I saw a video about that but...isn't it like 6' tall? If they actually get a 15' surge, I'm not sure it's gonna help much. (Granted, I'm not sure how far above water level the hospital itself is, so maybe it'll be OK?)

The good lord would never disrupt the best game of my life!

Speaking of insurance companies... North Carolina and Tennessee are pretty much ****ed, because apparently almost none of the flood damage from Helene will be paid by insurance..

Hurricane Helene could cost $200 billion. Nobody knows where the money will come from.
Almost none of the storm's devastation will be paid out by insurance.

In a preliminary damage estimate released on Thursday, the private forecaster AccuWeather pegged the financial cost of Hurricane Helene’s damages at $225 to $250 billion, more than double what it estimated in the first days after the storm made landfall in Florida last week — and far more than recent major hurricanes like 2012’s Sandy and 2017’s Harvey. That massive number includes the cost of rebuilding homes, businesses, roads, and infrastructure in the storm’s path from Florida to Tennessee, as well as the wages and economic output that will be lost during the yearslong rebuild.

Another fact that makes Helene’s devastation so unprecedented is that almost none of those hundreds of billions of dollars in losses will be paid out by insurance. While the storm caused most of its damage through flooding, which is covered under a government-run flood insurance program, very few residents of the southern Appalachian mountains hold flood policies — even those who live in federally designated flood zones. As of now, these storm victims in North Carolina and Tennessee have no guarantee of comprehensive public or private assistance as they try to piece their lives back together. The situation stands in stark contrast to other recent deadly storms like Hurricane Ian in 2022, where wind damage was paid out by standard homeowner’s insurance and flooding was limited to low-lying coastal areas where residents typically hold government flood insurance.

[...]

I thought theres was 20ft tall?

yep, I have to get regular house insurance. Then a wind policy and then also a flood policy. total = $8K+ a year. some of my neighbors got their insurance raised $17K in a single year.

I'm in the state backed insurance. best rates you can get. I got a letter this week that they are kicking me out after only 1 year to a private company. :cuss:

My house only gets $200k If its wiped off the face of the earth. despite it being worth 4-5X that. supposedly because the land is where the rest of the value lies.

I lived in the Tampa area during Hurricane Isaac, which coincided with the republican national convention that very month. I remember street signs flying near my home from 75 mph winds. It was pretty scary as you walked down the street and you had to look over your head. One strike and you were dead. It's not so much the water and the wind that kills you but the debris they carry. And to make matters worse, this area is notorious for extreme lightning activity during the summer months.

You learn a phrase the first time you deal with a hurricane..... Run from the water, hide from the wind.

Lets not make this political. People are in the direct path of one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. I just hope everyone evacs or is prepared

only the 2nd time in 14 years I’ve bugged out.

Looks like it ticked a little south of us. If it stays there or goes a little more south we won’t get any threating water surge of consequence and avoid the real high winds. We’d get 50-65 mph winds. We sometimes get 30-40 mph gusts in our normal summer afternoon showers.

Looks like I've got a projected surge of +9' above ground level. This is fantastic.

Right now it says 10-15 feet surge for me. My house is 8.5 feet above sea level. Not good math. But, it’s suppose to tick south before landfall due to that wind shear pushing it south.

My wife works at TGH. The aqua fence can withstand up to 15ft storm surge.

People don't realize the energy from high wind AND rain.

We deal with some insane winds in Southwest Kansas. We hit sustained 100mph wind a few years ago. Non-tornadic, straight line wind.

That's dry air. Hurricane air is HEAVY, moisture soaked air that carries a lot more mass and energy. Scary stuff.

Good luck, people. Use a rope and attach yourself to something large that floats, like Vita Vea.

Lol

Wind full of humidity will beat you down.

Staging for Linemen and first responders at Tropicana Field. Afterwards, maybe a make shift triage.

Gets above 40mph it stings like a mutha****er.

Stay safe Floridians.
Appalachian folks you still have our thoughts, prayers and donations.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AfIePZO0QrE?si=dzaYtu6IyhFpcJMj" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It’s Florida. Assume everyone is packing.

Learned that lesson shortly after I moved down here in October of 2016....the older neighbor down the road called frantically because his wife had fallen during the worst of the winds and rain we had here...I told him I would put on a coat and walk to his house.

It may have only been 45 MPH rain but damn that stung. Felt like it was sleeting outside.

The 2nd lesson I learned after moving to Florida....along with "just assume any body of water down here has an alligator living in it."

Stay safe my friends

My stepfather has a sick crib on Siesta Key. If I had to guess from staying there a ton, I'd say his sliding glass doors in back are about 10ft above the water level of the intercoastal that runs behind his house. Floor to 16 ft ceiling back wall is all glass. Not looking good...

It’s a body of water, no matter how small, it has an alligator in it. Don’t swim in lakes and streams in Florida.

Yeah the latest from the Tampa weatherman everyone trusts for decades, has it hitting Sarasota head in. Siesta key is right there.

Meant to say and look for Tampa. It's early here.

Miami was never in the cone. Some actually went to Miami to escape the storm instead of heading north

Denis or Paul?

Between category and landfall changing every time you read something I lost track and meant to say Tampa.

I'm up but my brain isn't yet.

Jim Cantore on TWC this morning about to have kittens

We've vacationed at Anna Maria quite a bit. Beautiful area. Sadly looks like it's about to take a direct hit.

This is a good channel. They were live until late last night. Will go live again later this morning.

https://youtu.be/Z2nxCX_JH18?si=zastaD-RedluzMhL

8a ET Update

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graph...e_and_wind.png

Or perhaps many people have stopped trusting the sources that used to be universally recognized as trustworthy because they have proven to not be trustworthy any longer. :hmmm:

Now a CAT4. Stay safe.

I have very good friends that used to live in Kansas but have been down there for 25 years now. They are the same way, they just ride it out. They are in Lakeland, though. It's more inland, though, closer to the middle of the state.

:LOL: asks the admitted Marxist......

Look at this douchenozzle.

Looks like Tampa is going to avoid their worst case scenario as it trends southward.

My wife and I have thought of moving to Florida. Yeah, you have the occasional hurricane that you have to deal with but it's a tropical paradise, and I absolutely hate Kansas winters. I can handle the heat and humidity. Hell, we have that in Kansas, sometimes (many times) the temp is higher here in July/August than in Florida. And yeah, Florida humidity and sun is worse but it's not like it is that much better here.

That being said, I will admit that hurricanes like this one make me think that maybe I'm better not ever moving to Florida. :) One of my best buds from Kansas moved there 25 years ago. They live in Lakeland and usually don't have much to deal with. But there have been 2 or 3 over those years that were pretty bad. I'm definitely praying for them.

Just have a back up spot to retreat to...maybe it's Hilton Head, SC or something else.

Thank god it getting wrapped up in some dry air

Says the guy that called me a racist slur and doesn't even understand that it's a slur because he has commie brain.

There's just no escaping it in Florida and IMO that's probably the biggest factor in deciding to move there.

I snowbirded there a couple winters ago and thought humidity wouldn't be nearly the issue that it is in the summer months, but it's still inescapable. Leave anything out to dry (dishes, clothes you don't want to tumble dry, etc) and it'll still be wet 3 days later. Windows were left closed all winter with the A/C or heat on in an attempt to keep humidity below 90% and be able to use covers in bed without cold humidity sweats, etc. I'd go to the gym and would condensate on equipment, leaving snail trails before I even got the the point of sweating (which is basically impossible to do anyway). Not nearly as big of a deal if you're right on the coast with a breeze, which might also be something to consider when it comes to being a tourist in FL versus living there.

At least in KC/MO, you get fairly routine cooldowns and the humidity drops to reasonable levels and you can open windows for a day or two at a time... and you don’t feel sricky and humidity 24/7.

Similar to Phoenix... it's one thing to say it gets hot in KC, too, but you don't know if you'll like it until you step outside at 10pm and it's still 95⁰, knowing you won't see <90⁰ for 3 months straight, 24/7.

https://theatln.tc/kyWsw7AN

Zoë Schlanger: “As Hurricane Milton exploded from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 storm over the course of 12 hours yesterday, climate scientists and meteorologists were stunned. NBC6’s John Morales, a veteran TV meteorologist in South Florida, choked up on air while describing how quickly and dramatically the storm had intensified. To most people, a drop in pressure of 50 millibars means nothing; a weatherman understands, as Morales said mid-broadcast, that ‘this is just horrific.’ Florida is still cleaning up from Helene; this storm is spinning much faster, and it’s more compact and organized.

“In a way, Milton is exactly the type of storm that scientists have been warning could happen; Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, called it shocking but not surprising. ‘One of the things we know is that, in a warmer world, the most intense storms are more intense,’ he told me. Milton might have been a significant hurricane regardless, but every aspect of the storm that could have been dialed up has been.

“A hurricane forms from multiple variables, and in Milton, the variables have come together to form a nightmare. The storm is gaining considerable energy thanks to high sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which is far hotter than usual. And that energy translates into higher wind speeds. Milton is also taking up moisture from the very humid atmosphere, which, as a rule, can hold 7 percent more water vapor for every degree-Celsius increase in temperature. Plus, the air is highly unstable and can therefore rise more easily, which allows the hurricane to form and maintain its shape. And thanks to La Niña, there isn’t much wind shear—the wind’s speed and direction are fairly uniform at different elevations—‘so the storm can stay nice and vertically stacked,’ Kim Wood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Arizona, told me. ‘All of that combined is making the storm more efficient at using the energy available.’ In other words, the storm very efficiently became a major danger …”

“Milton is also a very compact storm with a highly symmetrical, circular core, Wood said. In contrast, Helene’s core took longer to coalesce, and the storm stayed more spread out. Wind speeds inside Milton picked up by about 90 miles an hour in a single day, intensifying faster than any other storm on record besides Hurricanes Wilma in 2005 and Felix in 2007. Climate scientists have worried for a while now that climate change could produce storms that intensify faster and reach higher peak intensities, given an extra boost by climate change. Milton is doing just that.”