Hurricane Helene

 

When we left Arizona last Sunday, the storm now known as Helene was just a small blip on the NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER website with a small chance (20%) of forming into a Tropical Storm.  Today it passes 90 miles to our west as a Category 4 Hurricane.  This time a year, I look at the National Hurricane Center website daily...sometimes many times a day.  

The hurricane is going to hit just east of Tallahassee if the current projection holds true.  Marcia's granddaughter (with husband and two children) just moved to Tallahassee about a month ago.  For much of the day it looked like the Hurricane would pass right over her house!  Now it looks like it will pass around 10 miles to her east.  That means they are on the weaker side of the Hurricane, it could mean the difference between facing 120 mph winds down to 80 mph winds.  We sure hope there is no damage to their house...or harm to any of them.  The hurricane will pass over them later tonight...we only hope for the best.

Our lights flickered a few times this afternoon, then went out...just to come back on 15-20 seconds later.  That happened two more times...and then, after the third one, BLACKOUT!  We lost power, and the winds were just kicking into fourth gear...which means Duke was not going to be able to fix anything due to the danger.  The wind would die down, then shoot back up over the next two hours...during one of those lulls, our power came back on, and is still on.  We can still follow the storm over our computers, especially since the Internet equipment is plugged into a battery backup.  When my laptop got to under 50%, I switched to my Android Tablet.  Five minutes later the power was on.  For the next few hours the power flickered a few times, but never went out.  The winds have died down considerably, and we sure hope the lights don't go out again.   And kudos to Duke Energy for getting the power on during the storm.  Our neighbor is on oxygen, and the battery will only last so long on her machine.  When she called them, she reminded them of her predicament, as did I when I filed the outage over the Internet.  Due to the number of older people here at the Villas, Duke already had us as priority...but to do the work during the heat of the storm is commendable.  

But Duke is only one of a number of electrical providers in Florida.  Took this screen shot an hour ago...over 1/2 million customers were without power.  Just checked again and it is up to over 600K...heck, just wait until the numbers start coming in from the Tallahassee area.

By-the-way...the Condo Association President allowed me to park our Camper Van here at the Condos until Friday.  When we lost power, the outside temps was in the 70's.  We could have gone into it and turned the generator on...had the outage been longer, or the temps hotter, we probably would have.  Had our neighbor needed power for her oxygen, I would have run an extension cord for her oxygen.  Thank goodness we had it around if needed.