Hurricane Update … All is Well

Citrus Heights, Ca – at Sister’s House

The electric company is working feverishly to get power restored … heard that there are 3.5 million (or more) without power…which in Florida where September temps are still hot and muggy, it makes life pretty hard to deal with.  Pasco County, which is technically where the Condo is located, has over 1/3 of their customers without power…which is about half of what it was this morning.

Pinellas County, where our PO Box is located, has nearly 311,000 customers without power, about 55% of their customers.  That figure is down from over 70% as of this morning.

Our neighbor Mary made it home today from the shelter…power was on, and no damage to anything in her condo.  She said that one of the car ports lost its lid…no sign of where it blew to, no other damage anywhere that she saw. 

Marcia’s brother Mike and wife Sandy dropped by the condo today and said all was well…except for the hurricane evacuee who was living in our back covered and sealed patio area.  “WHAT” we said.  “Oh, it was just a little lizard….” was the response.  LOL

Mary, Marcia’s 84 year old cousin who lives just a few miles from us, is not as lucky with her power.  We told Mike to let her know that she can move into our Condo until her power is restored…all Mike would need to do is turn on the water, turn on the hot water circuit breaker, and bring a chair into the living room that she could sit on since we gave our couch and two chairs to Marcia’s son after the house they were living in burned down back in late April 

Have heard from everyone now…some don’t have power, everyone is safe and sound and we don’t think anyone has had any damage to their property.  Others, however, are not so fortunate…they are in our thoughts and prayers.

Hurricane Irma…Rain, Wind, No Direct Hit

Citrus Heights, Ca at Sister’s House

Although we won’t have word until tomorrow (Tuesday) at the earliest, the heart of Hurricane Irma missed our community of Tarpon Springs/Holiday Florida by around 20 miles.  And when it did get near us…it was barely a Category 1 Hurricane.  When we saw it hit the coast at Marco Island, I knew we had a good chance to miss the most powerful punch of the hurricane.  The arrow is the general path of the Hurricane as it passed through the Tampa area.  The “X” in the upper left is the area we live in.  The entire state seemed to get lots of rain and wind from the outer bands.  We will know in the morning if there is any flooding problems…for now, the area is under curfew, and morning’s light will produce a massive amounts of pictures.

I feel for those folks in and around Marco Island…and Naples who did take the full punch.  I also feel for folks in the Miami area in general, and of course, the Keys which took the hardest punch in Florida.  Of course, the Hurricane did massive damage outside of the United States too…it is the nature of the beast of living in this humid area.

Not that our area near the Tarpon Springs / Holiday area did not have problems.  Above is a Duke Energy Outage Map…and our Condo is in this general “outage” spot affecting nearly 1,000 homes.

We kept in touch with the situation by watching FOX 13 out of Tampa via the Internet.  On Saturday morning I did some research on which Television stations had a live stream…and FOX 13 seemed to be the best…maybe not the “technical best”, but because they have what we consider the best Meteorologist team headed up by Paul Dellegatto who oversees the work of four other Meteorologist. When it comes to Hurricanes…they are my team, that is for sure.  That said, they did have some technical problems.  At 9:00 pm Pacific Time Saturday (Midnight Tampa time) it went off the air for about 20 minutes…then it came back on with the rerun of the Saturday morning show.  Figured they had to make a mistake, and after 10-15 minutes of watching what I had watched earlier in the day…I called them.  Got transferred to the “Internet” person, and the nice lady immediately looked at it, acknowledged they had problems much of the day, promised she would fix it, and thanked me for calling.  She had “no clue” that they were broadcasting old stuff…and had been for 20+ minutes. 

At 1:00 am my time, 4 am Tampa time, it happened again…but this time when it came on they were showing what they broadcasted 2 hours prior to this.  I immediately called, and unfortunately the nice lady had left after a long, busy day. Her replacement was more skeptical when I talked to her…asked if I had started the “Miami feed” (did not know there was such a feed), and when I told her this was the second time I had called in the past 4 hours, she said, “Well, let me see for myself…”  And then about 30 seconds I hear the echo of what I am watching…and she gasps and says, “Oh, you are so right….”  Well, it was bed time, and we left the stream going…but by 6:45 when I got up to let the dogs out and feed them, the live stream was gone.

At noon our time, 3 pm Sunday Tampa time, it happened again…this time they started broadcasting what they broadcasted 45 minutes prior.  I immediately called, and this time was connected to a guy who tried to blow me off by saying, “Our engineers know about it and are working on it….”  I told him this was the third time I had called in less than 24 hours, and that the first two times I called no knew they were broadcasting old stuff.  I could not have counted to 10 after I hung up and the live stream went off the air.  Nearly 30 minutes later it came back up…and it has worked great ever since.

Another site I used was the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) site.  They seemed to have the best view of the eye of the storm so that I could track its direction.  They provide a 30 minute satellite view of the hurricane which takes about 10 seconds to play.  Every time it did a “wobble” to the north before they expected it to turn, I would say “YES!”, but with the full knowledge that if it turned too early, Miami and millions of people would be put in harms way.  What I truly hoped for was a turn into the Everglades…less population to harm…but no, it turned as forecasted…now it depended on which northern path it would follow. 

Goodbye Irma…how about headed west and putting out a few fires out here…..

PS:  Why is it that all the news media seem to think we like seeing them out in the wind, the rain, along a beach, standing in water, picking up sand and watching it blow into their face when they drop it???? 

"Neither tornados nor heat from fires nor gloom of hurricanes stays these RVers from their travels"

Citrus Heights, CA – at Sister’s House

Above is the most recent, as of 2 am ET time Saturday, of the path and strength of Hurricane Irma.  A very VAST change from just 36 hours ago when the projections showed it on the eastern side of the state.  “IF” this projection holds true, well, the “eye of the storm” (or darn close to the eye) will pass right over our condo in Holiday.

Above left is a map from google, with the orange balloon showing where Holiday is…in the picture right, which is a blown up of our area of the first picture, you can see the path line…and it sure looks like it will be right over Holiday.  Of course, these projection paths change from day to day…now changing about every 4 hours as its approach is so near.  Who knows…perhaps by Saturday night it will head so far west that it won’t even hit Florida at all…or it “might” just head up to the panhandle where many Floridians have evacuated to.  Marcia said that happened before when a Hurricane was suppose to hit Tampa area, so people went over to Orlando…and guess where it hit?  Yep, Orlando area.  Anyway, not only has the path changed…the strength as it passes through has increased from a Cat 1 or 2 to now a Cat 4. 

Back on April 30th and May 1st I blogged about a Tornado that we just barely dodged in Blytheville Arkansas on Saturday night (Sunday early morning) when we parked at a Walmart Parking Lot, and just across the Interstate at a Shell Station, a F1 tornado did damage to a Shell Gas Station below.

You can read about that night by visiting those two blog posts by clicking these two links:   April 30th Post ….. May 1st Post.   That was a very scary 20 minutes…no TV working, and if it wasn’t for our cell phones going off with an emergency warning, we might have just slept right through it.  Well, with Hurricanes you don’t sleep through them…they last for a long time…and if you are in the path, you are scared or stupid.  Thank goodness “WE” are not there, sitting comfortably in Citrus Heights at my sister’s house (comfortable now that the 109 temps have vanished for the rest of the summer…we hope…)  Of course…that was not the end of it because we faced another Tornado being close to us while in Santa Rosa Lake State Park in New Mexico on May 8th!  We also saw some hail as we traveled a few times this year…one hit pretty hard and I was shocked that none of our windows busted in the HHR.  Then there was the fire in Southwest Oregon, which led to our evacuation back to Sacramento.  That fire, by-the-way, is now at 178,000 acres, and only 5% contained…but so far they have kept it away from Brookings and from Alfred Loeb State Park which was shut down…and remains shut down…just five days before we were to return to the park for a two week stay.  We just decided it was best to get out of Oregon so that we did not take up any camping spots that locals who were evacuated from their homes might need.

So what has been going on for the past two weeks????  Family time, Doggie Grooming time, Computer fixing time at mom and dad’s place, and trying to keep cool.  Temps in Sacrament quickly raised right after our arrival, and yes, got up to around 110 degrees.  When it is that hot…the inside of the motorhome is in the upper 80’s.  Thank goodness the hot spell broke on Tuesday, but we will be back in the low 90’s Saturday, Sunday and Monday before they dip back down again.  But that sweat on my brow won’t be from the heat…but from worrying about our friends, family and our Condo as they endure Irma.  Our prayers and thoughts are with all of you...