Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Were people less concerned about Sarasota, Venice, Bradenton, Englewood, Anna Marie Island, Siesta Key because of the older population of people there? Or because those areas are more vacation spots? More people moved there to live year round.

Tampa Bay is extraordinarily vulnerable to storm surge and the impact of a direct hit would have been catastrophic to life and property. Obviously all these other places were also very much impacted, but its like apples and oranges.

Yes. I live in northern Tampa Bay, and work right in Tampa. I had minimal issues (I am inland, not on the coast or near a river). But Tampa is a mess. Tree debree everywhere, some still without power, now flooding AFTER (like, places flooded days later). I can only imagine how catastropic a direct hit would have been!!!

Anonymous wrote:Were people less concerned about Sarasota, Venice, Bradenton, Englewood, Anna Marie Island, Siesta Key because of the older population of people there? Or because those areas are more vacation spots? More people moved there to live year round.

Tampa Bay is extraordinarily vulnerable to storm surge and the impact of a direct hit would have been catastrophic to life and property. Obviously all these other places were also very much impacted, but its like apples and oranges.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On top of the flood and debris, people have to watch our for alligators potentially lurking everywhere.

No...they are not everywhere. They can be in bodies of water. They aren't strolling down my street.

Weather channel had video footage of fish swimming in flood water in the street.

Just sad.

Were people less concerned about Sarasota, Venice, Bradenton, Englewood, Anna Marie Island, Siesta Key because of the older population of people there? Or because those areas are more vacation spots? More people moved there to live year round.

Nothingburger.

Anonymous wrote:So is it safe to say this storm wasn’t as catastrophic as they were expecting? I’m not trying to minimize the impact by any means, but the news yesterday was calling it a one in a century event. Did we get a better case scenario?

Yes, absolutely, this was a better case scenario than what could have been. Hurricanes rotate counterclockwise so it was sheet luck the hurricane hit south of Tampa. Had it been a direct hit or slightly north would have been catastrophic with completely different levels of loss of life, flooding, and destruction of housing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a place in Charlotte Harbor. My place is fine. But, there's a yacht in my back yard. I don't own a boat.

Finders Keepers? Ha!

Hope everything gets cleaned quickly! You’re lucky the yacht didn’t destroy anything!

Rename it the "Possession is nine-tenths of the law" and christen that thing with some champagne, pronto.

Anonymous wrote:I have a place in Charlotte Harbor. My place is fine. But, there's a yacht in my back yard. I don't own a boat.

Finders Keepers? Ha!

Hope everything gets cleaned quickly! You’re lucky the yacht didn’t destroy anything!

I have a place in Charlotte Harbor. My place is fine. But, there's a yacht in my back yard. I don't own a boat.

Thank you, OP, for your level headed posts.

May I ask what profession you're in?

Anonymous wrote:So is it safe to say this storm wasn’t as catastrophic as they were expecting? I’m not trying to minimize the impact by any means, but the news yesterday was calling it a one in a century event. Did we get a better case scenario?

OP here.

It depends who you are referring to. The media is in the business of selling news. Your sources of information should be professional meteorologists, the national hurricane center, and the national weather service. Beware of "meteorologists" on social media, of recycled videos of previous weather events, or the old shark or alligator in floodwaters trope.

Milton had the capacity to be a catastrophic event for Tampa Bay, because it's a densely populated, nearly enclosed body of water and is extremely vulnerable to major hurricane landfalls. Meteorologists kept pointing out uncertainty in the track, and therefore, for the professionals, this hurricane performed exactly as predicted in terms of wind and surge damage (albeit with more tornadoes - we didn't expect that many). It's just that landfall was not in Tampa Bay, so Milton avoided a direct hit to the most vulnerable point in its general cone.

There is no way, in the next few years, to make that cone of uncertainty more accurate. This is why public announcements HAVE to take the range of threats seriously. If we'd said: "Landfall will be in Sarasota", and Milton had unleashed the full force of its eyewall on Tampa Bay with less prepared residents... there would have been hundreds of deaths there.

As a resident in a hurricane region, you must understand that you prepare for the worst, and usually the worst doesn't come to you. It comes to your neighbor 50 miles away. ***The worst always happens to someone, every single time***. In your lifetime in a hurricane-prone region, the worst might never come to you. But you always need to prepare for it, because the statistical risk is always present to some degree. This leads certain humans with certain psychological profiles to under-prepare, because they don't completely understand the nature of risk. It leads others, living far away from disaster area, to scoff. Risk assessment is a very difficult concept for Homo Sapiens in general, and this is why risks to populations are often left to governments to calculate and manage, sometimes by forced evacuations.

Anonymous wrote:On top of the flood and debris, people have to watch our for alligators potentially lurking everywhere.

No...they are not everywhere. They can be in bodies of water. They aren't strolling down my street.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
OP here.

Not in front of my computer right now, but major flooding at landfall, as expected, and sadly 6 fatalities already.

Sadly - folks could have left.

Four of the fatalities were due to tornadoes and not anywhere near evacuation zones.

Anonymous wrote:
OP here.

Not in front of my computer right now, but major flooding at landfall, as expected, and sadly 6 fatalities already.

Sadly - folks could have left.

Anonymous wrote:It's easy to say "residents need to seek higher ground". How and where? The area is flat, and are people supposed to venture out in knee-deep water in record rain and wind in the darkness? It is simply not realistic. I understand why at this point most choose to stay at home.

The hurricane warning has been going off for many many many days. You don't have to wait until you have no choice to have no choice.