Anonymous wrote:Praying for low income Floridians. Praying for seniors on the coast. Praying for those that don't have the money to evacuate. Praying for Floridians with disabilities which make evacuating challenging. Praying for those in the Tampa Bay area. This region always gets flooded even in minor storms. Praying for emergency services workers on the coast.

Praying for those staffing our hospitals in Florida.

Well said.

Milton now feeling wind shear and dry air, and technically a powerful cat 4 (right on the border with cat 5, 155mph).

Small shift in track southward:

OP here.

Milton has stayed remarkably intense, small and organized category 5 hurricane so far, with an incredibly small pinwheel eye and historically low barometric pressure (didn't go under 900mb last night, however, but did stints below 910mb, which is still record-breaking).

That may be starting to change with this eyewall replacement, currently underway. The predicted weakening, due to wind shear and dry air, is not perceptible yet, and we may not have as much weakening as we thought a few days ago. This also means Milton might stay smaller in size. Pros and cons to both scenarios: a small and powerful storm will kill and destroy everything in its path, but the path will be narrow. A large, less powerful storm will affect a larger area and create billions in damages, as well as threaten more lives with inland flooding.

There is still uncertainty as to track and time of landfall, but the surge damage is already locked in, due to Milton's churning of Gulf water for the past two days. There are multiple supercells forward of Milton, and there may be a tornado outbreak across southern Florida later today and into the night.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My SIL also plans to cook all day today, which I don't understand since they'll most certainly lose power. Unless she's baking bread and brownies (I think she's making stews, etc)

My sister has a generator

Generators don't do much if you don't have access to gas. Plus after a hurricane you need to be able to run them for a long period of time. Reports are that the area is already out of gas. That means trucks need to make it back down there to refill the lines, assuming they are able to do so in a timely fashion and that the gas stations themself are not damaged.

People who live in hurricane prone areas, who have generators, actually "prep" for hurricanes fairly well. They keep some gas on hand (outdoors in a shed, detached from the property) and likely fill up some more if they have an inkling a storm is on its way. They aren't rushing out now to get gas, because they know that gas will run low.

The people running out now to get gas to evacuate aren't generally the ones who "prepped" for the emergency.

DH and I have lived in Florida for 40 years. We have one of those built-in generac generators. It powers the entire house and runs on natural gas. It is set up on a permanent platform in our yard.

Anonymous wrote:I was just watching the news and am kind of shocked they aren’t using both sides of the highway to get people out.

In Tidewater, they make both sides of I-64 outbound and out down gates on the entrance ramps. If you want to go inbound, you have to use local roads. The highway is an evacuation route.

Tampa Bay pp here. I'm assuming they don't do that here because it's not a situation where everyone evacuates. People still use the highways to travel in both directions, and commerce does too. Plus the roads go further south, like to Miami, and people need to access that.

Plus, not everyone who evacuates needs to take a highway-like the officials say, evacuation doesn't have to be hundreds of miles, it can be tens of miles, just to higher ground.

I think most people who were going to leave already did.

Anonymous wrote:I was just watching the news and am kind of shocked they aren’t using both sides of the highway to get people out.

In Tidewater, they make both sides of I-64 outbound and out down gates on the entrance ramps. If you want to go inbound, you have to use local roads. The highway is an evacuation route.

Major highways all look pretty green right now, so maybe no need?

I was just watching the news and am kind of shocked they aren’t using both sides of the highway to get people out.

In Tidewater, they make both sides of I-64 outbound and out down gates on the entrance ramps. If you want to go inbound, you have to use local roads. The highway is an evacuation route.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The longer it takes to make landfall the better as it avoids the hightide of 2p and the stronger the odds are the cold front/shear impacts the hurricane to diminish its strength. The more north it hits, the better for Tampa and the more southern, the more surge for them. I don't know that it really matters where it hits however in that there will definitely be a surge there and the N is where Helene had made more impact so for them it's a bit more sad it's 2x hurricane.

I have a feeling it will not be as bad I don't know why. I've had a feeling since yesterday that the shear and cold front will quickly diminish this from a cat 4 to a 2 or even 1 because shear completely destroys the rotating force of a hurricane. It doesn't wipe out surge but the lowering of the winds will do a lot to help things. I just get a feeling that it won't be as bad as everyone thinks it will be and I also have a feeling that Tampa will get lucky again in not being hit directly by this. I just think that it peaked last night as a cat 5 with 899. The rest of the way up it will meet a lot of factors that isn't helping it maintain/grow.

Phew! Cancel the evacuation, everyone! No need to take any precautions, anonymous PP has a feeling!

Idiot.

I mean, PP may be correct, meteorologists aren't really saying these possibilities out loud because they want everyone to get out of there in case worst case scenario DOES materialize. It's better to prep for the worst case and be grateful if it ends up not being as bad, but people are stupid. Tampa has had a lot of near misses and it takes effort to get some residents to evacuate if they've managed fine thorugh previous storms.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:where is the evacuation zone? Just tampa proper? How far inland?

They have zones based on elevation. My son is a block from one of the canals and his side yard is zone B but his house is zone C because it sits 22 feet above sea level. He hightailed it out of Tampa yesterday, he wasn’t taking any chances with this.

Wise move.

Anonymous wrote:where is the evacuation zone? Just tampa proper? How far inland?

They have zones based on elevation. My son is a block from one of the canals and his side yard is zone B but his house is zone C because it sits 22 feet above sea level. He hightailed it out of Tampa yesterday, he wasn’t taking any chances with this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My SIL also plans to cook all day today, which I don't understand since they'll most certainly lose power. Unless she's baking bread and brownies (I think she's making stews, etc)

My sister has a generator

Generators don't do much if you don't have access to gas. Plus after a hurricane you need to be able to run them for a long period of time. Reports are that the area is already out of gas. That means trucks need to make it back down there to refill the lines, assuming they are able to do so in a timely fashion and that the gas stations themself are not damaged.

Where is a generator going to rest in 3 feet or more of water?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But you know, living in FL by the coasts...it's a matter of time. I just simple don't get people who live where you KNOW there are hurricanes coming every damn year. It's really rolling the dice and hoping for the best EVERY damn year.

Same in CA - You KNOW there is an earthquake coming. Or, you KNOW there are wildfires and if you live in an area where it's all wooded and there's a drought and it's that hot and this is happening everywhere around you..hmmm..wonder what will happen to me???!

OF COURSE, there is no 100% safe place to live but I'm just saying, if every year, you find these disasters happening v. once every 5 years, that's a different story but these days??

Even to a degree moving to the mountains. Nobody could have I supposed predicted Helene in W NC but if you live in the mountains, it's not exactly the safest place to live. Just saying - I would never move to remote towns in the mountains to live and not understand that I'm taking some risks whenever there's weather. Us humans are pretty fragile beings. We are totally at the mercy of nature.

Ok but couldn’t people say well if you chose to live near DC you knew an attack could happen at some point? There really isn’t anywhere risk free.

I agree that living right along a coast line is crazy in this day and age. But it’s not like inland FL should be deserted.

COAST LINE v inland are different. Inland is no prob but come on - coast line of Florida is rolling the dice. In terms of risk..I am thinking a hurricane 1x a yr or more v WW3. I'm going to say that the risk is statistically lower with the latter. Risk is just that - statistical analysis or frequency of it happening. You really think that getting blown up in DC by a missile is somehow as possible or more possible than being in the way of a hurricane from June1-Nov1 every single year???? For real?

Jumping in here-I live in Tampa Bay, but not on the coast (not in a flood zone). Macdill is in Tampa so I suppose we have a statistical chance of an attack. But it doesn't snow, so there's that Now, I'm going to do laundry and run my dishwasher in case we lose power from Milton. Everything outside is inside at my house (and my nearby parents). Cleaned the gutters at both houses, gassed up the car and filled the cans (go at 6 am, that's when there is gas!). Gonna get a few last minute sandbags tomorrow for the side door (so water won't blow under it). Gonna watch my weather guy Denis Phillips at 7 on fb.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My SIL also plans to cook all day today, which I don't understand since they'll most certainly lose power. Unless she's baking bread and brownies (I think she's making stews, etc)

My sister has a generator

Generators don't do much if you don't have access to gas. Plus after a hurricane you need to be able to run them for a long period of time. Reports are that the area is already out of gas. That means trucks need to make it back down there to refill the lines, assuming they are able to do so in a timely fashion and that the gas stations themself are not damaged.

People who live in hurricane prone areas, who have generators, actually "prep" for hurricanes fairly well. They keep some gas on hand (outdoors in a shed, detached from the property) and likely fill up some more if they have an inkling a storm is on its way. They aren't rushing out now to get gas, because they know that gas will run low.

The people running out now to get gas to evacuuate aren't generally the ones who "prepped" for the emergency.

OP again.

Time for a little lesson on the alternative metrics of hurricane impact. It's a way to measure potential damage to life and property. The Saffir-Simpson scale (hurricane categories) is notoriously bad at predicting damage.

Enter IKE, or Integrated Kinetic Energy: it's a number that represents ocean surface stress, generating waves and surge, while also taking into account structural wind loading and the spatial coverage of the wind.

Now for Milton's IKE measure. Right now it has an IKE of 24 TJ. It is predicted to intensify to 70 TJ just prior to landfall.

For point of comparison, Hurricane Rita, the strongest Gulf hurricane ever recorded, was thought to be at 30 TJ (theoretically, since the IKE measures were introduced 2 years later). Rita generated a storm surge of 18 ft near landfall. Evacuations were haphazard and deadly, which is noteworthy considered evacuations from Milton are also problematic as we speak. Evacuations are always, in times of crises, an underestimated problem.

Stay tuned for a potential sub-900mb barometric pressure measure with the recon flight currently in the hurricane.
If it verifies, it would be the first time an Atlantic hurricane has reached such low pressures twice in its development. Yesterday, Milton reached 899mb. Tonight, we'll see.

Anonymous wrote:What I never get is that the hurricane timing infallibly moves to half a day, if not a day later than expected. It's systematic with every storm. Now it's moved from Wednesday 8 am to Thursday 2 am. Maybe it's to err on the side of caution so people get prepared, but my county cancelled school a day too early.

It wasn't too early. They use that time to convert the schools into shelters.