Hurricane Michael Thoughts

10/11/2019:  Fortunately, it got a little cool through the evening.  With the Master bedroom soaked, I am using the sofa to sleep on in the living room, with some candles and a battery powered radio from the Hurricane Kit.  Somehow, the primary iHeart Radio stations (including 98.5) are broadcasting community service information without towers. I woke up and set to try to get to the UPS store to give Scott Cornell (the owner and a friend) a status report.  It took an hour to find my way around downed trees and power lines, not to mention avoiding any kind of debris on the road so as not to puncture my tires.  The Rogue was serving as not only transportation, but as my generator to keep the phone and laptop going.  T-Mobile signal still strong and robust data. Started using some containers I had set aside to prioritize the personal property I was going to try to save but mostly just made sure the neighbors were OK.  October 11th was also when I made the...

10/10 - In 1995, I tried to evacuate for Hurricane Opal and did not make it further than about 5 miles (and 4 hours), so I returned to my house and rode it out.  Although it was a Cat 3, there was minimal damage to the house. It was primarily a flood event and my neighborhood did fine.  When I went to bed last night, Michael was supposed to strengthen to a strong 1, maybe 2, so my plan was to ride it out.  When I woke up early to check the status, it had ramped up to a Strong 3, maybe 4, but it was too late by that time to try to evac. The storm progressed to basically a category 5.  Newsweek reported that landfall was officially 1240, but I was watching the radar progress on my phone and it appeared that we were very near to the eye wall at 1219.  I am now a T-mobile customer for life.  Verizon failed miserable, ATT was spotty, but I had full coverage throughout the storm and only lost it for about a 30 minute period a day and a half later (I suspect a g...