Well….. so far the hurricane has not produced much damage around my parts. I suppose as the Sun rises and people start to go outside, we will see severe damage along the South West Coastal areas. The storm is moving slowly and that is not good, but it is starting to weaken. It is a very odd feller. The power was not where it usually can be expected, but rather opposite.

My local weather liars are all predicting 25-30 mph winds here today. So I imagine we will have some power outages, but nothing like the electric company had been planning for. I can’t see the out of state crews hanging out around here, where we would be feeding them. They are gonna be needed way South of us.

If they leave, not sure what we will do with all of the food we loaded up into our refrigerated trailers yesterday. Then there were the trucks we loaded with canned goods and plates and all manner of stuff. Some of that stuff was defrosted just to get ready, and will no doubt be tossed if no one eats it soon. ( lights just now flickered as I wrote that ) Anyways, I hope that by Friday we will know what we are going to do. They have me scheduled to go and cook for linemen this weekend.

Maybe we will drive Southward and cook down there, but I doubt it. The power companies down there probably made their own deals, with companies in their area. No sense delivering our food to them as they will want to make some profit on the sale of food. i guess I will find out what is going to happen to that food.

The shame of this storm, is not the power or the size, but rather it’s odd movement. It was shown as swinging past SW Florida and heading up into the panhandle. I am afraid that lead folks down there to not prepare. That by the time the pencil heads got done drawing lines showing it hitting those folks it was too late to prepare. I am certain that many were caught off guard. In my area there is a major interstate that those folks have to use to evacuate. Well the roads looked normal for a weekday. No massive caravans headed North sucking all the gas dry as they go.

Even our locals haven’t sucked the gas supply dry. The stations all seem to have plenty. I am sure a few ran out but there are no great shortages. I spoke to one station owner and he was surprised. Said normally they are lined up to get in and get his gas during storms. It is all just so very weird with this storm.

Looking at the projected path, I suspect this storm is going to be listed as one of the more expensive storms. Places that do not normally get hurricane winds are getting hurricane winds. This means things that have been built over the years might get knocked over. People might not realize that there are lots of old trees around that haven’t been tested in a hundred years. The heavy rain softens the ground and that allows the rootball to dislodge and over it goes. Also, trees are designed to withstand winds acting one them in a straight line fashion. There cell walls and such flex. Twisting, swirling winds however twist the tree’s limbs and that makes the trunk twist and trees are not designed to withstand that. They snap leaving a nasty jagged break.

My buddy came over yesterday and removed the electrical panel cover off of my power supply thingie. He placed a breaker in the box and wired a heavy duty wire into that breaker. He showed me how to remove the neutral wire from the box. So now if the power goes out, I can remove the neutral wire, flip off all of the breakers. Make sure the main breaker is off. Start generator and plug into it. Then start flipping breakers on to run the household stuff.

To shower, I will turn on the hot water heater. Then after an hour, turn it off and turn on the well pump and get showered up. Take a leak, go ahead and flush. Then later flip the well pump on to fill tank. Last night we slept with the sliding glass doors open. We have a set in the kitchen, a set in the living room, and a set in our bedroom. The temperature was very pleasant and I was able to sleep just fine without running the a/c. I told her if she heard a loud noise to awaken me. Never happened. All quiet over night. Soon the Sun will light up the sky and I will be able to assess damage, if any at all.

If you ever move to Florida, consider a cinder block house. No it won’t protect you from getting the roof torn off, but it will save you from having to evacuate. There is nothing worse than evacuating. One year we had a storm and people were evacuating. I saw them lined up on the road, sitting there bumper to bumper. Bird cages, dogs, kids, the whole deal. Well that year they could not get away and weathered the storm in the cars. Stuck on the highways. Tough lesson but those people will never evacuate ever again.

The issue is water. Rising waters wash people to their deaths. Trees can topple over onto you just about anytime actually. The rising waters though are the real killers. Katrina killed in that manner. It wasn’t the winds it was the flood. Galveston, Texas had a large loss of life a hundred years ago due to flooding. In the Keys, there was a bad killer storm. The people there survived the winds, but not the water. It just flowed right over top of the land and washed people away.

I am sure the surf fishermen are mad as hell. This will put an end to the great mullet run. Not sure why, but storms like this ruin the run every time. Not sure where the fish go, but they will not be running the beach any more. My buddies have been having some fun catching flounder and jack crevalle and sharks. Oh well.

Well it is getting light now, so I am gonna go take a peak.