Anyone else concerned about travel plans this week? We are supposed to fly from Hartford to Atlanta on Friday morning. Is this weather going to be a problem??
We had planned to head to our place in Hilton Head this weekend but have postponed since there is a mandatory evacuation for all SC coastal areas.
It is recommended that everyone go at least 100 miles inland. Even though the current path shows it will hit land near the SC/NC border. It apparently is a large storm.
Last I heard, Matthew is expected to make landfall Saturday afternoon. You may beat the storm flying Friday morning.
My travel plans were non-existent. Now it looks like I will be evacuating tomorrow afternoon. Not looking forward to sitting in traffic for hours. I hope this thing loses steam.
We are flying about 2am on 10/6. Fortunately, I’m pretty sure our trip will not involve hurricanes.
My friends on Hilton Head have to evacuate by 3 pm tomorrow. They are moving as much as they can off the floors.
My daughter is in school on the Florida coast. The school will announce by 1 tomorrow what the schedule will be, but many of the kids are assuming classes will be closed and changed their travel plans (they have their fall break this weekend, Sat thru Tues). M daughter is staying put. I told her to buy bottled water (they just had 3 days of being required to boil water) and flashlights. She lives about 2 miles inside the Innercoastal waterway. Many are planning to park their cars in the parking garages at the school just to get them above flood levels.
Other than very very crowded airports, I think Atlanta will be okay. My friends evacuating HHI are heading to their home in Atlanta.
I don’t think Atlanta will be a problem at all, as long as the track of the storm doesn’t change dramatically. At this point, intellicast is forecasting weather in Atlanta to be excellent, as least for the foreseeable future. On Friday they are calling for partly cloudy, light winds.
I am worried about my husband. He is supposed to be flying in and out of Ft Lauderdale all week. Not worried about tomorrow, but Thursday really concerns me. They haven’t cancelled yet, and I am afraid that the most likely scenario is that they bring the airplane in there Wed evening, have somebody else take it out a few hours later, cancel the inbound flight on Thursday, and he is stuck there in a hotel with no airplane, no way to evacuate, and the hurricane veers further west. His crew went to the Dollar store and said there must have been 30 people in line, everybody is stocking up, and they have nothing. Jeez, wish I would have at least packed him some extra snack food before he left!
I hope the company things about its employees as much as their expensive aircraft when they make their decision, @busdriver11.
I hope so too, doschicos. I fear they are not planning ahead far enough, because right now the hurricane tracks show it sliding to the east of FLL. I think my husband’s plan is that if they end up in FLL tomorrow night and the hurricane is tracking further west, is to insist that they have the crew jumpseat on a flight out of there that night before it hits. Apparently there is a big meeting tomorrow afternoon and they are going to make some decisions. The company is usually fairly proactive, but I think it’s a little tricky since the official track of the hurricane is still showing a safe distance.
Busdriver,
local news has the storm hitting PBI Thursday evening, so hopefully your husband, being further south, may make it out earlier on Thursday
My D was planning on a meet up with a friend who is in grad school in the south. They had reservations in Hilton Head to see a friend and in Charleston. Her friend from HH called this morning to say they were preparing to evacuate if necessary. My D was able to cancel her hotel reservations. The carriage operator in Charleston was very nice refunded her money. She spent a long time on hold with United but they gave her a credit and said she won’t have a change fee.
“local news has the storm hitting PBI Thursday evening, so hopefully your husband, being further south, may make it out earlier on Thursday”
I sure hope so too, bookworm, however…much has to do with the runway orientation and the winds. Right now, starting Thursday morning, they are calling about max crosswind for the airplane he is flying, even if the track doesn’t turn any further west. And if they don’t bring another airplane in for him Thursday am, it’s all irrelevant anyways. Plus, if the track changes just a bit, everything changes.
However, even if he’s stuck at a hotel without power or food, in the end, it barely matters. What matters is that the storm stays offshore and everyone stays safe. Keeping my fingers crossed for everyone who could be affected!
Atlanta will be fine, but hope everyone on the Fl, Ga and Carolina coasts will be fine. It’s a hurrication for several of the coastal colleges.
Yay, hurrication!! Now that’s a new word for me.
As long as the power remains on during the Hurrication. I am watching a friend’s storm prep in the Bahamas (Facebook) and this one looks like serious trouble.
All the public schools will be closed Thursday and Friday.
Busdriver, we spent Hurricane Andrew in a hotel. They were fabulous about providing food
“Busdriver, we spent Hurricane Andrew in a hotel. They were fabulous about providing food”
Well maybe that’s the place to be, then, in a hurricane, as long as they don’t do a mandatory evacuation and the hotel employees stick around. I was in Miami right before Hurricane Andrew hit, and we were actually the last airplane to take off before they closed the airport. You could practically feel the relief coming from the passenger cabin after we took off and the turbulence stopped. Whew! Outta there! But some friends of ours sat out Andrew in Coral Gables, though I tried very hard to talk them into leaving. They said it was awful, blocks of houses flattened, and many people killed, just right down the street. They wished they have left, it was terrifying.
Flew on the last flight out before a hurricane in the Caribbean 40 years ago on an old DC3. It was a wild ride for awhile. I don’t want to repeat that again in my lifetime.
But I’ll bet you were really happy to get out of there, doschios! An old DC3? That might have been a wild ride at any time, that must have been exciting!
@busdriver11 Yeah, DC3s are pretty cool and have a great history. Steep climb from the back if you are sitting towards the front. 
They used a lot of interesting planes between the islands back in the 60s and 70s. All kinds of weird seaplanes. I also remember flying in a Hawker Siddeley Flying Boat and a Grumman Goose. It was like a living aviation museum. I also loved how you’d be sitting in the plane on the tarmac and watch a guy climb up and check the fuel level with a stick. Really bred a lot of confidence. 
Several of the coastal counties have mandatory evacuations for the barrier islands and the A1A strip. Schools are getting out at noon on Wednesday, all sports cancelled basically through the weekend. They are closing the hospital in Cape Canaveral and cancelling all surgeries scheduled for Thursday and Friday. They are opening shelters. Yep, getting serious.
I told my daughter to buy bottled water, charcoal, flashlights. Her response? Why? We had some heavy snow storms in Colorado and some heavy rain in Florida, but we really never lost power for days. She’s going to be in for a shock if she’s stuck for days.
Her biggest concern right now is she has an appointment to renew her passport tomorrow and she doesn’t want to have to wait another week or two if it gets cancelled.