@rom828 That hasn’t been the situation in the entire state re: gas. Not all areas were out as of Monday morning. Are you saying that your area hasn’t had trucks delivering gas since Monday? According to one press conference that the governor had, delivery has been ongoing all week, often with police escorts in the last day or so.
“I keep hearing that it is easier-going on I-95 vs. I-75.”
That makes sense since 95 runs up the east coast through Florida into Georgia very close to the coast and people seems to be evacuating to Atlanta and 75 is the road you wouid take. Likely lots are taking the turnpike instead of 95 and then going west to 75N farther up the peninsula. Plus, those evacuating to Orlando wouid take the turnpike.
The fact that fuel is still being delivered does not mean that stations haven’t been out of gas at various times.
In fact, I’d say the police escorts indicate quite the opposite-the need for gas is pretty urgent. So it’s quite likely that places have been completely out.
@alwaysamom I’m saying that people did start preparing on Monday. Yes we have had gas deliveries and the stations continue to sell out because people are taking this very seriously. Those still in line may have been preparing all week.
ETA: I have been to Publix twice a day since Monday looking for water and found some when I went at 7am this morning. Stores have done a great job of re supplying what they can.
The latest on my brother in St. Thomas is that while nobody, including his wife, has been able to make contact with him, there’s word from someone who has seen their house from the road above and confirm that it still has a roof.
@Sue22 You had some interesting thoughts about electric cars. What if power goes out for a while and you’re out of charge? Seems like it would make sense to have solar with an electric car for that reason.
Powerwall folks, Powerwall.
If anyone is evacuating as far as Asheville NC and needs a place to stay, PM me. I know of a camp offering space to evacuees.
Heard from S a few hours ago that they have decided to head for Raleigh where DIL’s mom & stepfather live. They are going to try to get to Savannah today and then on to Raleigh tomorrow. I’ll be glad when they get there. Need an emoji for “mom worry.”
Models moved west with Irma on the latest run. It makes landfall around Marathon sometime early Sunday morning then moves north through the Everglades. This is actually a pretty good scenario because the most intense part will miss Miami and the Keys have been evacuated (I’m sure there will be plenty of unhappy alligators – they always ignore evacuation orders!). The eye stays over land and that helps reduce the intensity quickly.
Note: the eye appears to be a little south of the NHC forecast path right now. It’s tough to tell exactly because hurricanes eyes have a minor cycloidal motion to them.
I’m posting these updates to show how crazy things are with numerical weather prediction when you look out more than a couple of days. A track change of ±50 miles can have a huge impact. If you think this event was bad, you should see how screwy it gets with potential snowstorms down here in the Southeast.
Our family left Ft. Lauderdale last night and after 18 hours got to GA where they were heading safely. Other family in Jacksonville and Venice are sheltering in place. Family in Venice (from Long Island) are panicking though! They are not in an area being evacuated, yet.
We have had our gas stations refilled a few times this week. One day one is out but across the street has gas, the next it is the opposite. I filled up on Monday but by Wednesday was at 3/4 tank (carpool!) so I topped it off both Wednesday and Thursday. Someone who saw me on Thursday might have thought I waited until the last minute though.
Woke up with a sore throat today. Went to Publix to get cough drops and medicine - it wasn’t too crowded and it was full of food - water, bread, everything. They are doing a great job of stoking their shelves.
If you go to marinetraffic.com you can see the big cruise ships pouring out of Miami. Almost a dozen of them between Miami and Cuba right now, heading southwest .
So I waited in line for an hour in Gainesville for gas . . . still didn’t get any. Finally left, not even close to the tank.
There were cars filling up multiple gas cans with 30-40 cars waiting. I wish they would limit gas purchases to so many gallons per trip (in times of emergency). People are hoping to power their generators in the aftermath, imho.
S topped off before they evacuated from Miami and said there were security guards enforcing a one 5 gallon gas can limit in addition to your car tank.
Just catching up…
Where I am if the power’s out the pumps are down anyway. One of the good things about an electric car is that as long as the power’s on you can keep your car fully charged. You can run 10 miles of errands, pull into your garage and plug in and be at full a half hour later. At the start of any outage I’d have at least 260 miles in range.
In a prolonged outage I could plug the car into a generator to charge up.
As I understand it, the Tesla superchargers are part of the infrastructure grid so they tend to be brought back quickly if knocked out.
@droppedit, what a cool site! Thanks for sharing it.
@droppedit, I’m enjoying and appreciative of your posts in this thread. I’m sure others here are, too, so thank you.
That is what we need up here!
@droppedit. I too am following what you say over anything else I read.