Very concerned about the west coast now. The storm itself seems to be moving faster than was projected earlier.
I saw that woman on MSNBC, @romanigypsyeyes. Her name is Doris and she was a hoot, but I thought she might have some dementia. I was so relieved to see her son show up to get her. Funny how the human interest stories like that and like the man who gave the woman the generator for her oxygen dependent dad connect us with the reality of the event.
The European weather forecasters have better computers.
If she’s still in Florida and actually waiting until Saturday at noon to depart, she may be joining her husband in Naples for the hurricane. Waiting till the last minute to fly out like that makes it more likely that the airport will close or the airline will cancel the flight. I would hope that she is elsewhere. Even getting to an airport tomorrow could be crazy with traffic, and tough getting back home if they cancel the flight.
If she’s flying out of a Florida airport, she should keep updated on airport closures and flight cancellations. The airlines are going to be wanting to get their employees out of there. No reason to put herself at risk on the road if her flight has already cancelled.
Kind of what I think about helmetless motorcycle riders, it narrows the gene pool. I’m not going to waste my worry with people like that, and if his wife is foolish enough to stay, the same for her. I hope first responders don’t get killed or injured risking their lives to rescue people who purposefully stayed in evacuation zones, who had other options.
Our girl Irma is now forecast to hit the Florida Keys as a Cat 5. It’s idiotic to stay there, but I’m not sure why everyone is saying that it’s certain death. Most people survived in Barbuda, didn’t they?
I’m sure people will survive but when the average elevation of the Keys is 3 feet above sea level and the highest point in all of the Keys is 18 feet, that doesn’t bode well. Barbuda isn’t quite that flat.
I heard Doris while driving my mom downstate to her friend’s house. I was concerned that the son wasn’t there yet and the building’s security guard had already left. Thankfully another security guard showed up and finally the son.
@busdriver11, I think she is flying out of Naples airport - which is very close to where they live. Last I heard her flight is still scheduled to leave tomorrow at noon. She’d been trying to get a flight out for days but they were all sold out. She’s on one going to Detroit and connecting to another flight to Seattle.
My BIL was supposed to fly tomorrow to upstate NY, to schlep my inlaws to more assisted living places, but his flight has already been cancelled. So she’s leaving and he is hunkering down. Fortunately, they are in a brand new, very solid house, built to the latest codes. I don’t even recall any large trees anywhere close to their house. They are on one of those man made lakes all the new developments have, but it’s not very large.
If I was foolish enough to stay in the Keys, after choosing the safest place to settle down in, I think I’d also wear a life jacket and a helmet…on the off chance that it would possibly save me from drowning or getting whacked in the head. One thing I noticed in the Houston floods, I never saw anyone wearing a life jacket. Maybe because they didn’t have access to one or think of it, but I’d imagine anyone living in the Keys has a life jacket. A tiny shot that it could save you.
In general, it’s tough to predict how long any particular area will be pummeled and what the storm surge will be like. If it’s a very high storm surge for a prolonged period of time, it will be challenging for things to remain alive when whever they are sheltering is covered by water, IMO. Hurricanes can throw a lot of heavy stuff around for long periods of time as well and gas leaks and fallen power lines can start fires, fallen power lines can also electrify things, including water. Refusing to evacuate isn’t certain death but it is definitely a risky choice and not one that I would make.
I personally think deaths and injuries from holdouts are not the largest potential problem. I think the serious problems occur after the storm when roofs are blown off, houses are flooded, roads are obstructed and power outages linger. Then all the “I’m staying in place” people start screaming for responder rescue and help, supplies and other critical requirements. Do these people really want their family to sit in their house during pouring rain with no roof or no windows? Do they want their family to be exposed to potential contaminated water?
First responders should be focused on clearing critical roads, getting communications back up, fixing hospitals, airports, bringing in needed equipment and supplies, evacuating injuries. These are critical issues in the Caribbean right now. Hospitals without roofs, roads impassable, airports damaged. Relief planes are landing on cleared runways, air traffic control towers be damned…terminals gone
We’ll be watching many of these same people on TV over the next couple of days screaming because the govt is not rescuing them or something along those lines
I agree. I just saw an interview with a guy who is planning to ride out the hurricane in Miami on his BOAT. Worse, he’s invited a homeless guy onto the boat to ride it out with him. He said if there’s a storm surge it’ll be okay because his boat will float. The woman interviewing him just looked incredulous.
Why is it always so beautiful right before a storm? We walked around UF’s campus tonight and all was peaceful and relatively cool.
Again, with the stupid boat guy, why do the media even air such crap?! As far as “riding out” the storm, that’s going to be a wild ride indeed.
As far as people on the islands, I’m sure if it was as simple as driving away from their homes, many of them would have taken that option. They couldn’t. Most people in FL can.
Evacuation issues can be very nuanced , even within the same general area. There are some areas that clearly need evacuated, have mandatory evacuation, and most people will comply. But, it is not always clear and many people won’t want to leave if they don’t absolutely have to, may not have good options to go to, are worried about leaving their homes behind, etc. And to add to the confusion, you have places that never flooded before that are now flooding, that got hit hard, with people who probably never had to think about potentially having to evacuate before… You certainty see people waiting til the last minute to evacuate in other areas, with wildfires for instance, trying to save their homes. Good luck to all those dealing with Irma.
Gov. Scott tweeted a number yesterday that anyone in an evacuation zone could call to get evacuated. I don’t know if it worked, but he did tweet it out.
“Gov. Scott tweeted a number yesterday that anyone in an evacuation zone could call to get evacuated. I don’t know if it worked, but he did tweet it out.”
BEFORE the storm. Like now. In many areas, they have busses hauling people out and to evacuation centers. The governor made it quite clear no one was going to rescue your butt during the storm.
That’s the conventional wisdom. I’m not a meteorologist but I have talked to some biggies at NOAA and it’s my understanding that the main problem with our long-range model (the GFS) is initialization. That’s a complicated process of assimilating global data (we have the best global data), generating mass/momentum/etc for the current state of the atmosphere, making sure to conserve things, yada, yada. It’s not mainly a problem with our model physics.
Now, I’m a software guy. We have multiple model teams at NOAA and associated universities. When I hear something like the initialization problem, I immediately think: pull everyone off of model development and put them all on the initialization issue! Once we have the best initialization system completed then they can go back to their favorite model work. It’s a no-brainer to me. It’ll benefit all of our models because many of our non-global models use the GFS at their grid boundaries.
Note that we (the US) have the best short-term high resolution models (say, 18-48 forecast hours). We have, by far, the best weather radars. We have the best satellites. Much of our weather science and technology is focused on severe weather (thunderstorms and tornadoes), probably because most of our R&D is based in the Plains where there’s tons of severe weather.
Surprised to see mandatory evacuation for Hilton Head - path seemed to be moving west - did not think they would have much impact - but still a storm surge issue.
When I said that Gov. Scott tweeted a number you could use to be evacuated, I meant to be countering the idea that people would have trouble being able to evacuate before the storm. It sounds like Florida has been making it possible for people who want to be evacuated, but who maybe don’t have cars or have some other issue, to nevertheless make it out.