Hurricane Isadore

Living in Florida, every summer is another chance to be in peril from yet another hurricane. I've been through a couple, and more than a few tropical storms. Right now there is a Hurricane sitting just off the tip of Cuba called Isadore. The weatherman seems not to be worried, but um...it's not moving anywhere. According to computer models it's supposed to move away toward the west, but whenever those storms basically stop moving anywhere computer models are pretty much useless. I've seen it happen before, when the hurricane did something totally different than what the computer models said, most specifically because it got stuck. Right now the hurricane is stuck because of high pressure above it, and the latitude that it's moving toward usually flows storms toward the east, but in this case it can't so it's stuck, and the longer a hurricane stays over water, the stronger it gets. If it gets stuck over land, it falls apart, water, grows bigger and more powerful. If that hits anywhere in the US, it will probably destroy what ever it gets near, it's going to probably be at category 4 or 5 by the time it makes it to land based upon the amount of time it's getting to stay put over water. I remember when Andrew hit in 1992, and that one moved really fast across South Florida. If this one just lollygags in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of somewhere, you might as well just drop an atomic bomb on the city cause it will pretty much trash it with floods, winds, and storm surge. I live right now on a peninsula, about a mile from the beach, so I'm pretty much screwed. The alley behind my house floods everytime it rains hard, let alone like 30 inches at a time. I checked the roof for cracks, yesterday, thank goodness there were none, however there were a lot of low hanging branches over the house laying or touching on the roof from this oak tree. I'm going to have to cut those. The hurricane will probably not hit here, it's kind of hard to directly hit Tampa Bay, but when they do, we're the worst possible place to be, storm surge is horrendous here. Water from the beach will likely flood past the seawall on Beach Drive near where I live, and spread out past Gulfport Blvd, and into the suburbs. My house is kind of raised up, but ahh, I don't think it's high enough if there is like a 20 ft storm surge and 120 MPH winds.

Whenever hurricanes get too close for comfort in Florida the weathermen get put into the spotlight on the news, and you get hourly updates, and gullable jittery people get scared shitless even if it's about 200 miles away at uh, ahem, Category 1. Home Depot and Lowes turn into a plywood buying frenzy, people buying tons of the stuff, even fighting over it. The news will often flash "Hurricane Survival Tips and Supplies" and people that never even own a box of bandaids will buy an entire medicine chest, 60 D Cell batteries, candles, flashlights, duct tape, gallons and gallons of bottled water, canned goods, and pet food. All the mobile home and trailer people pretty much get roused out of their doublewides and put in shelters, usually schools and churches.

When I was a kid, about 6, a hurricane called Elena came very close to Tampa Bay, and I can remember my uncle having to evacuate from his apartment on the beach, with him and his girlfriend Patty saying at my parents house. My parents usually wouldn't let me outside when it was really bad, but I remember how strong the wind was, and how the rain wasn't falling, it was rather blowing horizontally. When things were a little died down, I went outside briefly, and I could just barely stand against the wind. I assume that the wind was about 50 MPH at that time. It did some damage, but I think it hit at Category 2 or 3, and the eye of the storm crossed in a rather unpopulated area at that time.

Hurricane Andrew in 1992, was pretty bad, at borderline Category 5, and it pretty much leveled Homestead, Florida, near Miami. I remember when that happened and their own little city was wiped out. I remember watching the news and seeing houses and suburbs totally pulverized. It looked a lot worse and more widespread than the destruction to the World Trade Center, on Sept 11th, 2001. They changed building codes for that region because of Andrew.

Hurricanes can be fun, or dangerous depending upon the intensity of the storm. People get silly and start to panic if driven by grandstanding weathermen who pretty much sit in their corner of the news office droning about high pressure systems and dopplar radar. A Category 1 Hurricane is pretty windy and if you go out to the beach, you might catch a Hawaii or California sized breaker. The winds are pretty intense, and can push you back. In all my experience in Tropical Storms and Hurricanes, most don't seem to have much lightning, unlike a typical summer thunderstorm. I think it has something to do with the winds, and the circulation. When you watch the sky you can see cottage cheezy looking clouds just whizzing by, as the hurricane moves, you can see the clouds change direction and feel the wind change direction.

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