Florida in Crosshairs Again…. Milton

Ed Haywood said:
Common misconception. Water is the killer. If you are in a declared evacuation zone, get the hell out of there. Everyone else should generally stay put unless you have personal needs that might cause challenges.
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Yep! When I was growing up in Miami many many years ago, we lived inland. Never evacuated, but did board up, clean and fill the tubs with water, and placed towels along the door thresholds. Never had flooding, but the wind would tend to drive the rain across the thresholds. Our home was made from CBS Block, with hurricane windows that would lock down, along with awnings to close and cover the windows. Over the many hurricanes, never had house damage, just lots of tree damage. BTW - always removed the coconuts from the trees. Those things are like cannon balls coming at you in 100 mph winds! :yikes:
 
ateamer said:
If not for airpark life, we’d be out. Where, I’m not sure. Possibly northern Nevada outside Reno.
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Florida does not have a monopoly on airparks. Lots in Texas as well, and they're really all over. We even have some in Wisconsin!

If I had the money and nothing tying me to a particular area, I'd probably go for Alpine in Wyoming. Beautiful area, and close enough to the backcountry to have some fun there. https://alpineairpark.com/

31-runway-46u.jpg
 
I was thinking not just living at an airpark, but ours particularly. What a great group of friends our neighbors are! We have a really closeknit bunch and do things together almost every day.

I’m sure almost every airpark is the same.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Chicago winters might be treacherous sometimes, but I'll take them any day of the week over watching a hurricane barreling towards my home. I don't know how you all in FL cope with that stuff. That'd be a 1-and-done for me. Especially with the crazy insurance costs I'm reading about out there.
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Easy—We live in a drinking village with a boating problem.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
The older car is in Florida, newer in Indiana. Florida quote was 4x, same broker and insurance company.
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Katamarino said:
That's what we get when people decide to just leave their planes/cars in the way of the hurricane.
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Gee, I thought it might be because of overcrowded highways, population growth exceeding highway construction despite road construction freakin' everywhere, lost tourists, and having the most dangerous highway in America ( https://www.boginmunns.com/blog/most-dangerous-highway-in-america/ ). Good to know the real reason is people leaving vehicles behind when they evacuate. If they'd just bring all of them along to the shelters, our insurance rates would come way down!

:rolleyes:
 
Half Fast said:
It happens, but it's usually pretty localized inland. Storm drains run into lakes, so massive rain events cause lake levels to rise dramatically and people in low areas, especially waterfront, get some flooding. But for inland FL it's NOTHING like what NC has experienced. Away from the storm surge, we won't see 10' of water in homes and hangars like those poor folks have experienced.
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From the latest update. I would not discount the impacts of a hurricane this size outside of the storm surge. God willing the winds decrease, but this storm is unprecedented and will be a killer.

RAINFALL: Rainfall amounts of 6 to 12 inches, with localized totals
up to 18 inches, are expected across central to northern portions of
the Florida Peninsula through Thursday. This rainfall brings the
risk of catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding,
along with moderate to major river flooding.
 
Might be shifting south. Will be interesting to see what the track is tomorrow morning.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Chicago winters might be treacherous sometimes, but I'll take them any day of the week over watching a hurricane barreling towards my home. I don't know how you all in FL cope with that stuff. That'd be a 1-and-done for me. Especially with the crazy insurance costs I'm reading about out there.

But I hope everyone makes it to safety and Milton pumps the brakes on wind speed before it makes landfall. Best of luck.
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The people in Florida don't know how we cope with Chicago
 
I've decided anything stronger than a cat 1 pointed at houston, i'm using birdy to evacuate, there is zero i can do to protect the house/cars.
 
The focus has been on Tampa, but it looks like the bad flooding is going to be south of there, from Cape Coral up to Bradenton.
 
bflynn said:
The focus has been on Tampa, but it looks like the bad flooding is going to be south of there, from Cape Coral up to Bradenton.
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Hard to say. Having ridden out at least dozen of these, the track can shift a surprising amount at the last minute.

The 50 miles of coast to the south of the eye will get the surge. The area north of the eye will get minimal surge.

Right now the track points to Sarasota, which would spare Tampa Bay from major water damage. But a last minute jink of the track could easily put it north of the mouth of the bay. Then it would be Godzilla time.

That entire section of coast is densely populated, so a lot of people are going to have a terrible day. Just a matter of where.
 
This is a good example of how fast the track can deviate. Here is the 1000 cone, along with hourly plots through 1300. It is almost out of the cone in 3 hours!

Now imagine the impact of that on the 12 hour track the next time they run the models.

Screenshot_20241009-131901.png
 
francisco collazos said:
I disagree with you, we have known that this storm was coming this way for over a week. There's no reason for not being able to move a plane in that time.
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I was busy dealing with a flooded house and pretty much lost everything so forgive me if I think your opinion is f’ng worthless as I was spending every waking moment dealing with that and not toys. It’s called prioritization.
 
Ed Haywood said:
the track can shift a surprising amount at the last minute.
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Of course it can. That's why I say "it looks like" and not "it will".

The area south of the eye will get the flooding wherever the eye comes ashore. Right now, that still looks like Cape Coral will get the worse because of low lying areas, but the whole coast between there and Tampa is likely to get hit.
 
francisco collazos said:
I disagree with you, we have known that this storm was coming this way for over a week. There's no reason for not being able to move a plane in that time.
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Sounds easy when you aren't in the bullseye. There can be a lot of other priorities to deal with in front of a storm, a replacement metal and composite toy might not be one of them. Your home, business, family, animals, etc. can be a lot more important than your aircraft. When I used to live on the coast and evacuated, we took our SUV and camper, stuffed to the gills with the important stuff, after spending days preparing the house. If I had an airplane then, it would have been left behind. Not enough time to shuttle back and forth.
 
tsts4 said:
I was busy dealing with a flooded house and pretty much lost everything so forgive me if I think your opinion is f’ng worthless as I was spending every waking moment dealing with that and not toys. It’s called prioritization.
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Sorry buddy, I'm just north of you. If you need any help send me a PM. I can help with whatever you need.
 
Some good news on the local newscasts; the cold front to the north is weakening the storm. The eye is breaking up, and they expect it to drop to Cat 3 by landfall.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Some good news on the local newscasts; the cold front to the north is weakening the storm. The eye is breaking up, and they expect it to drop to Cat 3 by landfall.
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I've seen 3 different kinds of reporting:

1) the typical THIS IS THE WORST STORM IN THE HISTORY OF HISTORY EVERYONE'S GONNA DIE WATCH OUR CHANNEL FOR MORE DETAILS LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE AAAAHHHHHHH
2) THIS IS THE WORST STORM IN HISTORY
3) this is one of the worst storms and it's heading for Florida. all indications at this point are there are several factors in play that should break this storm up so it won't be nearly as devastating as most are making it out to be by the time it hits land.

and I'd say the above order also holds true for the most widely spread to the least. just my observation.
 
Cat 3 is still an extremely dangerous storm, especially with so much debis still around from the storm two weeks ago. I was just outside of Charleston when Hugo came through (9/1989) as a cat 4. We rode it out but not something I'd want to repeat. I mentioned in another thread a couple of days ago that I would have grabbed my loved ones and beat feet outta town already ...
 
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eman1200 said:
I've seen 3 different kinds of reporting:

1) the typical THIS IS THE WORST STORM IN THE HISTORY OF HISTORY EVERYONE'S GONNA DIE WATCH OUR CHANNEL FOR MORE DETAILS LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE AAAAHHHHHHH
2) THIS IS THE WORST STORM IN HISTORY
3) this is one of the worst storms and it's heading for Florida. all indications at this point are there are several factors in play that should break this storm up so it won't be nearly as devastating as most are making it out to be by the time it hits land.

and I'd say the above order also holds true for the most widely spread to the least. just my observation.
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Local newscasts are far more reliable. The meteorologists at major Tampa stations make or break their careers on hurricane coverage. Local coverage is very professional and detailed, and largely devoid of exaggeration or hyperbole. They understand that overstatement causes those who are in danger to dismiss all coverage as alarmist. They also understand that unwanted panic can put more people in danger, so they are careful what they say and how they say it.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Interesting the Tampa ATIS is only predicting 35G60?
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The nearby TAFs are forecasting lower windspeeds than the weather.gov website, and local news is all over the place.

I suspect part of it is surface wind vs wind at altitude, and part of it is what likelihood % they choose to use for their forecast. If there's a 10% probability of 100mph winds, some stations use that as their "forecast" even though it's unlikely. I suppose that's safer.

The zone forecast for Polk County calls for "...80 to 90 mph with gusts up to 105 mph after midnight." So that's 70 to 78 knots with gusts to 90. But the Lakeland (KLAL) TAF only calls for 40 knots with gusts to 60. That's a pretty significant difference.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Local newscasts are far more reliable. The meteorologists at major Tampa stations make or break their careers on hurricane coverage. Local coverage is very professional and detailed, and largely devoid of exaggeration or hyperbole. They understand that overstatement causes those who are in danger to dismiss all coverage as alarmist. They also understand that unwanted panic can put more people in danger, so they are careful what they say and how they say it.
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I agree 100%. They also live with this stuff, just like we do, and their own homes and families are impacted by the storm. Much more reasonable reporting, less hype, less heroics-for-show.

When I was a kid in Jacksonville, there was a local weather guy named George Winterling ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Winterling ) who made a name for himself by studying and forecasting hurricanes, and was the only one to be right about Hurricane Dora. Everybody in Jax listened to that guy like the Oracle of Delphi from then on, and he had an impressive career. He was the inventor of the "heat index" and he was the first person to use moving satellite weather images, which he painstakingly made himself by printing individual photos then filming them frame-by-frame to create a moving picture.

Neat, neat guy. He passed away last summer.
 
francisco collazos said:
I disagree with you, we have known that this storm was coming this way for over a week. There's no reason for not being able to move a plane in that time.
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Some of us have a family member who needs us to be at home every day. Some of us are traveling with our family and cannot be home to move the plane. Some are in public safety or essential employees at work and cannot leave the area. Most of us aren’t so arrogant as to come down on someone else for not putting inanimate objects first.
 
ateamer said:
Some of us have a family member who needs us to be at home every day. Some of us are traveling with our family and cannot be home to move the plane. Some are in public safety or essential employees at work and cannot leave the area. Most of us aren’t so arrogant as to come down on someone else for not putting inanimate objects first.
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And some of us have a plane that's grounded while we wait for USPS to deliver a @$%$! part that's been on order for a couple of weeks and seems to be stuck in the postal service's ^&*%@ Atlanta distribution center.

Yes, I'm PO'd.
 
This storm is likely going to be similar to Katrina. It reached Cat 5 over open water, but reduced to Cat 3 by landfall. As most should know, the Category is based solely on windspeed. Despite the downgraded winds and Category, Katrina's size, impact area, and storm surge were all just as large as the Cat 5, just with slightly reduced peak winds. That is what these massive hurricanes do, they get very intense, then very widespread. Even now the discussion I am seeing is about how wide the wind field on this storm is becoming, with hurricane level winds out 40 miles from the eye, and tropical storm force winds out 250 miles from the eye.

Now as opposed to Hurricane Camille, that actually made landfall as a Cat 5, but its destructive path was relatively narrow, mostly confined to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
 
Cat 3 now. Local stations saying it may drop to Cat 2 by landfall.

OTOH path seems to be leaning north. If it does not turn east soon, landfall it may hit the mouth of Tampa Bay. That would drastically increase human impact.
 
Numerous tornado warnings covering much of the state of Florida.
 
The 4:00 PM EDT update:

SUMMARY OF 400 PM EDT...2000 UTC...INFORMATION
-----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...26.9N 83.5W
ABOUT 100 MI...160 KM WNW OF FT. MYERS FLORIDA
ABOUT 100 MI...155 KM SW OF TAMPA FLORIDA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...125 MPH...205 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NE OR 35 DEGREES AT 17 MPH...28 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...950 MB...28.05 INCHES

100 MI SW of Tampa, currently heading NE or 35 degrees. Still going to wobble some so hard to predict, but getting very close.

Watching this website, you can track water levels. Currently rising in Ft. Myers and Naples, Tampa still fairly flat.

 
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