(no subject)

[lliira]

Stocking up for a storm when you can't eat high fiber food is a major pain in the ass. Basically peanut butter and jerky, and that's about it. Canned tuna I guess, but I find canned tuna without mayo pretty blech. Potato chips.

The area I live in has only been seriously effected by a hurricane once since I've lived here, and that was the year we got four hurricanes right after each other. Irma's looking worse. Way. Way. WAY worse. Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands are gonna get seriously slammed, and they don't have the resources Florida does.

I'm not worried about our safety here, as the likelihood of the Tampa area getting hit by Irma like Houston was by Harvey is pretty low. But this is not going to be pleasant. I'm looking to the experts, and Floridians who've lived here for decades usually scoff at the panic over our hurricanes. Not this time.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I lived in Florida 20 years, and I'm in Daytona Beach now. Get out if you can. This is a scary-ass storm. If the scale went to six, Irma would be a six already.

If not, maybe you can source some of those little fast food mayo packets for your tuna. Mayo is shelf stable until you open it, so leaving the packets unrefrigerated is safe.

[madgastronomer]

Dammit, it logged me out. I was logged in when I started the comment. That's me.

[lliira]

It would be basically unprecedented to have to evacuate here. We're pretty far away from any large bodies of water. They don't even know if they're going to close the schools in the county yet. Some models have it hitting the Bay area after Cuba tanks for us and makes it a cat 4. Other models have it going more up the center of Florida (worst-case scenario as far as I can tell) or skimming the east coast (which I've seen called the best-case scenario as then the eyewall would be farther away from the coast.) Then there's the possibility it'll avoid us altogether and hit the panhandle instead.

We're preparing for evacuation at a half-hour's notice if one is called. But premature evacuation (snicker) could be a very bad thing. People have done that only to drive directly into a storm's newly changed path. Also, there aren't very many freeways going north here, and we need to save them for people from the Keys and such who do need to evacuate. We're in an area with a lot of animal-friendly shelters and other amenities. I'm anxious, and preparing, but not panicking. I'm definitely not as blasé over this storm as I've been over others after ten years of seeing the national media freak out over storm after storm that turned out to be big nothings.

It's weird how every little tropical storm in Florida gets massive attention, but Harvey wasn't given much play until the worst happened, and hardly anyone seems to be focused on what's happening in Puerto Rico. Irma is a serious threat, definitely, but it's not time to flip out yet.

[madgastronomer]

Mm. The spaghetti plot has moved east overnight. The one I was looking at last night was worse for the gulf coast. Not as bad as the east coast, but bad enough. But the thing is, if the Saffir-Simpson scale was extended logically, if the categories kept going up every 20mph like they do for the rest of it, Irma would be a 6 on the way to 7. And even though it will probably lose a lot of speed traveling up the middle, a category 4 is still "catastrophic damage" territory. *shrug* As I said, my family's on the east coast, and we're all getting out now, early. I think the Sarasota cousins are packing up too, at this point.

In Florida, every storm gets attention. I don't know what they do now, but when I was a kid, during the season, every paper grocery bag had a hurricane tracking map on the back, and we all learned how in school. In Seattle, we never hear about them unless they're a cat 4 at least.

And don't you know Puerto Rico is full of brown people? That's why no one cares. :P Most people don't even know it's part of the US, as far as I can tell.

[lliira]

It's catastrophic damage, and it's going to be bad for the people who are in the "catastrophic" band. But as they constantly remind us here, evacuation is 10s of miles, not hundreds. And we're in a location people evacuate /to/. Even if the city of Tampa itself got hit head-on, we'd most likely be safe, though the roads would be a mess.

I have never known anyone who doesn't know about Puerto Rico. Public school is not that bad yet. I think the reason it doesn't get attention is that it doesn't have money. No money = no ad revenue for the megaconglomerates that own the news, or so they think. Though that doesn't apply to Houston -- but then, the mass media pretty much hates Texas. I do not believe that it's a bottom-up thing; I think it's a top-down thing. And I've talked to people across the political spectrum, including very many "apolitical" people, who are past tired of being treated like idiots by the media. I certainly am.

I hope you and your family get out easily and safely! I don't know anything about the way in which hurricanes hit the east coast. Florida's weird -- we might as well be about four separate states, both in weather patterns and culturally. I miss blizzards; a blizzard is a blizzard no matter where it hits :P.