Two Years Ago
At this time two years ago I was sitting at the computer when the first rains from the outer bands of Katrina arrived. My feeling was that we had been spared the main hit, but were still going to experience a tropical storm. The eye came ashore almost 200 miles West of me, but tropical storm force winds were felt 50 miles to the East before the night was over.
Tonight all there is to watch is Invest 94L in the Atlantic, not what was then the fourth most powerful storm on record. I’m content with that.
11 comments
sitting at your computer? lucky duck. i was [required to be] out driving in it.
I had locked everything down and dispensed “sage advice” to new people in the neighborhood about not parking under trees and having towels ready for East and South windows and doors, and taking inside or tying down yard stuff. I stuffed a 20 pound bag of kibble under the house with the top open in case anycat got hungry, and sat here drinking coffee and filling my thermos while we still had power.
Between the base and the tourists, there are so many people over here who can drive in a thunderstorm, that I prefer to stay off the roads when the weather gets bad.
As I explained to a young soul who ventured out to see what it was like during the storm – if you want to experience a hurricane go up to I-10 when it’s raining really hard, get in the back of a pick-up, and have the driver make a couple of runs at 75mph. That’s a hurricane, and standing out in one is just as stupid.
our county provides free bus rides to shelters for people who need to evacuate but don’t have a car, or access to one. there was a bit of a kerfuffle during ivan, with some bus drivers refusing to report to work for this. as a result, several local employers now require their employees, in order to get or keep their jobs, to sign a form stating they will do whatever they’re told in case of hurricanes.
i love wild weather, and i’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but i was nonetheless releieved to have survived my katrina sorties.
It’s the gusts on the wet roads that will get you. I wish I-10 was further North, because heading to the West side of the storm is usually faster and quicker than heading due North, but that bridge into Pensacola is the stopper. That thing keeps falling into the bay.
I’ll keep our wildfires and earthquakes thank you very much.
The wildfires are a lot like hurricanes, with the fixation on weather reports, directions, windspeed, but the earthquakes just surprise you and end.
To each her/his own.
and the ones that won’t fall down on their own we push over with wayward barges.
also, we like to rebuild them with kinks in them.
Picky, picky. We need to make US-98 on the eastern end of Okaloosa Island portable so we can take it before tropical storms or stronger, and then roll it back out after the storm passes.
The ferry service that’s provided after hurricanes wash it out again is a real pain, as is driving around the bay to get to Destin from Ft. Walton. For a fishing town, Destin has amazingly few public docks and patently absurd fees.
They should attach floats and mooring ropes to the sections of the I-10 bridge to recover them after the storm.
destin is an ex fishing village. everything about the place is now absurdly out of reach.
bridges that we could take in out of the storm and put back out right afterwards would be a real luxury. as for the i-10 bridge, i’m not sure i’d want to drive over it again after it’s been sleeping with the fishes.
Destin was always a port for “other cargos,” fishing is what you did when people came to find you. I go back a long way in these parts and know people who were here when the Capone people would winter in Niceville and pick-up this and that from Destin.
I’m not talking about the bridge, the bridge has always been fine, it’s the road itself that goes missing. It’s like what happened to the Pensacola end of the Three-Mile Bridge – you can drive over the bridge, but the road is missing at the other end.
The whole I-10 Bridge has been soaked with salt water, so ensuring a soft ending and a way of finding the pieces would help.
capone?! that’s a l 😈 😈 😈 😈 😈 😈 ng way back, dude.