Looks like we are about 24hrs from Charley making landfall pretty much directly over us. I finished all the clean up of stuff around the house. We have our water, food, batteries, candles etc and it is just a sit and wait situation right now.
The power went out at the office, unrelated to the weather as it was a construction crew cutting a cable. But it did feel kind of wierd with all the lights out and the UPS’s beeping like crazy all over the office. We were told it woul dbe 30 minutes but after an hour or so we decided to prepare the office for Charley. We went around and moved all the PC’s up on desks and covered all the equipment with plastic in case the roof leaks.
The storm track seems to be pretty stable as it hasn’t changed much over the last 18 hours. Depending on the track the storm surge in the bay could be as high as 14ft, or the sorm could suck the water out of Tampa Bay. It all depends on where it makes landfall north of south or directly over us.
The traffic copters on tv show the bridges heading inland over the bay and it looks like a slow moving parking lot. They are trying to stagger the evacuations. Pinellas county on the coast has been on voluntary evacutations most of the day and mandatory since 6:00pm tonight. Hillsborough County is on the inland side of the bay and has started special needs and voluntary evacuations now and will go mandatory at 6:00am tomorrow. They hope is Pinellas will have cleared the roads so Hillsborough can get out.
The stores are all crowded and there are lines at the gas stations. Traffic was a mess coming home from the rink this evening. There was some rain that was apparently thanks to Bonnie, and many excited and anxious drivers, there were two accidents just between the rink and the house.
Chelsey is over at a friends and Lindsey and I are hanging out. The tropical storm force weather will start sometime tomorrow afternoon. The heavy weather is expected to last between 6 and 8 hours.