KattyWilly

This is the branch that came down early this morning outside Lindsey’s window.

At this time that appears to be the worst of the effects of Frances at our house.

This is starting to remind me of Hurricane Elena. 

In 1985 Cindy and I went through Hurricane Elena. We evacuated the condo we lived in and rode out the storm with Cindy’s parent and our cats and Larry’s cat and Cindy’s parents cat. It was forecasted to move through the Gulf and make land fall in Louisiana. But instead it turned right and sat off the coast and battered the bay area for two days.

“There’s nothing worse than when you are on radar and it says exe error re-boot.”

Just heard on the local news.  How long before we see a BSOD?

The most recent update has Frances slowing down and is either
stationary or moving very slowly towards the panhandle where it is
expeccted to perhaps strengthen to hurricane strength again.

I think we all thought that by this time in the morning things would
have cleared out.   There are tornado warnings up for the
interior sections of the state.  “Normally” the area of the storms
where tornadic activity is the north east portion of the
storm.   We are currently in the south east portion of
Frances.  The Gulf waters are feeding the storms as the rain bands
rotate around the center,

The Storm Team VIPIR radar is showing a 3-D cutaway view of an area of
rotation that reads level of 32 dbz and away from the core it was
(null) .  Looked a little more geeky than the displays I’m used to
seeing.

The backside of Frances is still hammering our area.  The rain
bands have been moving through all night.  They weather guys just
measured rainfall rates at 1-3 inches per hour in the areas of the rain
bands.  Downtown Tampa is on the TV right now and is flooded in
many areas.

Sometime around 6:30 I heard a large thump out in the yard.  I
went out and we lost a large branch from one of the Maples in the back
yard.  It was about a 6-8 inch thick branch that missed the house.

The TV weather guys are having a hard time talking and operating the
computer at the same time.  The weather radar systems are getting
so sophisticated that they need to have a team, one to operate the
computer, and another to desccribe the displays.  There are
hundreds of thousands of people without power and are listening to the
TV broadcasts that are simulcast on the radio.  I’ve heard several
of the weather reporters talk about the folks listening to them on the
Radar instead of Radio.

The winds have picked up since last night.  When we went to sleep
around 1:00 am it had let up quite a bit.  Now we have sustained
winds in the 30 mph range and gusts inthe 40’s.  The live shots
from the beaches look really nasty.  Hernando county has announced
mandatory level A and B evacuations.

A short clip of the tree.  Just wanted to see if I could get this to transfer to the web.

The winds have shifted and we are getting the backside of the storm now.

Just did a quick tour of the neighborhood while I ran down the street to pick up Lindsey.  Actually there is not much choice other than to go around the block as the tree that came down is blocking the road.  There isn’t any other real damage at this time.  Just a few fences blown down and lot and lots of leaves and small branches all over the place.

That said the center of the storm hasn’t actually made it to us yet.

Click the photo for a bigger image.

You can’t get there from here.

Click for a larger image.

Here is another picture of the tree that came down.  No injuries and no damage to home or cars so it was quite a lucky thing that a tree that large could find a place to fall that didn’t hit anything.

I was just out watching the weather from the garage when a pretty big tree went down around the corner.  Photo coming as soon as I can get it uploaded.

Here is the photo, click on the thumbnail for a bigger image.