2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season Running Thread

You'll catch your death.

 

She didn't say it, but I definitely deserved a "bless your heart."

 

My grandma when it go below probably 70, certainly 60, and I was wearing a t-shirt....
"You need a sleeve."

 

As of 2 a.m., TD10 went poof.
It was like a school boy the first time in the back seat of a car.

 

Just checked the radar on the phone upon waking. Isiaiaisisisis is off the coast of Fort Lauderdale right now. While the eastern side of the storm looks menacing, the radar shows almost nothing on the western side (which is the side Floridians are mostly worried about). I heard the hurricane nerds talking last night about it fighting some strong wind shear.

Today's the real deal for everyone from Jupiter Inlet to Ponte Vedra. Good luck. We're all counting on you.

Note to NHC: If you're going to name hurricanes, at least make them easier for broadcasters and journalists to say and write?

 

Easy for those in the Spanish-speaking parts of the North Atlantic region to say!

 

The real deal? My driveway is almost dry there's been so little rain, and it's a little bit windy here on the treasure coast. A few nice gusts to sit and listen to my hurricane-viewing area. Pretty much a fizzle at least right now and right here

 

This is going to turn into a replay of David in 1979, at least here on the Tourist Coast.

 

Nothing like a good hurricane party, if you know someone dumb enough to throw one. I knew a guy who had one at the Flagship hotel in Galveston, which sat on a pier out over the gulf. He rented a room on the fifth floor on the gulf side... not that I went. I was married by then, and my wife wasn't having any part of my going down there. The hotel was there for about forty years and finally closed after taking a lot of damage due to Hurricane Ike.

 

Traditionally, after we've done shuttering up and we're all prepared, but before the storm sets in, there's a bunch of us our neighborhood that will meet in someone's driveway and sit around for a couple hours drinking and chatting and enjoying the breezy weather. But that did not happen this year.

 

The hurricane I enjoyed most (there's a sentence I never thought I'd write) was Alicia, in Houston in 1983. We lived in an older apartment complex, with the buildings in a triangle around a central pool, gated entrances at the corners. We were in an upstairs apartment and the front wall was was glass, with a sliding glass door. The winds were channeled by the entrances in such a way that I could stand on my front porch with the rain blowing sideways at 90 mph about ten feet in front of me, or sit inside and watch through the plate glass. It was awesome standing out in the storm without being affected in any way, watching various objects blowing sideways past me, the full fury of the storm close enough to reach out and touch.

It was awesome until the power went out, anyhow. My son was about two weeks old, and we were in a glass fronted apartment that faced west with no air conditioning. No fun at all in August in Houston, as we didn't get power back for eight days or so. My wife would up taking the baby to stay with her parents in Birmingham, who did have AC.

 

For Fran, my co-worker and I were scrambling to finish our pages (for a paper that would eventually never get printed) before the newspaper lost power. The Old Telegram building had a broken window on the second floor -- and the rain was hitting us from across the room. We completed the section around 12:30 a.m., and I got in my Honda CRX to drive back to our rental house. The wind was so strong, I barely could get the door open. I got to the first intersection and couldn't tell whether I had a green light or not, because the light was blown sideways. Not a big deal because I was the only car on the road. I passed the only big building in town -- the Hardees headquarters -- and with the winds blocked, the car actually felt like it jumped eight feet into the next lane, then jumped back.

I got home safely, parked the car in the driveway, and then did a Jim Cantore in the street for a while, because standing up in 75 mph winds is amusing. I also recorded the wind noise on a recorder for posterity. We eventually lost power at 2, so I just watched the lightning, rain and trees blowing back and forth until I realized the 70-foot tall pine on the other side of the street was bending right over my car.

So I went back out in the driving rain, moved the car into the street, and no more than 15 minutes later, that tree snapped with a huge crack and landed three feet behind the CRX, blocking everybody else in the court!

The next morning, we saw lots of big trees downed on houses nearby, but nothing hit us.

Floyd, on the other hand, was just inches and inches and inches of rain.