Continuing with Hurricane Irma

I wish I was able to say “What a difference a day makes.” Maybe I can, but not in a good way, especially not for those of us further inland on the east coast.

Based on the current projected track, it looks like we’ll see two landfalls, one in Florida somewhere around Miami and one near the GA-SC border. After that, Irma will move inland, and if things go as they normally do, weaken rapidly. That will be cold comfort to those who will still be hit with tropical storm force winds and deluged by many inches of rain. Many of these areas already have had a wet summer, so the ground is pretty wet and rivers and lakes are full or nearly so.

I keep up with the area near Myrtle Beach, SC as we have friends there and it is one of our potential retirement areas. Rivers there are already at or above flood stage. While the current track spares them some of the worst weather, they will still get a lot of wind and rain, and things will get bad fast. This is one single example of what is awaiting a huge and heavily populated swath of the southeastern US. Folks, we’re going to have a bad week next week.

The news is full of stories, video and photos from the Caribbean showing wide-scale disaster. We’re also getting reports from Florida that the evacuation is going as well as we preppers would expect it to. Gas stations are running dry despite government efforts to get fuel supplies in. Stores are running out of supplies of water, food, batteries and so on as desperate people who have come to the realization they can’t get out or who won’t leave are preparing to go to ground and ride the storm out. Walmart and Home Depot among others are trying to send in fresh supplies, but it will be a case of “too little, too late” as it always is. May the Lord lay his protection over them during their hour of need.

Those of us further north still have considerably more time to prepare for a storm that will not be as bad, but that will still cause us no end of trouble. I remember Hugo all too well. We were spared the worst, but I had friends who were out of power for a week or more. Stores were closed because of no power–it seems that no one can sell anything without a functioning point of sale system these days.

Obviously I’m going to keep watching this storm, and I’m going to keep posting about it as time permits. Today I’m making grocery store runs. I’d do that anyway today, but these will be a bit larger than normal due to the storm. I’ll also make a few other stops to top off a couple of items we’ve allowed to run low as we do on a seasonal basis.

Tomorrow is the day I’ll service the generator, blow off the pine needles on the roof and give it a good once over and begin battening down the hatches, so to speak. There really isn’t much I can do besides putting up things that could blow around, but the activity makes me feel that I’m doing what I can not be a problem.

As we move closer to Tuesday and Wednesday, we will be charging batteries and battery-powered devices, making sure laundry is done and so on. Any last minute items I can think of will also be attended to.

When I was younger, this sort of thing was an excuse to “have an adventure”. Hell, I’d probably go to the beach to get the experience. I was pretty stupid when I was younger. Now, I’m older, perhaps wiser, and a sight more concerned about what can happen when the weather goes bad. Within the last few years I’ve had friends and family flooded out, a tree on my own house, seen roofs collapse from too much snow in a part of the country that doesn’t usually see it, killing frosts too early, spring in February and so on. The weather, for lack of a better term, has been weird.

I’m hardly a Global Warming fetishist, and I’m not jumping on the “Ermagherd Climate Change!” bandwagon. However, I’m not unaware that climate does change, and some of the changes don’t happen over thousands or tens of thousands or millions of years, and I’m really starting to wonder.

The kid who was raised a Southern Baptist is also starting to wonder if we’re not at the beginning of some of the tastier parts of the book of Revelations. No man can know the mind of God, so until there is a truly undeniable sign, I’ll just have to wonder.

Whatever it is, I don’t like it. Perhaps it’s just age, and I’m starting to feel my mortality creeping up on me. But Things Are Getting Too Weird For My Taste.

Edit, 9/7/2017, 1823:  The latest word from the weather mavens still has Florida in the bulls eye, with the storm coming onshore for good in pretty much the same area as this morning. The predicted course is no further west than it was this morning, but that still in the chicken bones area of the forecast. Weather Underground has a good write-up on the whole thing.

One thing I noticed while I was out and about is that some people here are taking this seriously. I assume Hugo is in their minds as it is mine. No panic, but the big thing I noticed was water and easy to prepare food disappearing off the shelves. Not a run yet, but the weekend might be interesting.