Monday, September 6, 2004

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. 1:22:49 PM

10:06:09 AM

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. 9:58:36 AM

"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? 8:21:16 AM

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. 8:11:16 AM

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. 7:38:47 AM

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. 1:19:05 AM

© Copyright 2006 Rod Kratochwill.