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Oh. My. Goodness.

A Category 5 and not even at the Gulf of Mexico yet? I feel so bad for everyone on the FloraBama coast; Gulf Shores and Pensacola haven't rebuilt from Ivan (LAST YEAR) yet, and then this? It looks really bad, and if it is a cat 5 when it hits, it'll only be the third in recored history to hit the States (Hugo and Andrew).

I live a few hours north of the coast in Alabama, so I'm not expecting devastation here . . . but hopefully a few days off work (golf course) as cynical as that sounds.

The interstate (I-65) north from the coast is going to all 4 lanes north at 6 AM this morning. Hopefully any CoNers on the Gulf coast are making plans to go somewhere safer. Already, 85% of Cubans are without power and the communications network has been devastated. And on top of that, it's only July, a relatively tame month for hurricanes usually. Scary stuff.

This post has been edited by imperialstooge on 9th July 2005 05:55

My parents are halfway to the Panhandle for their annual condo rental. I predict this will be the last year they schedule it for July. :\

I hope everyone out there finds a safe place (with wireless internet to post guerilla-style reports).

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Supposed to dump a buncha rain here all next week. That's a bummer. Course, that's what they said last September, and the remnants of Ivan still made a mess.

Be safe, Gulf CoNers.

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Words of Wisdom:

If something can go wrong, it will.

If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. - Murphy’s Law

Boing! Zoom! - Mr. Saturn

Well, Cuba turned into more of a brick wall than was expected, dropping it down to a 1. However, it's back up to a 2 and they're predicting a 3 by US landfall. Still bad, but not as bad as it could have been. The path is slowly shifting West each time they retool the predicitions; it's looking like it won't hit Florida, more likely Alabama or Mississippi instead. For me at least it's looking like I'm gonna catch the east side of the storm, the bad side (tornadoes and more rain.)

EDIT: 10 minutes after I post, the first rain band gets here. Might not have power for a while...

This post has been edited by imperialstooge on 9th July 2005 19:19

Good luck and be safe imperial.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

Well, no power loss yet, despite about 12 hours of steady rain. It's back up to a category 4 and has even weakened a little bit since the first bands hit land.

It's only about an hour or so away from eye landfall, and right now the eye looks to hit Pensacola directly.

Several points, from what I have been seeing:
Right now, they're expecting 12-18 foot water rise at the coast and storm surges. For the record, the outlying barrier islands (Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Dauphin Is., etc.) are only about 9 above sea level.

Hurricane level winds are expected as far as 175 miles inland.

If it does hit as a 4, which is likely, it will be the first to ever hit the Florida Panhandle or Alabama. It will also be the earliest 4 to hit the US since 1957.

Also, they just showed footbage of birds flying backwards in Mobile, and a few flapping away but only hovering.