Life as a Floridian

[joychica]

I guess you're not a Floridian until:

You go to the insurance company a day before Tropical Storm/Hurricane Watches are issued for your area and request homeowners insurance. And just hours before insurance companies stop issuing homeowners/flood/hurricane insurance.

You close on a house when by that evening your newly constructed home will be battered by tropical storm force winds and mass flooding.

You have the DirecTV guy coming out to install your satellite when you're anticipating 70mph winds.

You hire a moving guy to move all of your belongings into (above mentioned new home) when you are anticipating severe thunderstorms and 70mph winds.

You book a cruise to the Carribean during hurricane season...and the cruise is subsequently cancelled due to a hurricane...(silly family members)

So well I guess this weekend I will become a true Floridian

Keep your fingers that the closing goes smoothly and that we actually get to move in...this could be intersting

Laura

[BUK]

I feel your pain.

What a day to quit smoking!

Good luck wit dat.

[kcbent]

Laura, this post made me laugh! Thanks for that! I think I've become clinically hurricane-phobic, based on my reactions to the storms so far this year. I don't think I've recovered as fully from last season as I thought I had. Which is what is bringing me back to Thornley again, since they were my 'cure' last season.

I hope you make it through the move ok. Dennis appears to have moved a little further west, although we've been sitting in on-and-off squalls down here in Miami since Friday evening.

Here's some additions to your 'I guess you're not a Floridian until':

- You've lived with your patio furniture inside for at least a week

- Your vocabulary of 4 letter words has increased 100 % and is usually followed by the name of the most recent hurricane

- You've begun to consider hurricanes as a living, breathing entity rather than a weather system

- You stay up all night watching the weather channel

- You realize just how horrible life can be without power (no computer!! lol) and wonder how your ancestors survived

- You've realized that all the lists of hurricane supplies you read about don't include the most obvious - the alcohol and the candy!!

- You've paid $5.00 for a bag of ice and thought you got a bargain

- You've taken a bath with soap and shampoo in a swimming pool

- Your living room includes a pile of gatorade, flashlights, batteries, water bottles etc. and you no longer care if it 'matches' the decor

- You realize that a day off of work/school isn't as fun as it used to be when it's because of a hurricane

- You start to think of other places to live

- You have at least one vacation or big event cancelled because of a hurricane!! grrrrrr.


I could go on and on. Laura, welcome to Florida!! Actually, I've lived here since 1972 and we pretty much ignored hurricanes until Andrew came along. They became very real after that. Right as we started to relax and let our guard down again, last season took place.

So here's some hurricane humor, that at least Laura will appreciate:

[Phedre33]

lol

[joychica]

But do you eat off your patio furniture when it's inside?

What's worse about losing power is that if you have a septic system that means you have no water (need power to work the pump) and therefore you cannot flush toliets either! So you live with a bucket next to the toliet or next to the pool...everytime you need to flush you run out to the pool to get more water!

Big events...tell that to my folks who planned a cruise out of Tampa for their 30th wedding anniversary...the cruise was still leaving only 12-24 hours late, most of the carribean stops were cancelled...so my folks decided to just get their money back and book it again later (hopefully not during hurricane season)...

Last year during Charley my hubby and I had concert tickets that we paid for and for a band we really wanted to see...that concert got cancelled...but this year we got free tickets from a friend to see Firehouse, Quiet Riot, Ratt and Cinderella...and my husband made us brave the weather (mainly the wind was the worst) to get to the concert in time to see Ratt and Cinderella


Your borded up pic is the best! I hadn't seen that one yet! My hubby and I closed on our house Friday and decided to drive down to the house...I noticed some houses borded up...then we went to Sam's Club and the line was around the builiding of people getting gas...then there is us in there buying supplies for our new home, like a hose and sprinkler so the new plants outside don't die...even though we were to get a couple of inches of rain within the next 3 days...But I must say when I saw the gas lines and borded up houses that's when I got nervous with Dennis the meanace...

And yes I feel like I'm on such a friendly first name basis with these hurricanes...like they are a real person...It's really a scary thing...But I think we just hit our quota for the year...four storms in just a few weeks...yeah that's enough

Laura

[kcbent]

Laura, congrats on closing on the house!

It's easy to get caught up in the fear when you see other people in long lines. Do they know something we don't know? Did I forget something? lol Last year, for each new hurricane, I felt like I had to buy more supplies. We ended up with this HUGE pile of things like gatorade and cereal! I think at one point we had over 20 boxes of cereal here! I just felt like I had to do something.

As for the patio furniture, we don't have enough room inside to do anything other than stack it all over on other things, so there was no eating on it. It was in the way. We ended up leaving it inside for a few months, in addition to leaving half of the shutters closed. I don't recommend that - it sends you into instant depression!

For flushing the toilet, we caulk up the bathtub in one of the bathrooms and use that for flushing and sponge baths. My Mom has the pool, not us. We also get a lot of empty containers and fill them with water, some for drinking, some for cleaning,etc. There's this type you can get at a sports store for camping that collapse for easy storage, but whenever I think of them, they're already sold out.

Yes, I think we've had enough for one season! I'm glad for the people in the area of the direct hit that this one didn't strengthen back up like it could have. Also, it hit an unpopulated area and the eye wall was relatively small as hurricanes go. That means the worse damage covers a much smaller area. It also moved fast, so the high winds weren't pounding on everything as long and the rain wasn't as bad as it could have been. Still, it hit right near where Ivan did just 10 months ago. I figure if I get this stressed out over hurricanes, what must that be like for those people?

I'm glad your new house was spared! Probably the best investment we ever made was before last hurricane season - we upgraded to those accordian shutters right before the season started. I can't recommend it enough, if you plan on staying in Tampa for very long, saving your money for easy-to-close shutters.

[joychica]

My mom basically owns everything any anything that you could possibly need for any scenario...she actually has a portable shower and toliet that she uses when she used to go camping...she has brought that out during the hurricanes as well as the bunsun burners to cook food...she's like McGyver...

My husband and I kid around that it's a good thing we moved less than 10 miles away from where Charley hit in the Charlotte Harbor...because what's the chance that a hurricane will strike the same exact place twice

Laura

[u4ea]

hey Laura,
I haven't been around much lately, but I'm thinkin' of ya! Best wishes with the house and the weather, hang in there!
jenn

[joychica]

Jenn, will you be heading down this way this season?

Laura

[RAF]

joychica said:

Jenn, will you be heading down this way this season?

Laura

Jenn, if I were you I would wait until Emily, Franklin, Gert,
Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katrina, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rita, Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma pass through.

...



















Stay safe Laura.

RAF

[kcbent]

raf said:

Jenn, if I were you I would wait until Emily, Franklin, Gert,
Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katrina, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rita, Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma pass through.

LMAO!!!! Good one! ;D

[u4ea]

LOL RAF

Laura, no plans this year

I'm gearing up to leave on a roadtrip to Martha's Vineyard where I'm photographing a friend's wedding.

Planning to spend a day in the Boston area on the way. Anybody here know the area at all? I'm clueless about what do do there... is this another city you have lived in, Laura?

[joychica]

Never lived in Boston...Actually I've never even been to Boston!

Must put that on the to-do list

Laura

[JLash]

Florida = love
I'm going BACK to Florida for New Year's now. hehehehehehe.
I think I'm going to move there.

Glad to know Laura and Cheryl are doing alright!

[kcbent]

jlash said:

Florida = love
I'm going BACK to Florida for New Year's now. hehehehehehe.
I think I'm going to move there.

Are you serious about moving here? To what area? Where are you going for New Year's? Orlando?

Winters are great down here, it's the summers (and hurricane seasons) that suck.

Laura, did you see this article? It was in the Miami Herald

Posted on Wed, Aug. 03, 2005

HURRICANES
Even more storms expected this year

Record heat bathed South Florida last month, and the hurricane season could be more active than had been projected, experts said.

BY MARTIN MERZER

[e-mail]

Though the day was generally balmy, two pieces of unpleasant weather news arrived Tuesday for South Floridians:

What we have seen so far during this historically active hurricane season might only be the introduction. And last month was the warmest July on record in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood -- and the second warmest in Miami Beach and West Palm Beach.

The around-the-clock average temperature last month reached 85.14 degrees in Miami, 84.9 degrees in Miami Beach, 84.11 degrees in Fort Lauderdale and 84.3 degrees in Hollywood.

The outlook for this month: more of the same -- normal rainfall, above-average heat.

''It's miserable,'' said Rusty Pfost, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service's South Florida office. ``Thank goodness for air conditioning.''

In most cases, the record temperatures were about two degrees above normal and fractionally higher than the previous records.

Pfost attributed the record heat to several factors, including unusually warm overnight temperatures that elevated the 24-hour average.

That might have been caused, he said, by persistent nighttime clouds that served as an insulation blanket, preventing daytime heat from melting away.

Higher-than-usual ocean temperatures also contributed, he said, just as they contributed to the record start of the hurricane season.

Seven tropical storms formed during the first two months of this season, and two of them, Dennis and Emily, became hurricanes.

''Everything is interrelated,'' Pfost said.

SOUNDING ALARM

Also Tuesday, with the peak of the hurricane season just over the horizon, government experts dramatically upgraded their full 2005 forecast -- and they again sounded the alarm.

They now expect a total of 18 to 21 named storms, with nine to 11 becoming hurricanes, five to seven of them intense, with winds over 110 mph.

Before the season started, they predicted 12 to 15 named storms that grow into nine hurricanes, three to five of them intense.

Right on cue, the eighth tropical depression of the season formed Tuesday in the open Atlantic, posing a modest threat only to Bermuda.

''The Caribbean and the United States are at an increased risk of being hit by hurricanes,'' said Gerry Bell, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

``Historically, when we have more active seasons like this, an average of two to three hurricanes strike the United States during August to November.''

`DEEPLY CONCERNED'

Said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in west Miami-Dade County: ``I'm deeply concerned about the lack of public preparedness as we enter the peak of the hurricane season.''

Before the season started, government scientists predicted 12 to 15 named storms that grow into nine hurricanes, three to five of them intense.

On May 31, a team led by private forecaster William Gray of Colorado State University predicted 15 named storms that turn into eight hurricanes, including four intense storms.

That team plans to release an update later this week.

The six-month season ends Nov. 30.