Looks like Frances is on the way

[DennisS]

A successful evacuation

Well I ended up by Skidaway island ga. I reserved a room in orlando thur night, none available fri-sat. I left early thur to beat the traffic out of south FL. I planned on heading up to Gainesville. I decided to leave Orlando at 3 am fri and beat the traffic on the turnpike. I took I-4 and exited at the turnpike around 3:30 am. It was a parking lot, unbelievable, supposedly a 70 mile backup. I went about a mile in a half hour and finally found a spot on the median to turn around. There were LOTS of cars on the side of the road. Sitting in traffic going nowhere they ran out of gas. Not a good thing. I heard they are running low on gas in Orlando. When I filled up, the low test was out at the station. I headed back on I-4 and went up 17, what a nice drive, it follows lakes and the St johns river. It had very little traffic. I was going to look in Savannah for a place to stay. Everything on 95 is full. I went exploring and was headed to skidaway to check on a campsite, found a days inn and am now off exploring the islands of Georgia, looks like a nice place to find a good crabcake.

Getting back down should be interesting. Power will probably be out at the pumps and a couple hundred thousand motorists heading south.

 

[ReneeC]

Just saying Hello to my fellow Southeast Florida divegroup! Glad that this thing "looks" like its heading north and losing strenght but getting stir crazy here already. Hubby won't let me go to the beach so I've switched from beer to Mango Marguaritas! Yummmm

 

[Scuba_Jenny]

Yeah, I wanna go to the beach also. Its awesome power! I need to start on the beer pretty soon, it is after 3pm!
Heres the hurricane spaghetti models

 

[SmokeAire]

Heres the hurricane spaghetti models

Hmm...Hurricane Spaghetti...Andy's new nickname? ;-)

 

[H2Andy]

ow... that gives me a headache just looking at it

[edit] you know, when it comes to making fun of me,
chuck is faster than a hurricane

 

[CBulla]

Well, the strength loss and slight direction change of the storm is good news for us down in southwest FL. I'll take that vs. what were looking at 2 days ago.

 

[Natasha]

So things are looking better?

 

[Wendy]

So things are looking better?

Even though its not a 4 anymore, it is still a hurricane and strong. So when it passes it will be like Charley was. But there is still the chance it will strengthen back up and hit harder.

 

[simbrooks]

They are even talking of it going further up the coast than Vero when it hits the gulf stream - who knows. Still watching that tracking, but this thing is slowing down so much, who knows what it could do - however wherever it hits and whatever the eye track prediction shows, IF you are within 80 miles or so of that path, you are likely to get a whole bunch of rain and wind, the odd tornado chance too. I am hopeful that the intensity does keep decreasing and we only get barely hurricane force and mostly tropical storm force - rather that than hurricane force for 12-16 hours or whatever it will take to shuffle across the state.

 

[Natasha]

OK. Thanks Wendy. Keep us updated.