Taking Irma seriously

I'm kind of in the opposite situation.
I'm in Virginia.....and had planned to head back home on Sunday.
Hope I can but at this point it doesn't look good.

Agreed. Don't try to ride out a Cat 5 that is setting off seismic sensors and 185 MPH+ winds. Get as far inland as possible.

hopefully anyone who can leave has left and didn't wait for the govt to tell them to get out of the way.

rk911 wrote:
hopefully anyone who can leave has left and didn't wait for the govt to tell them to get out of the way.

Well it's not quite that easy, Rich.

People have lives that they can't just pick up and abandon that easily.

SO.....you need to wait at least until the severity and path has some certainty to it before you run away.

If you left home every time a tropical depression formed in the Atlantic you would be away for about 3 months every year.

One needs to be READY with a plan.....and not wait until the last minute but landfall near Miami is still about 4 days out. That should be plenty of time to leave if you are ready.

Don't think being inland in Fla is going to help much. If it hits with 185 mph winds, Fla is done. Snowbirds will turn into 'sitting ducks'.

I see the Governor has already declared all 68 Counties 'emergency status', activated some National Guard and imposed evacuation plans.

No RV ever built will take 185 mph winds, in fact, no brick and steel building will either.

Wonder how Trump's place will fare. It's in Miami-Dade County as well. I bet !75 is a disaster and will be for a while.

To think I used to live in Key West. Glad I don't now. I'll take the snow and cold in front of a nice wood fire anyday.

Florida has it's act together when it comes to hurricanes! They start mandatory evacuations early. Worked for a company that had many retail stores in Florida was always closing stores at least 36 to 48 hours before expected arrival.
If it is as bad as it was when it hit St. Martin it will really test the new stringent building codes since Andrew.

Inland, as in Georgia or further. Get off the peninsula of Florida.

Just watched the weather channel. It shows the entire state being hit with a minimum wind of 125mph.

Not to belittle the strength of the storm but much depends on the course of the eye of the storm. JMO but most weather people are overly frightening people by not giving full information as provided by the NHC.

The area of very high winds is very very small & the worst of it is in the NE quadrant of the eyewall. Look at the NHC website. Wind velocity & distance from center, the windfield that the weather people rarely mention, is there.

A hurricane is an anticyclone. An extremely concentrated low pressure system. Surface winds flow in an anticlockwise direction around the center. If the storm center passes offshore along the coast winds will be mostly offshore i.e. from a westerly quadrant, a good thing as far as storm surge is concerned. You do NOT want to be on the eastern of the eye.

Whatever, after being through many hurricanes at home in Bermuda including a very slow moving cat 3, if I were in FL I would be on my way out of FL TODAY. No way would I be joining the rest of the fools leaving at the last minute expecting highways to be moving.

One online weather channel had possible 225 mph gusts as Irma strengthened in the Florida Straits.
I'd like to be at least 150 mi. from there if that happens.

A lot can happen to weaken or channel Irma to the better in the next few days. Hoping that's what results for FL but some folks are going to get hammered by this monster.