Hurricane Matthew

[Belgarath]

Hey - just wanted to say that if any of you are in the path, or on the fringes, best of luck. Not much to do except hope for the best, I guess.

[My 2 cents]

Hey - just wanted to say that if any of you are in the path, or on the fringes, best of luck. Not much to do except hope for the best, I guess.

Hope for the best and, if possible, head for the hills! It is probably easier to hope for the best up there.

[RatherBeGolfing]

Dang it, no hills here in Florida to run to :/

Luckily, we are not supposed to get the worst of it here in Tampa but you never know with these things,.

[Lois Baker]

Judging by auto-responses to today's newsletters, lots and lots of business closures in FL/SC.

Not looking good for the FL east coast. Dave is helping family in Sebastian/Vero Beach -- and I am remembering why we headed for the hills moved to the NC mountains some years back.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Tom Poje]

8:15 in Jacksonville, some rain, nothing major yet, but they have been saying the worst will be around 2.

Jacksonville is spread out, I'm about 20 miles from the coast, so that makes a big difference. my house is not in any of the evacuation zones, so it really depends on the location. still, it wouldn't surprise me if power goes out in the afternoon

[Belgarath]

Good luck, Tom. If the worst that happens is the power going out, I'm sure you will consider yourselves very fortunate.

[RatherBeGolfing]

Good luck Tom! We got through it with mostly heavy winds here in Tampa, still strong gusts and some rain down here. I hope you get to keep power, I lost it for over 4 weeks when I lived in Jax and the storms went through in 2004. Stay safe

Jim

[Tom Poje]

the elevation map says the house is about 20 ft above sea level

storm surge prediction around 9 ft so that is why we are not in an evacuation area.

a couple more brief power outage, less than a minute around 11.

enough rain that even the back yard pump can't push it out.

the porch is slightly flooded, but that happens if we get a huge down pour so that is no surprise.

I believe the latest local news was the storm is beginning to break a bit, so maybe it won't be as bad when it hits here. at least it is day light for us as opposed to the poor folks in the lower part of Florida when the storm hit earlier.

[hr for me]

Good thoughts and prayers from one who used to live on the TX Gulf Coast and have lived through at least 3 hurricanes and multiple tropical storms. Lost our roof in the last one....I was happy when we moved to NC (inland near Charlotte), but now these hurricanes seem to be on the East Coast side.....

Wouldn't wish one on my worst enemy honestly.....it sucks!

[Tom Poje]

lost power at the house for about 18 hours. not bad. and most of that at night, and not being much of a TV watcher even less of a problem for me perhaps

no house damage, that I can tell early in the morning

have a nice grapefruit that is partially uprooted, hopefully I can get that back in

May God watch over those who suffered worse.

[RatherBeGolfing]

Glad to hear you are ok Tom. It was sad to see the images of St Augustine turning into a river last night so I imagine it must have been pretty bad in Jax as well.

[Tom Poje]

it really depending where you are in Jacksonville. it is so widespread a city, with a great big river in the middle as well.

so if you are real close to the river, better chance of flooding

we just moved the server at work to a new location at the end of August. no loss of power there. the old place - they were still without power yesterday, so we were real lucky.

Power was on at my house at 5:00 Sat morning.

1/2 mile away the grocery store still had nothing Sat morning.

the church I attend on the other side of the river had no power until late Sat.

initially during the storm on Friday they indicated they would do nothing until the morning, then they changed it to going out after midnight.

one of the local radio stations (all sports) cancelled all programing and simply broadcast reporting from different locations all Friday. Kudos to them.

I had run down to Lowes the day before to get some batteries, shelves were pretty thin, but they had just gotten in a shipment when I was there so that was a bit of luck.. a number of people had 1 if not 2 generators in their carts.

at times the sound of the wind was quite something on Friday, the rain was heavy at times, but really only bad because it was constant for so long. we have had days where a downpour will dump more water is a shorter period of time.

I have a pump in the backyard that pushed the water out to the street, but it couldn't keep up with quantity. the back porch will flood, but I never worry about that. maybe about half of that was flooded, then the power went out and then the porch quickly filled, right up to the house, but never was more than a couple of inches from getting in the house. then not ant higher as far as I could tell. the ground level to the street is just enough that the water won't get much higher (unless I suppose the rain would continue a lot longer)

[GMK]

Judging by auto-responses to today's newsletters, lots and lots of business closures in FL/SC.

Not looking good for the FL east coast. Dave is helping family in Sebastian/Vero Beach -- and I am remembering why we headed for the hills moved to the NC mountains some years back.

Stay safe, everyone.

From what we are seeing on the TV, Matthew made some pretty bad messes in NC.

Hope you and Dave are A-OK.

[Lois Baker]

Thanks so much for the thought. We're at the western edge of NC, in the mountains -- we;re actually in dire need of rain. Thoughts are with all of those on the east coast - worst possible scenario for them.

Judging by auto-responses to today's newsletters, lots and lots of business closures in FL/SC.

Not looking good for the FL east coast. Dave is helping family in Sebastian/Vero Beach -- and I am remembering why we headed for the hills moved to the NC mountains some years back.

Stay safe, everyone.

From what we are seeing on the TV, Matthew made some pretty bad messes in NC.

Hope you and Dave are A-OK.