Ian looks nasty

https://zoom.earth/#view=24.69,-89.26,6z/map=live. Prayers to those in it's path.

I have a friend that has a winter home in Naples she's worried!

Looks to be a direct hit on my brother's home in Rotonda West. They left this morning saying they were heading to Miami and just got a text they are in Georgia. Apparently hard to find hotel rooms.

This guy has a plan.

More power to him! Like his idea

My wife’s whole side of her family is in Sarasota. I’ll be praying for them.

https://texasstormchasers.com/video/live-tracking-hurricane-ian-2022/

Adding to those prayers!

Yep. Either able/prepared or not. That simple. IF you are in a situation where you can ride out a major storm and take care of yourself good, much better than evacuating and dealing with all of that. Both times in my life that I've evacuated my home it was a mistake that ended up in a major cluster [censored]. Folks that were actually prepared faired just fine, but not everyone is though.

We evacuated our platform as usual days ago (have to) so it's real quiet at work right now, but won't be for long. It's a chore after a major storm to get a facility going again but all part of it.

Sister is home in NC, but house in Crystal River is at risk. Deck is only 4 feet above high tide normally. Will see what happens!

Close to being a CAT 5 hurricane.

Onshore now. Ft. Meyers Beach live cam is incredible. Just about to be submerged.

Now is the time when 911 switchboards, at least those still operating, are overwhelmed with people calling for help after refusing to leave when they had the chance. Saw a report earlier where officials were telling residents not to bother calling 911 because no one can reach them. And when it's all over, there will be many who will say they would have left if they thought it would be that bad. Happens every time with the really bad storms.

Yep, just saw a report of someone who stayed behind is asking for a helo rescue because her 2-story home's entire 1st floor is underwater. Not gonna happen with those winds.

It's just hard for some people to believe the wind can blow more than twice as hard as the worst thunderstorm they've ever seen and not stop for hours on end.

Crystal River is North of Tampa, and far north of where landfall will be. She'll be in the North west quadrant and won't get storm surge until after the eye has passed. That's good news for her.

I've heard Sarasota county 911 has shut down operations and said, if you didn't get out yet, you are on your own until after the storm.

As it should be.

Although the eye of hurricane Ian came in directly over Ft Myers the worst part of a hurricane is just to the right side of the eye where the winds are blowing directly into the land and in this case it was Naples that got hammered the hardest especially with the storm surge.

If you have been keeping up with it, the back side of Ian pushed all of the water out of Tampa Bay for a short while.

My BIL from California bought a house about 6 months ago on the barrier island across from Englewood, FL and just finished having the whole house remodeled before they moved in a month ago. They fled to a friends place in S. Carolina, talking about terrible timing,

My evil MIL was suppose to spend Christmas at her sons place in FL this year, if his place is destroyed that means I will have to put up with her for one day.
You bet your azz I am hoping the BIL house is in great shape

Two of my girls live in FL. I have no idea why, other than their husbands wanted to. Great fishing. Just plain silly to live there. I'm not living anywhere where my glasses totally fog up when I step outside eleven months of the year.

Reports of hotels gone, gone and fatalities over a hundred or maybe in the hundreds.

Very sad stuff. Lots of misery.

Choices have consequences. Many appeared to have made the wrong choice. Sad but true.

My friend that has a house in Naples only had some minor tree damage. She's busy trying to find out about her friends that live there year around, so far it's mostly flooded cars, but that's the people she can get a hold of. Cell service is spotty her neighbor had to drive a ways to get enough signal to text her.

Having lived in Florida and traveled 90% of it for business reasons back in the '70's ...when you hear that the approaching Hurricane is gonna do this or that, and go here or there ..... A. you don't NOT pay attention & B. you double the weather guesser's estimates of what's gonna happen where and when. BTDT and we got outta Dodge ASAP. OTOH we shoulda bought the house west of Daytona & east of the St Johns River and Orlando for cent's on the dollar by a bankrupted Builder, 7 years later had sold again for 5 times what I could have bought it for. In those days in the mid '70's Jacksonville was a disaster waiting to happen in more ways than just weather. and I was not gonna live in Jax no matter what.

The Federal guy who lived up stairs from us was tasked with surveying all of Duval County to see if it met Federal Standards to continue to receive Federal Funding for any projects. He stopped me one Friday evening as I had just rolled in from South Carolina and said meet me at the swimming pool with a 6 pak of beer in his hand ... we need to talk Big Time. First he asked when my wife was s'posed to deliver our 2nd child and could I afford to buy a house if I was gonna stay in Florida. ...with no mention of buying a house for the long term in Jax, as the apartment house had a 1 baby Rule , against Federal rules since they had taken Federal funding to build the project

Typical Federal guy -say as little as possible - then he said in the Monday newspaper he was going to publish his survey results on the front page....1. of the 400 acres of the CBD - Central Business District- his recommendation was to scrape it clean and start over, 2. Duval County had 3/4th's of the City & County's dept heads - City & County law enforcement & legal systems and school systems that were probably going to be indicted for Graft. . No school system in the County met State of Florida standards and no students from any Duval County school system would be accepted to any Florida State funded college or university, and finally it was his estimation that 75% to 85% of the Duval County dept head leaders would be convicted of graft and other illegal issues.

Before we moved out of state 10 months after the new baby was born, Duval County was reorganized into being the largest land holding County in the Florida, and finally met Federal standards, and so many dept heads were convicted of graft they had to double & triple up with the Honest dept heads doing double & triple duty.

I always liked Florida and made some good money down there, and had a future that looked bright and potentially long term ...but ever move back down there again ....doubtful 'cause I never would play the "Mordita" ( Little Bite ) graft payoff game necessary, based on the 1st time we lived there and I really doubt if anything has changed enough even now. Re: the condo collapse in Miami that killed lots of long term condo owners, is still too common for me.
Ron

Glad your friends house had only minor damage.

The images of the eye that I was looking at yesterday when it came in were not nearly as defined as the one I just saw on FOX a short while ago.
What I thought I was seeing yesterday was the eye going directly over FT Meyers and that is why I thought Naples would bear the brunt which was not the case.
The eye came onshore just north of FT. Meyers which is why that area seems to have bit the bullet the hardest.

I will stop forecasting hurricane tracking as soon as Jerry Jones stops being the President/GM of the Cowboys

You aren't wrong. If you choose to live along the coast you have to accept the fact that you could get your clock cleaned from time to time. Same thing for us in Tornado Alley. But no one should die in a hurricane with days upon days of warning before the event.

I had to read this twice to figure out what you're even rambling about. My parents have lived in Jacksonville for 21 years. As business owners and homeowners, they've never even been approached to pay bribes to anyone. You make it sound like old school Chicago or NJ, that's about as far from reality as is what's actually taking place in Duval these days.

Just saw a video of folks biching because a gas station in Ft Myers is out of gas. Why didn't they fill up every car BEFORE the damn storm like normal people? Not like they didn't have a freeking week to prepare.

Same reason you see people here during a tornado that don't heed
official warnings, then they don't have anything left but the flip flops
and shorts they were wearing when the tornado roared through
their neighborhood

Tornado? Really? Nobody gets a week to prepare for a tornado, often just minutes.🤦‍♂️

There are some storm prep basics that are universal, Keep some cash, at least a weeks worth of food, a go bag if you have to evacuate. Think about what a week without electricity would require plan for it.

My brother in-law's house is on S. Casey Key Rd Nokomis, FL. on the barrier island facing the gulf. They were about 26 miles north of direct impact and only suffered minor damage from some trees down. Their house was on the backside of the storm where the wind was blowing into the gulf fortunately, their house is okay and they will host Christmas dinner for their mom, my MIL

congrats! Lol

Lucky dog. My elderly MIL, now a widow, is always here, every Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the very first signs of dementia showing up now. She always was an extremely selfish and self-absorbed person. I try to remind myself of what a jacked-up childhood she had. She's always wanted to "hold court" talking. But now she repeats the same thing 3 times in just a few minutes...and it's absolute babbling, non-stop, without hardly taking a breath. She doesn't hear, nor really care to listen to anyone else. I have to walk outside.

Kameltoe said the govt will be providing help based on equity to low income and people of color. What a racist POS!

Just saw on FOX news that Florida Power & Light is saying they expect to have all power restored to the hardest hit Lee County by COB Tuesday. That is after Ian knocked out 100% of that county on Thursday. I'd say that's a great job by all the linemen working there. Kudos!

Yes, sir! Bravo zulu!

P.S. And not a single one of those lineman trucks runs on electricity either.

That is incredibly fast! We were without power for 2 1/2 to 3 weeks here after Harvey.

They had hundreds of outside line crews staged in Georgia before the storm hit. Here in MN I saw a convoy of Asplunth Tree Service trucks heading south. I don't know were they were going but there were five trucks heading south. They are nationwide and do a lot of power line clearing commercially

The company's name is Asplundh and the only reason I know that is that I worked for them right out of high school trimming trees away from the power lines for Dallas Power & Light (DP&L),
I then went to work for DP&L. Been shocked a few times while trimming those trees away from the power lines.

Well crap, now they're saying maybe 30 days for power to be restored to Ft. Meyers.

That is not on the linemen if that is the case.

Just local govt officials opening their yaps.

It depends on the damage, when long sections of line have all the poles snapped, it takes awhile. When the poles are okay restringing wire goes pretty fast. My friend got power back to her house in naples this morning.