Ivan! Jeanne! & Karl & Dennis The Menace & Katrina

Checking in to see how the Florida gang is doing.

Well, Beth. Most of us here are fine.

Well Florida folk. The worst is over and Dennis calmed down considerably;winds are 50 mph. Whew.
Everyone stay tuned.

yes. fine here in central fl too

still onyx, haven't got to play too much tennis...have you?

no *frown*

but maaaybe this wednesday evening.

Now that's it's nice and sunny out, I can't hang my clothes on the line, half a tree fell on it.

bummer...I heard St Pete got roughed up.

Just got our electricity back on. A tree fell on a power line this morning (so much rain last night) and laid there, caught, until the crews came through and took it down and then another crew came through and restored the power. Hooray for the utility crews!! It was just beginning to feel a little muggy in here.

pffft. Imagine 2 weeks without power...in a baking S Florida.

But I'm very happy for you eoe...glad you made it ok

Good to hear from yall. We still haven't heard from Magginkat, though. I believe that she (?) is in the panhandle.
I normally never watch tv, but I turned on the Weather Channel on Sunday as Dennis came ashore. I was stunned. These guys had absolutely nothing to say of importance, but they stood out in the middle of the road reporting that it was very windy and very rainy. Over and over again. And they were introduced from the very serious anchors in the studio as being "meteorologists." And then would come five minutes of commercials.

You read my mind. The weather channel on Sunday was...pathetic. The ratings scramble is an embarassment.
I can't wait til we get all our video feeds from the public's cell phones.

RJB: Don't you love how they keep showing the same picture over and over?

I remember one hurricane in Cocoa Beach, as we watched it on TV in our living room the news media was standing on a corner, off the beach mind you, where the wind and rain was the absolute worst. The storm wasn't that bad ... they just sensationalized it!

Of course, when a storm is approaching we must endure the constant 'Chinese torture' and repetitive warnings so that the John Q public can run to the stores and empty the shelves!

Great for business, huh?

Welllllllll........... I'm back realjohnboy. We lost electiricty about 12:30 on Sunday & it was restored yesterday evening about 5 or 6 pm.

Hurricane Dennis was a dud which was fine with me. Very little damage in our neck of the woods and frankly many of us are wondering why we lost electricity for more than an hour or two when the wind and rain was brisk but hardly qualified as a hurricane in my opinion.

Most of the damage seems to be in two neighboring counties to the east and the speculation is that because the damage was so far inland that it was caused by tornadoes rather than the hurricane.

Who knows..... with the media whipping this one into a major frenzy it was hard to know what the sam hill to expect.

Welllllllll........... I'm back realjohnboy. We lost electiricty about 12:30 on Sunday & it was restored yesterday evening about 5 or 6 pm.

Hurricane Dennis was a dud which was fine with me. Very little damage in our neck of the woods and frankly many of us are wondering why we lost electricity for more than an hour or two when the wind and rain was brisk but hardly qualified as a hurricane in my opinion.

Most of the damage seems to be in two neighboring counties to the east and the speculation is that because the damage was so far inland that it was caused by tornadoes rather than the hurricane.

Who knows..... with the media whipping this one into a major frenzy it was hard to know what the sam hill to expect.

I saw your's & realjohnboy's posts after I posted mine below (don't ask me why it posted two times...if anyone knows how to remove one, please feel free).......... the media's coverage of the hurricane was a joke.

I really wonder if they are the reason this was rated a category 4 ! We have had much worse thunder storms than this sad excuse for a hurricane and I am not beneath thinking that the great gov of FL would order the electricity cut to drag in federal funds. AND... As Misti noted, once they latch on to something they think is a good picture they run the damn thing to death.

Here is an example of the totally rediculous......

Yesterday evening my neighbors and myself were mostly propped up in front of the living room windows (wide open) trying to get a small breeze when we looked up and saw a caravan of trucks coming down our little street. Seven trucks from an out of state electric co. plus 5 trucks from Asplundh (tree cutters). As much as we wanted electricity by that time we just sat there an laughed at this sight.

The largest tree limb that we had seen was lying in our front yard and was about 4 feet long.... the rest was twigs and leaves! Actually I saw a slightly larger limb outside my bedroom window.... about 6 feet and the "trunk" of this limb might have been two inches across the largest part! But they won't even touch the limbs that are not in the roadway!!

Anyway we had this caravan of trucks here to restore out electricity and that's about all we cared about at the moment.
So we pretty much watched, as did all of the men on those trucks, as one lone linesman took his bucket up and fiddled with the transformer on a pole at the end of the block and we had electricity! Eleven trucks and about 20 men were nothing more than onlookers.

Now we know why it was the third day before we got power restored! You can bet your last dollar that this will bring in those federal dollars!

I'm sure that the scam artists are disappointed as that pathetic media that this hurricane was a fizzle.

Fear factor, folks. But the worst part, is that it tends to make us complacent about future predictions.

Hurricane Emily looks like a bad one, but heading pretty much due west. Heading towards Mexico (in which case the reporters for the Weather Channel will not be on the air) but it could nick Texas (in which case they will be there, clinging onto telephone poles like drunken frat boys on a Saturday night).
Another one down, perhaps. What is F and G?