Hurricane Milton

[partgypsy]

Just out of curiosity, anyone here going to be affected by Milton? And have you evacuated or staying? I'm in NC. And the rebuilding for Helene in western NC is going to take months, if not years. It took it a lot of infrastructure.

[dandarc]

Someone posted in a journal yesterday they were in Tampa-ish and riding it out (not in evac zone, good elevation - staying is, generally speaking, the right move).

[partgypsy]

Well I dk. Leaving is a huge pain. But staying, esp if you are in the zone iimho is not worth gambling your life about. hopefully it will continue weakening and go south of Tampa which they now say is possible.

[GilesMM]

Unfortunately this storm is likely to affect most of us via higher insurance rates (nationwide) and/or cancelled coverage which is spreading like a cancer from FL and CA to other states like NC, TX, and OR.

[dandarc]

Really isn't gambling your life any more than evacuating is, assuming of course that you're not staying in an evacuation zone. Actually, many people (including me the time we did when our city was under a voluntary evacuation order from Irma) do it wrong. 10's of miles, not hundreds is how far you need to go.

The goal of evacuation is to get to high ground to avoid areas likely to be flooded in a life-threatening way. The mass casualties happen from the storm surge / flooding, and generally not wind / debris related. I mean you can get tremendously unlucky and have a tree fall on your bedroom, but assuming house is reasonably strong, is actually quite unlikely if you follow the advice to stay in that interior room that you'll be killed or even injured seriously. Scary as hell - that's for sure - but it does tend to just blow through and you're fine on the other side. There is risk to evacuating as well , which is why it is best to only do so when under a mandatory (obviously) or voluntary (then you need to weigh your situation carefully) order.

Boils down to "Run from the water, hide from the wind".

[Sailor Sam]

From the backside of the Keys. Saw gusts of 110 knots, 115 mph.

https://i.imgur.com/3hpPxl5.mp4

[MustacheAndaHalf]

The goal of evacuation is to get to high ground to avoid areas likely to be flooded in a life-threatening way. The mass casualties happen from the storm surge / flooding, and generally not wind / debris related. I mean you can get tremendously unlucky and have a tree fall on your bedroom, but assuming house is reasonably strong, is actually quite unlikely if you follow the advice to stay in that interior room that you'll be killed or even injured seriously. Scary as hell - that's for sure - but it does tend to just blow through and you're fine on the other side.

Tornados that form during hurricanes complicate that picture.  I believe a record-breaking number (30?) were formed during Hurricane Milton so far, and a tornado can definitely make debris (and houses) dangerous.

[dandarc]

The goal of evacuation is to get to high ground to avoid areas likely to be flooded in a life-threatening way. The mass casualties happen from the storm surge / flooding, and generally not wind / debris related. I mean you can get tremendously unlucky and have a tree fall on your bedroom, but assuming house is reasonably strong, is actually quite unlikely if you follow the advice to stay in that interior room that you'll be killed or even injured seriously. Scary as hell - that's for sure - but it does tend to just blow through and you're fine on the other side.

Tornados that form during hurricanes complicate that picture.  I believe a record-breaking number (30?) were formed during Hurricane Milton so far, and a tornado can definitely make debris (and houses) dangerous.

Tornados suck ass, but they don't typically kill people that heed the warnings and get into proper location within the house. We had 2 tornados meet up and then run through our neighborhood in May - amazing the difference from one side of our street to the other actually. Only 1 person died who was in a mobile home way out (before the tornado's met up at the 5th green near-ish as an actual article stated) - our neighborhood in Florida may have old houses and tons of trees but the houses are well built. Have a picture of a house on our street fully supporting an uprooted, large pine tree on its roof. No injuries in that house even though folks were home when it happened. This happened kind of out of nowhere at 7:00 AM while people were commuting to work and schools.

And tornados are incredibly difficult to predict and cut mostly small swaths. And if anything hurricane-associated tornados actually fall on the "don't evacuate" side of discussion - you're way safer from tornados in your home (assuming well built of course) than if you are unlucky enough to get caught in your car. Plus tornados from a hurricane tend to be weaker than the super big ones they get out in the plains.

If you're ordered or just decide to evacuate, do it sooner than later because of stuff like this - evacuation travel is much slower (a reason to be looking a shorter distance). Everything I'm saying here is coming from actual emergency officials - living in the state capital of Florida for 15 years you sometimes actually get to talk to people that know things, and have some real experience with it as well.

Think about it - we've had 2 major hurricane events in the last 3 weeks. The big death figures are coming out of a place where you just don't do more than cursory prep for hurricanes because why would you 300 miles from the nearest shoreline? What happened there? A once in a millenium type of flooding event due to the unprecedented amount of rain.

[dandarc]

Actually something that may not be obvious to everyone - even in places where general mandatory evacuations don't happen, often there is a mandatory evacuation of mobile homes. Because those are much more vulnerable to wind / debris. Not uncommon for evacuation orders to take the form of "mandatory evacuation of zones and and B and ALL mobile homes. Voluntary in zone C".

Believe it or not our government units actually do have a lot of knowledge on how to handle this stuff and provide good guidance throughout the year and especially when the storm is coming.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

The goal of evacuation is to get to high ground to avoid areas likely to be flooded in a life-threatening way. The mass casualties happen from the storm surge / flooding, and generally not wind / debris related. I mean you can get tremendously unlucky and have a tree fall on your bedroom, but assuming house is reasonably strong, is actually quite unlikely if you follow the advice to stay in that interior room that you'll be killed or even injured seriously. Scary as hell - that's for sure - but it does tend to just blow through and you're fine on the other side.

Tornados that form during hurricanes complicate that picture.  I believe a record-breaking number (30?) were formed during Hurricane Milton so far, and a tornado can definitely make debris (and houses) dangerous.

Tornados suck ass, but they don't typically kill people that heed the warnings and get into proper location within the house. We had 2 tornados meet up and then run through our neighborhood in May - amazing the difference from one side of our street to the other actually. Only 1 person died who was in a mobile home way out (before the tornado's met up at the 5th green near-ish as an actual article stated) - our neighborhood in Florida may have old houses and tons of trees but the houses are well built. Have a picture of a house on our street fully supporting an uprooted, large pine tree on its roof. No injuries in that house even though folks were home when it happened. This happened kind of out of nowhere at 7:00 AM while people were commuting to work and schools.

And tornados are incredibly difficult to predict and cut mostly small swaths. And if anything hurricane-associated tornados actually fall on the "don't evacuate" side of discussion - you're way safer from tornados in your home (assuming well built of course) than if you are unlucky enough to get caught in your car. Plus tornados from a hurricane tend to be weaker than the super big ones they get out in the plains.

If you're ordered or just decide to evacuate, do it sooner than later because of stuff like this - evacuation travel is much slower (a reason to be looking a shorter distance). Everything I'm saying here is coming from actual emergency officials - living in the state capital of Florida for 15 years you sometimes actually get to talk to people that know things, and have some real experience with it as well.

Think about it - we've had 2 major hurricane events in the last 3 weeks. The big death figures are coming out of a place where you just don't do more than cursory prep for hurricanes because why would you 300 miles from the nearest shoreline? What happened there? A once in a millenium type of flooding event due to the unprecedented amount of rain.

I smiled at the story of a house supporting an uprooted pine tree.

I'm not that familiar with the combination of hurricanes and tornados.  My understanding agrees with yours - that tornados from hurricanes tend to be less destructive than tornados that form on their own.  But I also saw a news report claiming Milton's tornados stayed on the ground much longer than usual, which might explain why 5-6 people tied from tornados in St Lucie County (out of 17 total so far, from Hurricane Milton).

I've also heard reports that Trump is lying about FEMA's response, trying to give people a reason to want change.  It has the negative side effect of preventing people from seeking aid who need it.  Maybe it is worthwhile hearing from people living in the impacted area about it.

[dandarc]

Republicans (ain't just Trump, though he is particularly awful) are gonna republican. Did you know that the democrats make hurricanes happen now?

[Sibley]

Republicans (ain't just Trump, though he is particularly awful) are gonna republican. Did you know that the democrats make hurricanes happen now?

If they're going to come up with conspiracy theories, can we actually make them make sense? If the Democrats were actually controlling the weather, they would be sending rain to California (help with fires), and to the part of the country that are actually in a drought. When these big storms hit, one of the thoughts that goes through my head is wish we could send some of that water to places that need it.

[dandarc]

Republicans (ain't just Trump, though he is particularly awful) are gonna republican. Did you know that the democrats make hurricanes happen now?

If they're going to come up with conspiracy theories, can we actually make them make sense? If the Democrats were actually controlling the weather, they would be sending rain to California (help with fires), and to the part of the country that are actually in a drought. When these big storms hit, one of the thoughts that goes through my head is wish we could send some of that water to places that need it.

This - and on the hypocrisy / Republicans projecting front, in addition to this lying about aid being available, Trump himself apparently was inclined to withhold disaster aid from California in 2018 and was only convinced because someone had to remind him that there's many millions of republican voters in California too that he'd be harming. Guy is just not fit to make a sandwich, let alone be president. And yet basically a coin flip as to whether that happens again or not.

[nereo]

Republicans (ain't just Trump, though he is particularly awful) are gonna republican. Did you know that the democrats make hurricanes happen now?

If they're going to come up with conspiracy theories, can we actually make them make sense? If the Democrats were actually controlling the weather, they would be sending rain to California (help with fires), and to the part of the country that are actually in a drought. When these big storms hit, one of the thoughts that goes through my head is wish we could send some of that water to places that need it.

To me, that’s the defining characteristic between conspiracy theories and misguided notions. Conspiracy theories make no sense when you apply even basic logic. Dems controlling the weather, Covid was engineered to come up with a way for the g’vt to microchip people via the “vaccine” and there’s a epidemic of Haitian immigrants stealing and eating people’s pet dogs. They don’t make any sense if you understand even the basics of weather, vaccines/“microchips” or crime statistics. Then there’s the misguided notions that refuse to die regardless of more data, like trickle-down economics or tax cuts “paying for themselves”.

That’s just where I draw the distinction though.