Heeeere's Charley!

And now, the aftermath

2004-08-14T11:32:00.000-04:00

It's a beautiful day here in east-central Hillsborough County. Leaves are scattered about on our street, but that's the only sign that the weather was the least bit inclement yesterday.

Such is not the case in much of the state -- although, contrary to typical hurricane logic, the problems are not coastal, they're inland. The problems are compounded, of course, by that defiance of logic.

The Charlotte County emergency operations center was built in 1995, according to the St. Petersburg Times, to withstand 111-mph winds. So when Charley paid a visit with its 145-mph shredder, the emergency managers found themselves managing an emergency directly over their heads, as their building suddenly had a sunroof.

There are many casualties in Charlotte County. Nobody yet is saying how many. But they apparently didn't get the repeated "gotta go, gotta go" message that we got here in the Tampa Bay area.

This shows the danger inherent in the improvement in hurricane forecasting. The more definite those little lines on a map are, the easier they are to believe. The National Hurricane Center shows the path of a hurricane in a conical fashion, acknowledging the variance possible in its forecasts. That's why the hurricane warning went from Key West to the mouth of the Steinhatchee -- basically, the entire left side of Florida. Everybody in that area should have been taking it as seriously as we were taking it in Tampa Bay.

But most people don't have nhc.noaa.gov bookmarked. They're watching the TV guys, and the TV guys are showing straight lines, with mild disclaimers -- or sometimes, even less than mild. "It should follow this path ... " "It could follow this path ... " "It appears to be headed right this way."

As of 11 a.m. yesterday, "right this way" did not include Charlotte and Lee counties. It would be easy to blame that on the local media; after all, "could hit anywhere along the Florida west coast" doesn't make for the dramatic television that "coming right to your house" provides.

But:

Let's say the entire Florida west coast had chosen to try to scramble inland. Imagine the chaos that would have created. Florida's not that big; it's not like everybody had somewhere else to go. And in Desoto and Hardee and Charlotte counties, there aren't a lot of places to go nor ways to get there. U.S. 17 can only handle so much traffic, and even if you tried to go from those counties to the southeast, you can't drive across Lake Okeechobee.

DeSoto and Hardee counties are about as inland in Florida as one can get. They're on the northern edge of the Everglades, an extremely rural area. A lot of the folks who live here choose to live in mobile homes. That's a roll of the dice in Florida, but it's also a roll of the dice in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska ... you get the picture.

A lot of questions are going to be asked about how the media and the authorities handled this situation. The answer: Absolutely as well as they possibly could have. It's an inexact science, and most of the public is not trained to handle inexactitude (I don't think that's even a word, but it's my forum, so I can twist the language as I need to.)

I do think the whole theory behind evacuation is open to question. A lot of evacuees evacuated to Central Florida, which wound up being right in the path of the storm. Then, when mobile home residents in Central Florida found themselves under a mandatory evacuation order, there was no place for them to go because so many of the mandatory evacuees from the Tampa Bay area were already there.

So instead of sending people on an ill-defined evacuation path, maybe people should be encouraged to stay close by. Strong shelters can be found in Pinellas County, stronger, at least, than the average mobile home. It's not necessary to run from St. Petersburg to Orlando or Lakeland or Ocala.

No one right way to handle an emergency exists. When lives are at stake -- especially your own -- it has to be dealt with in whatever way that minute dictates. The Tampa Bay area handled that drill very successfully yesterday. Now it's time to send thoughts and prayers, if that's your way, down to Charlotte and hope that situation is not as bad as it currently appears to be.

Meanwhile, two new storms churn in the Atlantic. Danielle appears to be headed north, well away from land. TD 5 -- soon to be Tropical Storm Earl -- looks like it could make its way west. Let's hope some lessons were learned, and let's hope those of us who were spared don't get complacent.

Fine out west

2004-08-13T18:28:00.000-04:00

Pinellas County is lifting all of its hurricane-related restrictions. The evacuations are over and the curfew has been discontinued.

Here in east-central Hillsborough: moderate rain, winds probably in the low 20s.

Woods update

2004-08-13T18:20:00.000-04:00

All right. I'm going to say it:

We seem to be out of the woods here in the Tampa Bay area.

Best wishes for maximum safety for my people in Orlando, which seems to be its alternate target. Y'all stay safe.

If there's reason for further updates, I'll provide. Right now, we've got rain and wind, but nothing more than you'd usually get in a moderate shower. The problem seems to be off to the east now. Let's hope it misses them like it has apparently missed us.

Idiots on cameras

2004-08-13T17:46:00.000-04:00

Stern tones are still being used at news conferences, but they're being directed at the people asking stupid questions now. Basically, the media is blaming the state Emergency Operations Commission for the hurricane not steaming up Tampa Bay. "Did you focus too much on the Tampa Bay area?" No, basically, you focused too much on Tampa Bay. "Why didn't it hit where you said it was going to hit?" It did hit where we said it was going to hit — somewhere between Key West and the Steinhatchee River.

The Tampa Bay media have done a generally very good job of getting out information. They have, in the last few hours, found themselves a little too far ahead of the story. They started saying "here's where the storm is going" without the hedges, and then found themselves scrambling to correct. One of the hazards of live TV. I give them credit; they've had to fill about 30 hours of time practically non-stop. It's understandable for them to be a bit on edge and perhaps a little loopy.

Because there are no camera crews in Hardee and DeSoto counties, those counties being in the middle of nowhere, TV stations are reduced to thumbing through the Arcadia, Fla., phone book and calling people. Strangely, people who are under a Category 4 hurricane are not thrilled about their phones ringing just right then. One recipient of such a call chose not to go on the air, explaining that his roof had just blown off, and he was going back to his safe interior room. "We can certainly understand that," the understanding female anchor said in soothing tones. "An example of everything that is wrong with journalism," says The Wife.

Some guy named Buford is on the air right now, asking, "Are we in the ah of this thang? My roof just came off."

The St. Petersburg Times announced that it will publish a full newspaper tomorrow, complete with a 24-page hurricane section. Say it with me: Better them than me. Meanwhile, Charley's churning through the swamp on the way to the Magic Kingdom.

5 p.m.: 26.9 N, 82.2 W

2004-08-13T17:24:00.000-04:00

Am not sure I like the fact that the last two dispatches put the western coordinate at 82.2, being that my ass is currently sitting on 82.2.

On edge

2004-08-13T17:20:00.000-04:00

A Hillsborough County emergency official now says she's seen an ever-so-slight turn back to the west. She's using that as justification to not lift the mandatory evacuations until tomorrow.

In my backyard: Minor winds. Light rain. More to come, they tell me.

Woods update

2004-08-13T17:19:00.000-04:00

" ... even though it seems like Hillsborough County is out of the big woods," the talking head said ...

4 p.m.: 26.7 N, 82.2 W

2004-08-13T17:07:00.000-04:00

Had a brief squall of rain here, but nothing beyond the average Florida afternoon thunderstorm. It appears the bulk of the storm is headed up the swamp right now, through the largely uninhabited portion of Florida between I-75 and Lake Okeechobee.

So instead of ravaging cities you've heard of, like Tampa and St. Petersburg and Sarasota, it's hitting nowheresvilles such as Arcadia and Zolfo Springs and Fort Meade. The nearest city of any substance that faces any danger at all is Lakeland, and after Lakeland, it's going to wind up in the Orlando area. It remains to be seen how much it'll hold together by that point.

Because nobody thought this is where the hurricane was going, and because there's not much there to begin with, there's not really any news coming from the point at which the hurricane actually is. The camera crews all apparently got misdirected to Fort Myers and Port Charlotte, so there's not much to see yet.

Again, a turn to the north still brings the eastern Tampa Bay area into the danger zone, but it's looking less likely at present. Here at 27.9/82.2, it's a minor rainstorm. Wind calm, high 70s, a little bit of water on the ground.

Somewhat ineffective ads

2004-08-13T16:03:00.000-04:00

Notice that the automatically generated ads atop this page are shilling for Pinellas County real estate. Uh, don't think that's going to get a lot of interest right now ...

3 p.m.: 26.4 N, 82.3 W

2004-08-13T15:53:00.000-04:00

Pinellas County was just about ready to fold up its emergency management center and declare everything cool, and it said as much in a news conference about an hour ago. The same guy just came back on and said, "Uh, we might be back at ground zero."

Now, nobody wants to commit to anything. The diagonal move across the peninsula, from Sanibel Island to Flagler Beach via Orlando, proved to be a very short-lived theory. It's brushing the coastline somewhere south of Port Charlotte, but the trend from the last few minutes — and the last few minutes are now the only thing that really matter — shows it going due north.

If it goes due north, we're in trouble here at 27.9/82.2. We'll get the brunt of it. If it moves a little bit more to the east, that's landfall, basically, and all bets are off at that point. We could be looking at a major disaster, or we could have just run a very elaborate drill.

This is how fast things are changing: When I began writing this post, we had still had no rain of any significance. It has since become much darker, and in the time it took me to get to this graf, we now have fairly steady rain. No serious wind yet, however. The tornadic activity is remaining southeast of us, for the moment, although that's the part of the storm that will track north and west in that counter-clockwise fashion.

Which means: All we can do is wait. And wait, and wait, and watch a few more hours of wall-to-wall news, and wonder whether we're "out of the woods yet" (a favorite TV news expression, apparently) or whether we're still "in its crosshairs" (another fave.) Me, I'm wondering now why I wasn't at work all along.

Wait. Hang on.

2004-08-13T14:39:00.000-04:00

"We should not be breathing a sigh of relief," says the talking head. Yesterday, it was going to be a Category 2 heading into Tampa Bay. Now it's a Category 4 headling into Port Charlotte. Which means it'll still be a 2 over Hillsborough County, maybe.

Bottom line: Nobody really knows. At this point, the radar tracks and satellite photos and guesses by the National Hurricane Center and the guys at Channel 8 mean ... well, nothing. Now we can only wait and see what actually happens.

Here at 27.9/82.2: Nothing, again. No breeze. No rain. Cloud cover. About 87 degrees.

2 p.m.: 26.0 N, 82.4 W

2004-08-13T14:29:00.000-04:00

Well. They tell us now that here at our coordinates, we don't have anything to worry about. At all.

We just went from the highest level of alert to ... well, to nothing.

The fact that the storm is now apparently going to hit south and east of here has caused the tone to completely shift among the authorities and the media. Talk has already started of un-evacuating Pinellas County. Here in Hillsborough, it might not even rain, they say.

This, of course, has already started raising accusations of overreaction. What that means is that the storm that does hit Tampa Bay in the next couple of years may result in many casualities, because this -- only five years after the Floyd wolf-cry -- will cause people to further think that nothing will happen to them.

And in Charlotte County, one wonders if they're scrambling like hell now.

1 p.m.: 25.7 N, 82.5 W

2004-08-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

The storm has picked up forward speed and has officially adjusted its target a tad south of us. The eyewall is now expected to drop in on Florida somewhere in Charlotte or Lee County, between Charlotte Harbor and Fort Myers, around 3 p.m.

Air Force reconaissance aircraft suggest now that Charley is a Category 4. You might remember the last 4 to hit Florida: Andrew.

And suddenly, it's very dark here at 27.9/82.2. The rain has just started to fall, from the very first of the outer storm bands moving southeast to northwest. It's a light rain, a soft spring shower.

The Tampa Bay media's apparent instinct is to breathe a sigh of relief at the southward change in the storm track. But the stern-voiced officials at the news conferences say we're not at all out of the woods here at 27.9/82.2.

Category 4. Wow.

An ever-so-slight change in the weather

2004-08-13T12:42:00.000-04:00

We can tell when The Weather Channel presents its storm updates. Not because we're watching The Weather Channel; we're not. We can tell by our phone, which starts ringing and flashing up phone numbers from the 417 area code (our parents) and the 719 area code (Natalie's grandmother) and the 407 area code (our friends in Orlando) simultaneously.

"I just heard it was going to swerve south of you." Yeah, that's one possibility. It's making a very slight northeasterly turn, but the weather guys caution that's no reason for us to celebrate yet.
"Are you in Pinellas County?" No, Hillsborough.
"What's happening there?" Well, really, nothing. Yet.

The sky just took a turn for the dark a few minutes ago. A very slight, cool breeze has kicked up, in stark contrast to the total calm of the last seven hours.

TV guys say the storm is getting stronger. Tornado warnings are popping up; one was just issued this second for the county directly east of us. The phone ought to be ringing again soon. Feel free to call.

Hey, Idiot! Outta here! Now!

2004-08-13T12:08:00.000-04:00

Charley's position, as of 11 a.m.: 25.4 N, 82.7 W

Gov. Bush and several state officials have been speaking at back-to-back news conferences, in very stern tones. Basically, they're saying that if you're still listening to them from your couch in Pinellas or Manatee counties, you're stupid.

However, if you wind up stuck in traffic, you're stupid, too. So at this point, wherever you are is where you should stay. No problem for us; we're staying here.

The bridges across Tampa Bay have been closed to westbound traffic. That means people can get off the islands, but nobody is allowed back.

The local electric utility is cutting power to beachside communities, in a further effort to 1/keep people safe or 2/chase them away. Probably a lot more of "2."

Tornadoes are starting to hit the inland counties southeast of us, around Lake Okeechobee. That activity will come at us from the right as the main event comes in from the left.

That's what we're hearing. Here's what we're seeing:

In my neighborhood, nobody has boarded windows, including us. In our case, it's not because we don't think our windows aren't going to be blown out, but because we never got around to buying plywood. For most of our neighbors, we're told, that's also pretty much the case.

The sun has actually emerged through the cloud cover. There is still absolutely no breeze of any sort. It's mid-80s, still sticky.

One of the Old Daughter's friends is over here keeping her occupied. The other kids have been set down for naps, in anticipation of a long night. I probably should be working right now, but I can't stay focused on it. Pretty much everything we can do is done. Time for me to make a few laps of the house to see what I'm missing.

It's quiet. Too quiet

2004-08-13T10:52:00.000-04:00

Our location: 27.9 N, 82.2 W
Charley's location, as of 9 a.m.: 24.7 N, 82.9 W
It's ultra-calm here on the Western Edge, which is cause for concern. Not even a little hint of a breeze. About 85 degrees, sticky humid, dark clouds off to the south, lighter cloud cover off to the north.

I landed back here from St. Cloud, Minn., last night. I was worried that Bonnie was going to prevent access to the Edge of America, but that storm had pretty much dissipated by Thursday afternoon. When I got off the plane, I was expecting a traffic nightmare, owing to the evacuation ordered in neighboring Pinellas County. But it was strangely empty on the roads. Every car I did see had a Pinellas County license plate, and every car I saw was heading east.

The local TV stations have been running nothing but storm coverage since about 3 p.m. Thursday. They're kind of repeating themselves at this point, but I can't really say they've been generating panic. Their level of urgency is in direct and informative proportion to the governmental level of urgency.

Today's St. Petersburg Times carried a 160-or-so-point headline on A1 — "Target: Tampa Bay." The Tampa Tribune featured a large aerial of the evacuation, with the headline "Charley's Mad Dash" reversed out off the photo. See the Tribune here.

I just made what will probably be the last trip to the store for a while. Here's what the stores are out of:

Bread

C and D batteries

Ice

Here's what everybody was buying:

Beer

I finally found three bags of ice at the fifth place at which I stopped. I bought a small portable radio, several AA batteries (which were available) and, well, lots of chocolate for The Wife. Kids are out of school today, of course, and they're staying pretty calm.

We're as battened down as we can be here. We're scrambling to do tasks that depend on our having power: Laundry, running the dishwasher, using the Web. We'll keep you updated from the middle of the storm as the storm allows.

Next advisory due in a few minutes. You can keep up too at the National Hurricane Center's site for general info. We'll tell you here what it looks like on the ground.