I understand your feelings Bill. I'll keep them in my thoughts. Lets hope the storm doesn't hit as hard as expected.

Yikes, Bill.

Hope things turn out okay for your folks!!!

Sorry to hear that, Bill. Let's hope Charley is more bark than bite.

At least your folks bothered to tell you where they were. Last night we thought it was going to Tampa. Today I can't get ahold of my parents, my brother, my sister, nobody. I even called my niece's boyfriend's family. They ain't home either.
So everybody beat feet to somewhere this morning. A call would have been nice.

Well, if they're not home, they probably went somewhere safer.

I'm sure they did. When I find them I going to beat them.

Good luck to your folks.

Yea, they pretty much mandatory evac'd most of TPB this morning from listening in on the conf call with NWS/FEOC. This thing is pushing 150 MPH now, and the Barometric pressure has been falling more, and it is bearing down on Charlotte County, right down the bay. They are pretty well prepared down there too, but I think a little bit behind where TPB was, since up until about 10AM EDT everyone though that was where it was going. Couple degrees of deviation in the angle the thing was hitting the coast causes HUGE deviations in landing point though, because it was such an oblique angle. Good thing is its moving pretty fast, so duration shouldn't be so long, and most of that coast from Naples to Cedar Key was pretty well evac mobilized. Bad news is you've got tornado vortex signals showing up around the bay, and the hurricane itself is slowing DOWN on forward movement, so it could stall and take another tact -- It's been very wobbly in direction.
I hope we are out of the worst -- 6 hours ago we were looking at 100MPH inland winds. And a LOT of rain. And we've already had a lot of rain. I'm just glad it looks like we will be missing the worst of the winds in Gilchrist County now I feel sorry for those guys down there, because thats a mean SOB coming down the pipe..

Bill:
If you wanna monitor very up to date nexrad, Go here:

http://tinyurl.com/6wus8

You can get to other nexrad sites at http://www.wunderground.com/radar/map.asp, but that particular one is TPB,
You may have to reload a few times, they are under heavy load. It's updated about every 4 minutes

-b

Hey I just talked to a guy (I work with weather scientists) who said he once spent 10 hours in a research 'hurricane' chaser airplane chasing, what else?, a hurricane (I don't know which one...) Key-razy!!

Heard Charlotte Harbor is where the eye is now...have you heard from your parents, Bill?

Sorry, he wasn't 'chasing' the hurricane, he was flying through the damn thing, over and over, different parts of it, for 10 hours.

Barf bag city.

Glad to hear your parents are OK. Im in Odessa (20 miles east of the gulf, 15 north of the top of Tampa Bay).

I kept hoping the hurricane wouldn't come here. I suppose, though, that meant it needed to go somewhere else.

Glad to here your parents are ok.

Do more catblogging!

Context, so people don't think I'm a total jackass.

Donnah, I hope all is well.

I'm relieved your parents are safe.

Have they never been through a hurricane before? Once is all it took me to learn proper respect for hurricane force winds.

I grew up down there, and we've been threatened with hurricanes and went through tropical storms all the time ... but they are never as serious as the warnings. Even this one wasn't as bad as forecast considering my parents live ON Charlotte Harbor, and there was no storm surge.

Thank you, Ghost. They're fine. They went galavanting around the county without telling anyone. We'll put them in the home soon. ;)

I'm glad Donnah's and Bill's parents are ok. I made my comment after Bill said his folks were ok, but before I read posts like this. But I'm still a jackass.