Prospero

NHC has been pretty good five days out the past years. Ian is still in flux, but Tampa Bay has not been in this deep in the forecast for quite a while.

9 has a name. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/024746.shtml?cone#contents

SailFlow see 88 mph gust. https://www.sailflow.com/

21 minutes later it still looks like it, but hard to find a circulation. Would be good for everyone if it goes west and takes on shear in the open Gulf.

In a typical year we'd enjoy banter until warnings went up where it matters. Obviously the stress of a slow year has the very serious members Jonesing to do what they do and all of the rest of us who live in the path are put aside in a banter thread. If we get hit direct and give a moment to moment live feed we may still get pushed out if we are not a real Met. LOL

Here we go: City of Gulfport 2401 53rd Street South Gulfport, FL 33707 (727) 893-1000 www.mygulfport.us #2 For Immediate Release: Friday, September 23, 2022 THE CITY OF GULFPORT IS CURRENTLY MONITORING THE TRACK OF TROPICAL DEPRESSION #9 Sandbags will be available starting tomorrow at 10am.

This looks more like an Astrological chart than a Tropical System map.

Puts TB right in the middle. But I'm still trained from 2021 to expect it to nail western Louisiana.

Well here we are a few days out in the cone in Tampa Bay. Happens every year, usually more often than this year, but this is the first time as I remember this season. We've been throwing away old outdated cans of food we bought for Irma. Are we stocking up this weekend? No way. If our home is still standing if we get hit and lose power, the first day will be cooking egg/cheese meals and whatever meat we have in the fridge. Second day is eating as much as we can of what was frozen food. Third day no power, even with cans of good food, living without A/C in Florida is torture any time of the year. If the house can be locked up, we are heading to a hotel somewhere.

After all this time, we all bored to death and finally something starts to happen and "banter" is too much as we wake up when the thing doesn't even have a name yet? OK Party poopers...

If the next storm to hit Tampa Bay was like Andrew, the new massive storage buildings will be standing while everything else is wiped clean. Billing would not stop for units, and the next wave of construction would be mostly new Storage buildings.

We are paying $200 a month for storage mostly for a lot of plywood left over from Irma. I didn't want to leave it in our storage shed as by now it would be a termite ant infested creepy mess. We do have a hundred dollars worth of junk in the storage as well we don't want to throw away, but at about $12,000 over 5 years I think tossing the plywood in the trash after Irma would have been a great investment.

The Hype is On! I watched TV with my wife on three or four locals channels and the Weather Channel for a half hour or so. Granted, it has been a slow season so far and $$$ mets need to earn their pay, so the Hype is in full speed ahead! All channels were talking about 10 to 18 feet storms surges in Tampa Bay or Ft. Myers. I told my wife by this time tomorrow they will be saying 20 to 30 feet in Tampa Bay. They'll have graphics of downtown Tampa filling up, then going down.

Well, I am ready to feel like a ping pong ball for the next few days. The GFS is better than what the NHC says.

AmericanMX may have been active that day but I did not know of it. I signed up for a Florida storm forum a month or so later. On TV and internet news channels, downtown Tampa was looking at a 30 ft storm surge for several exciting hours. The hard turn shocked everyone.

My first wife's famous quote in the hills of Virginia during my 1978 Senior HS adventure, "I have not got pregnant yet."

In the Tampa Bay area, we have become a little too casual. But when you spend time and money to batten down the hatches over and over every year to be spared totally by yet another scary storm and still have some more work to do to unbatten everything after it passes, we get careless. And that is after having to put out a lot of money for repairs and cleanup after a storm does come too close feeling grateful we did whatever we did to batten down the hatches. Maybe 5 years is the threshold where we get lazy. If NHC is even as good as 2021 I am concerned a little.

Ultimate Hype Memory: The morning Charlie was bee-lining for Tampa Bay in 2004, direct line in its target and I was in Sun City Center! Nobody expected a hard right turn (that I was aware of). Many friends left here and the beaches scrambling in traffic to get to Orlando where they were pummeled by Charlie around midnight worse than we saw around here. It was a treat for us as it passed just South of where I was during daylight so I could experience it outside watching tiles blow off roofs and shutters flying down the street like paper trash. We kept power until 3:00 am or so and it was only out a few hours. We were spared, but close enough it is a something I'll never forget.

Just now I got freaked out. NHC was pretty good last year even when I disagreed many times. 5 days out now, have to take things more serious. In the last years since Irma, I think this is the first time we are inside the dark green, medium green, light green, and yellow. Or closer than I remember since 2017.

If that trend keeps going, we'll be hoping for at least some rain in Tampa Bay. But this September has been the wettest I remember. This is usually a DRY month except Tropical Systems!

I was a kid when Agnes spun out in the Gulf for a while in 1972 and pushed us the highest storm surge in the past decades for Tampa Bay. Remember watching the Washingtonian Palms swaying in the wind, but the large waves crashing in our driveway were a true memory for sure. The old Skyway Bridge was mostly under several feet of water. Our favorite seafood restaurant on Treasure Island was destroyed. 50 years and no other storm has beat it. And it was the 1920s since the last big surge.

Gulfport, FL, the "other" Gulfport.

One of these days here in Gulfport (South Pinellas County in Tampa Bay) we will be slammed. The last Hermine was in the top 3 for cost and aggravation since I moved here in 2006. Irma takes the cake with a few thousand bucks of clean up and ruined food and other stuff. I was across the bay in Sun City Center for 2004 Charlie, Francis, and Jeane. All three were a thrill, but Jeane is the one that killed power for a few days long enough that everything in the freezer and fridge were destroyed. Just made plans with my wife who is disabled. She will spend the time at the Assisted Living facility where my Dad is about five minuted from here and is shelter. My 87 year old Dad wants to be here with me to stay in the house and we will have enough beer to last a week. Even though only five blocks from the Boca Ciega Bay, we are on a 15 foot hump so likely not a storm surge threat, we hope. By Monday Hermine is likely to be heading to west LA as a Cat whatever which will make me very angry...

I expect sand bags will be available here by this time tomorrow. https://mygulfport.us/stormevent/ But so many times in the cone, even the day the storm hits and we enjoy the miss. But roulette has its odds...