Well, here we go again

[Jim Becker]

Yea, it's the storm surge that's going to be a "yuge" concern along that entire coast.

[Lee DeRaud]

It's also amazed me that so much of Florida remains using overhead power. I've wondered about that for years and wondered if the cost of so many "fixes" may have exceeded the cost to bury it earlier on. Who knows?

Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I lived in Orlando (1970-ish), the water table was measured in inches. Joke was, you could drill a well with a golf tee. Underground power lines implies underground transformers: I've seen multiple instances out here where heavy rain and transformer vaults refused to play nice.

I assume it can be done, but it definitely sounds like a trade-off.

[Paul McGaha]

Thoughts, prayers and good mojo for those in the path of the storm.

PHM

[Greg Parrish]

Alan, hopefully you didn’t get the surge you were worried about and all is okay.

Gusty wind and rain here. Hopefully we’ve missed the brunt of it in Tallahassee as well. Doesn’t look good for the Keeton Beach / Fish Creek area as well as up through central north Florida and South Georgia. Current radar shows it coming ashore and possibly going up towards Perry.

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[Alan Lightstone]

Real concern regarding those living in the Big Bend area of Florida. Damage there is likely to be catastrophic.

We didn't lose power. Areas close to us have. Storm surge is by far the most we've ever seen since we lived here. Likely most in history of St. Pete, Clearwater area. Fortunately, as of now, the storm surge hasn't come close to the house yet. Wind hasn't been impressive compared to hurricanes that have come closer. They've cut off access to all the barrier islands, and bridges to Tampa and Sarasota are now closed.

The timing of this storm coming at a King Tide is horrible. And having it intensify to Category 4 over the Gulf makes things so much worse.

Greg and Alan Rutherford are likely in much more impacted areas. Our collective prayers are for you, and all in the path of this storm.

[Greg Parrish]

Thanks Alan. We are only about 40 miles from Perry and it’s looking really bad there from the footage on the weather channel so far. Can only imagine how the Keeton Beach area must look. Of course, it’s not over but we got real lucky in Tallahassee. We are on the left side so it has to have helped with our wind levels. Haven’t seen any updates on damage locally but for the moment we still have power at my place. Still a constant wind level with some strong gusts, but nothing like the folks in Perry and elsewhere are seeing. Thoughts and prayers with everyone in its path.

[Greg Parrish]

Just saw this update locally:

”Update as of 8AM. NOAA Doppler radar imagery indicate that the eye of Idalia made landfall along the coast of the Florida Big Bend near Keaton Beach around 7:45 AM approximately 58 miles southeast of Tallahassee.
Data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that Idalia's maximum sustained winds were near 125 mph (Category 3). The latest minimum pressure central pressure estimated from reconnaissance data is 949 mb.
Water levels along the coast of the Florida Big Bend are rising rapidly. A NOAA National Ocean Service tide gauge at Cedar Key, Florida, recently reported a water level of 5.9 feet above mean higher high water, which is an approximation of inundation in that area.
Locally, we’ve seen wind gusts near 45mph
Outages
Current Outages: 11,019
Outages Restored: 1335
10 circuits are currently down
Mutual aid crews are engaged and integrated with our crews. Crews have been responding to outages overnight and will continue to respond as long as it is safe to do so.
Now that the storm has passed central Florida, additional mutual aid resources from Kissimmee, Lakeland, and Orlando have been released and are en route to Tallahassee”

[Alan Lightstone]

Just saw this update locally:

”Update as of 8AM. NOAA Doppler radar imagery indicate that the eye of Idalia made landfall along the coast of the Florida Big Bend near Keaton Beach around 7:45 AM approximately 58 miles southeast of Tallahassee.
Data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that Idalia's maximum sustained winds were near 125 mph (Category 3). The latest minimum pressure central pressure estimated from reconnaissance data is 949 mb.
Water levels along the coast of the Florida Big Bend are rising rapidly. A NOAA National Ocean Service tide gauge at Cedar Key, Florida, recently reported a water level of 5.9 feet above mean higher high water, which is an approximation of inundation in that area.
Locally, we’ve seen wind gusts near 45mph
Outages
Current Outages: 11,019
Outages Restored: 1335
10 circuits are currently down
Mutual aid crews are engaged and integrated with our crews. Crews have been responding to outages overnight and will continue to respond as long as it is safe to do so.
Now that the storm has passed central Florida, additional mutual aid resources from Kissimmee, Lakeland, and Orlando have been released and are en route to Tallahassee”

The US Coast Guard moved all their air units from Clearwater to West Palm Beach to aid in their distribution after the storm. Never heard of that happening before. The Coast Guard station here is massive, so fortunately they'll have lots of resources to come online when safe to do so.

I'm always amazed at the massive caravan of power trucks that drives into/around the state to restore power. They really do cooperate and work well after an emergency.

[Brian Elfert]

Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I lived in Orlando (1970-ish), the water table was measured in inches. Joke was, you could drill a well with a golf tee. Underground power lines implies underground transformers: I've seen multiple instances out here where heavy rain and transformer vaults refused to play nice.

Residential underground distribution in my area has above ground transformers. Transformers are underground in downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. There is even at least one underground substation in downtown Minneapolis.

[Greg Parrish]

Same here. Our lines are underground but transformers are above ground. We are in a unique situation whereby our neighborhood has its own substations attached to the main high-power lines coming directly out of the power plant. These lines are the ones on the tall metal transmission towers. I don't have any proof but I feel like they fair better than the typical wood/metal pole might due to the line height and the tower framework. Anyway, in 14 years I can only think of one time we lost power for longer than a few seconds and it was due to a transformer being knocked out at the power plant itself during Hermine. In that case, we were out a day or two simply because they didn't have a spare of the same type on hand and had to source one from elsewhere.

However, most of Tallahassee is covered with above ground powerlines on wooden poles with much/most of it located within heavy tree canopy (live oaks and such). The bulk of town regularly looses power during storms. I count myself lucky for sure.

Residential underground distribution in my area has above ground transformers. Transformers are underground in downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. There is even at least one underground substation in downtown Minneapolis.

[Jim Becker]

'Glad things are ok for you Alan.

Going to a Cat 4 is indeed scary and that sucker is going to continued as a Cat 2 well into/through Georgia, according to the forecast on the news this morning. That's one nasty storm!

[Rob Luter]

The question of why power lines are not underground comes up here every time there is a major storm that knocks out several hundred thousand customers. Luckily, such a storm has not occurred for several years. The power companies talk about the cost to put utilities underground and the higher ongoing cost to maintain underground lines. Apparently, it costs more to maintain underground lines than overhead I guess due to the cost of digging up or replacing underground lines. My parents had their underground feed go bad at least once. The power company thought an animal chewed on it.

My city has required underground lines since the late 1970s so there are few power poles. The power companies have been putting all new residential services underground for 40 years or so. I demolished a house with overhead service in 2001. The new house the power company ran the feed underground even though it goes overhead at the street.

I always wondered why they didn't run power lines under sidewalks in a trough, with concrete walking surface just set on top. This concept has been used for industrial wireways for decades.

[Stan Calow]

We live in tornado country, where every year major storms knock out power lines. Everyone screams about putting all the utilities underground, but no one seems to want to pay the cost to do that. Or to have their own trees trimmed away from lines. Must be someone else's job.

[Jim Becker]

I always wondered why they didn't run power lines under sidewalks in a trough, with concrete walking surface just set on top. This concept has been used for industrial wireways for decades.

It's a bit more complicated to do underground utilities in the "low country" because of water tables, etc. It's less about the wire/cable than it is about the transformers, switching gear (all electronic now) and so forth as all that stuff has to be kept dry 100% of the time, although the act of burying transmission lines (the high voltage stuff) as well as local distribution lines is still expensive, disruptive and no fun. That said, I still do think that ultimately it's a good thing to do so, but funding it...it's a big barrier. I suspect that wireless power transmission might happen sooner than funding burying everything...

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

We recently had a very local bad storm. A couple thousand people were with out power for 5 days. The whining and complaining about lack of water (those on wells) or air conditioning, food in freezers going bad etc, was terrible. At least two fires started because of candles. The lack of common sense and preparedness was shocking. One neighbor asked if I would bring my generator over to run her refrigerator. Which would be great but we have two refrigerators and two freezers to keep going. (one or two at a time) I noticed she had a Toyota highlander. I asked, don't you have an outlet in your car? She didn't know. I looked, she had 2, one in front and one in back. 1500 watts each. Told her to get a heavy duty extension cord and plug it in to her frig for about 20 minutes every hour.

I asked about light. She was using candles. Told her Harbor freight has cheap battery operated lanterns, about $5 or $6 each. Gave her a 5 gallons of water from our well. How are you cooking? They ate cold canned spaghetti. Use your bbq grill - it's propane. just use it where it sits in the yard.

I really don't understand people's inability to prepare. In 25 years here, we have had around 30 days with out power. 3 times for five days or more twice that was in winter. . My Mrs insists on having double back ups for most things. We have the generator, as well as two inverters that can be hooked up to vehicles or the tractor. We have battery lanterns, flash lights, and oil lamps. We have the propane stove, grill and my old camping stove. There is a shelf in the basement with about 15 gallons of water, if we can't use the well. We keep jugs of water frozen in the freezers to take up empty room, so if the power goes out, there will be more cold mass inside the freezers to resist thawing. We don't normally eat canned good, but keep couple dozen or so cans around for "incase". We have small electric heaters and a small wood stove in the basement with the items necessary to vent it out the window, ( including a window fitting panel with a hole for the stove pipe) if there is a need for heat.