Debby

[Alan Rutherford]

The worst thing about a hurricane is the waiting.* Debby isn't a big deal, as hurricanes go. I'm not even sure if she's made it past Tropical Storm yet although it's supposed to be a hurricane by the time it hits the coast, about 30 miles South of our house. When we lived in Seattle we didn't have hurricanes. We had earthquakes. No preamble, no incessant TV news interruptions with the latest. No scrolling lists of all the places that will be closed tomorrow. Just some shake, rattle, roll and it's over with, hopefully, no damage.

Wife just texted the kids to say we're fine, we'll be fine, we probably won't be able to talk to you tomorrow but really, we'll be fine. We'll let you know when we can.

The National Hurricane Center is pretty good about putting out the facts without the drama (https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/). TV is not. It looks like the eye will pass 20-30 miles from us but winds will already be dropping. That will be mid-day Monday. The last time a hurricane passed this close it was the middle of the night and we slept through it (it was fading fast). Not everyone gets off so easily, especially further South, but this is not worrisome, just annoying.

It's not making landfall along the peninsula, like Tampa, but it looks like it's already wet and windy down there. I hope they're doing OK.

Generator is ready, car is parked right where the top of a tree fell the last time we had a big wind so I figure it can't happen twice, loose stuff picked up outside, new storage shed anchored down. This is a PITA.

* Re-reading this - I know there are a lot worse things than the waiting for many people, and if that is the worst we see from Debby, I should be thankful. Some people will probably do much worse. I get that and I regret the suffering even a small hurricane can bring. This is still a PITA.

[Doug Garson]

Hope you stay safe.

[Jim Koepke]

Hope it dies down before it gets to landfall.

I've lived in earthquake country all but a few months of my whole life. I was living in the SF area for the pretty big one, Loma Prieta, in 1989. Just a few minutes before it hit I was on the lower deck of the Nimitz Freeway that pancaked.

I would still rather live in earthquake country. Now I live where on a drive into town on a clear day Mount St Helens can be seen about 50 miles east of us.

jtk

[Rollie Meyers]

Hurricanes & tornado's are scary, firenado's are terrifying, earthquakes are no fun, I live close to where the Park Fire started, 2 miles or so but other then smoke I am better off then folks who lost everything, some even lost their homes twice, the earlier Camp Fire being the first, we are at the mercy of forces that we have no control once unleashed.

[Alan Rutherford]

The NHC publishes predicted positions and wind strength of storms and updates the forecast every 6 hours. It's pretty dry reading and difficult to visualize so I've been plotting Debbie with dry-erase marker on a plastic sheet over graph paper. Crude but very useful. The blue numbers are lattitude and longitude. The green line is the Gulf Coast and the green X is our house. The red numbers are the past or predicted positions with dates/times in UTC and the track. The predicted track has shifted to the East. I left 2 red marks from earlier predicted tracks when I erased them. It's looking better for us. PXL_20240805_041346766~2r.jpg

[George Yetka]

Hope it went well for you. First I heard about it was my father in law calling my wife complaining she doesnt care about him because she didnt call worrying. We are not a tv news household. Usually feeds on phone or social media lets us know.

[Jack Frederick]

I think back to the days when as a kid in the 50’s-60’s you watched Uncle Walter or Huntley-Brinkley. Local news before or after and the weather man standing with a grease pencil showing where the wind was coming from, drawing clouds, rain snow. It was about 50-50 correct. Today as Alan demonstrates it is much better. Back in the UW/HB days there were storms too, but it wasn’t constant. Hurricanes, floods, EQ, Tornados, in our case fires and smoke as well. All of these are constant and unrelenting nationwide. I’m not much for nostalgia, but I wish for the infrequency of these storms from back in the day.

We were lucky where we were in the foothills but the pet carriers were in the hall closet, the go-bags by the door, the gas tank never below half, etc. The attached photo I was on my way out to the shop looked out to the west and jumped. We were lucky as this one popped up in late June and there were no big fires drawing air resources. Minutes after I saw this a DC-10 dropped below the horizon dropping its load. They put everything on this fire and knocked it down before it got into Nevada City. It was a really nice place, but I’m happy we are out of the foothills. That’s optimistic. It can all burn,

[Mike Henderson]

I found this site to be good for information on hurricanes. While I don't live in a hurricane area, my extended family lives along the gulf coast and that gets hit by hurricanes fairly often, so I track hurricanes which are in that area.

I remember when Katrina hit, the first reports were that New Orleans had survived another one, but that was not correct.

Hope you come through without any serious damage.

Mike

[Debby doesn't seem to be a serious threat.]

[Pat Germain]

I lived in Hampton Roads, Virginia for 17 years and I can relate to the TV hype. Every year it was, "This could be the big one! Remember, it's not the wind, it's the STORM SURGE!". All we ever got was rain, rain and more rain.

Stay safe.

[Alan Lightstone]

We got a little over 9" of rain in a day, and probably about 40mph winds at most. Lots of palm fronds down, but no flooding or other damage. A number of areas with flooding, but as things go, we did reasonably well in Tampa Bay. Of course, in the panhandle, and especially if the forecast holds true with it stalling over Georgia and South Carolina, they may have real flooding issues.

[Bill Dufour]

Sacramento California used to get winter floods very often. So they brought in dirt and raised the downtown up to 15 feet. That was back in 1864 with horses, not machines. I suppose they used a lot of out of work miners for labor. Solved the problem. why not in Florida?
Bill D

[Patty Hann]

Sacramento California used to get winter floods very often. So they brought in dirt and raised the downtown up to 15 feet. That was back in 1864 with horses, not machines. I suppose they used a lot of out of work miners for labor. Solved the problem. why not in Florida?
Bill D

I think they would have to "raise" the whole state, or an awful lot it

[Mike Henderson]

I think they would have to "raise" the whole state, or an awful lot it

Florida is really flat. I read about a couple of guys who were traveling and climbing the highest natural point in each state. In Florida, they beat their way through high grass to Britton Hill, 345 feet above sea level.

The underlying strata is very porous so building dikes is not a solution. Sea water would just flow through the porous strata to the other side of the dike.

The water table in Florida is very high. Most people have a shallow well (maybe 10 feet) that they use for lawn irrigation. When I lived there, we had a deep well (maybe 25 feet) because the shallow well water had a lot of iron in it and it left red stains on everything.

Mike

[Steve Demuth]

It'd take a LOT of dirt. None of Florida south of Coral Springs (so that includes all of the Miami metro area) is more than about 10ft above mean sea level. Some day in the next decades Miami will take a direct hit from an H3 or H4 hurricane with 20ft storm surge, and a couple of feet of rain inland. More than half a million homes will be inundated when the sky clears.

[Rod Sheridan]

I hope everyone is doing well, with no damage from the storm.

It's funny how we relate to storms.

I was at at a motorcycle rally in North Carolina and we were all sitting around at night talking. From the other side of the circle I hear "that's Rod over there, he's from Canada, go ask him".

Honestly, that's an opening line that makes me nervous.

Over comes a nice guy, maybe 10 years older than me who introduces himself, he's from Alabama and wants to know how I can stand living in a place where we get snowstorms.

My response was " well, normally we get a couple days warning so when I wake up in a snowstorm, instead of dashing out the door for work, we have a nice breakfast, then I top up the bird feeders and bird bath (we have a heated one) and I go back inside"

"Then I have another mug of tea and watch the birds in the feeder, and stay home from work. Once it stops snowing I get out the shovel and the snow blower and clear the driveway and sidewalks. It sure beats having my house flattened by a tornado or hurricane".

His comment still was "yeah but you get snowstorms"

So when I hear about the storms that happen in the southern US, I probably worry more about it than people who live there and have experienced these storms, as I have no experience with them.

Regards, Rod.