Oh sh!t ... Hurricane Ivan is projected to hit Florida.

It is currently a category 5 hurricane packing 160 mph winds.

Pretty soon Florida will be gone...

We are devastated down here after TWO hurricanes in 3 weeks. Businesses are ruined, hundreds of thousands do not have electricity. Gasoline is in short supply.



Please keep us Floridians in your thoughts.

quick...move to KALIFORNIA.

you guys are definitely in my thoughts

I saw a pic in my morning paper of "W" handing out a sack of flour. Will that help?
Seriously, we all wish you well. Sometimes we in the colder climes forget that there is a price for living where the weather is always warm.

Karl,

Hope you weather this next one. I have a brother between Miami and Tampa about 5 miles inland..i know what you are going through.

You should move to Indiana!..We need more teeners up here...plus, we only have tornadoes and snow storms!

Jim

Yes, try to stay safe...

how is your son? hope this dosnt affect him . my thoughts are with you

damn, how many people had money on the Trifecta !?

you guys batten down and be careful.

somebody told me a while ago that there's a cost associated with everywhere you want to live.
with earthquakes, you keep your emergency preparedness supplies at the ready and you're done - there's none of this living in dread while you watch the weather closing in... i didn't like the tornado season when i lived in Illinois, and i know i'm not cut out for anywhere in the SouthEast.

it gets nippy up here in the winter, but i can dress for that; it gets humid in the summer but i can dehumidify for that (and IIRC, you're no stranger to humidity in FL...)

i saw the storm track a couple of minutes ago and it does look ominous. the climate does seem to be changing a bit, and the longterm projections i've seen suggest Atlantic storms will get worse before they get better...

I was just readin' about an "up cycle" for Florida & their hurricanes.....and I ain't talkin' college football

The "down cycle" ran about 20-30 years. The up cycle is due to last about the same lenght of time. The good news is that the swamps won't be catching fire for a while.

The bad news is that the down cycle lured a pee pot fulla' people to the area with attendant development. Now what are they gonna do? Were it me, I'd pick up my double wide and move it to Arizona.

I feel for youz guys, but that don't help ya a bit. All I have to worry about is earthquakes, volcanos, & old age

Qarl must be the only one with Connectivity and power. Because I haven't sen the remainder of the Florida boys on the board since last week.

I fired up my Generator on Monday just in case Mississippi sucks as bad Florida. Not sure if that is possible.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.and oh by the way if the guy next door is named Noah and building a big wooden boat in his back yard I'd get the heck out a there now.Good luck and stay safe

Karl I hope you and the family are able to weather the storm. It is I am sure no great pleasure to be in your new home and wonder if it will be standing after Ivan rips through the neighborhood.

I sold a home on the Island of Nevis, located near Genada, many years ago. Right now I am glad I don't have that to worry about, instead I will keep you in thoughts and prayers.
Take car.
CCL

I got a bad feeling about this one. It's coming UP the peninsula, so nowhere to run unless you leave the state.

We got lucky with the last 2 but now our luck may have run.

dr

We are just getting the remnants of Francis up here now.
Heavy rain warnings and a delay of the Canadian Open are the worst of it at this point.

Good Luck down there.

This is BULLSHIT!!!

I'm leaving my plywood up and buying more beer.

To all of you in Florida and the surrounding affected areas, I hope you are all able to stay safe and well.

HIEDI

my thoughts are with you guys -- hang in there!

prayers.

side note; your insurance premiums must be the price of a new boxster.

seriously though prayers.

Maybe if we all strip neked and dance aroung a fire to beating drums, it will change it's path. I nominate MikeZ, Aaron, Howard and Miles to do the honors.

Be safe - RUN AWAY - and don't look back!

I hope this thing loses its steam by Sunday. I and my daughter who loves teeners are keeping you and all the others affected in our prayers. Dig in deep or get out of the way!!

Hope you stay safe and sound with your head between your knees, Qual.

Monique is trying to get a hold of her sister on Jamaica....no luck.

heh Ive done that for the few direct hits Ive experienced here on LI

this is

scary

good luck guys

Stay safe guys, Paul, be sure to put a few extra tie downs on your ultralight. Maybe let the helium out of the tires and roll cage. You FL guys be sure and keep us posted as often as you can this weekend. You're in our thoughts and prayers.

I'm sure I'll be down there sooner or later. You guy's get the heck out of the way! Ivan's big!

not that we should be f'n with mother nature more than we already do....but has anyone (mostly the US I guess) tried to "stop" or slow down a hurricane using explosives??

something small and harmless like a thermo-nuclear device set off in the eye of the storm????

They should name the next hurricane "Hannibal" as bad as they've been this year!

Thanks, try that next time a hurricane hits California, leave this one au natural.

I don't need 160 mph fallout.


M

Oh, by the way, a hurricane like Ivan is on the order of 5000 megatons..

Don't try to stop it, just get the hell out of it's way, or not.

I ain't goin' no damned where.




M

Be safe, florida guys... I've dodged the occasional tornado up here, but i couldn't imagine going through a hurricane, let alone three of them.

NOAA path prediction:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ftp/graphics/AT09/...IF/061453W5.gif

And another:
http://www.w4dfu.ufl.edu/emwin/TRKATLUS.GIF

Hitting it in the eye of the storm would IMHO actually make it worse. A storm is a localized low pressure area. After the bang you have nothing so even more of a low pressure area.

Why is it getting bigger with time?

Im no weather guy ...

it's picking up energie from the warm water ...

Andy

WHEW. Good Luck.

Paul may want to rethink this whole lightweight thing.

I read somewhere that they tried seeding the clouds and it worked.
Some countries that depended on the rain from the hurricanes didnt like the idea.

What about the butterfly effect.

One thing is for damn sure, it screws up dyno testing!

Tuesday as we caught the rest of Frances I was on the dyno. 2 Days before I was also on the dyno with the same engine and had to stop in the middle of a test due to an oil leak....

Our normal air pressure here is about 28.23-28.47 most of the time. When this storm came through were dropped down into the 27.17 range at some points and wow did it do things to the engine. I had to give up because our tuning was radically different. On Monday the engine ran great, not a ping- nothing. during the rain storm it was so different that it was pinging like crazy!

Very wild. I have never seen pressure here that low before.

They seeded one off the coast here in the 1950s, it was moving north...

It suddenly changed course, and killed 6,000 people.



M

Hey Miles, your real name isn't Chris...that lives near LA...and owns a sweeeet IROC that can out run any cop car on the planet...that wears temporary tatoos...that gets knob nibbles by his many beotchs...while the scared CHiPs officer waits for her to finish...are you?

Just kidding... You make WAY more sense than him!

They say it should be on our ass Tuesday. At least this time it won't screw up our weekend.

Paul

You may want to keep the Nuke talk on the "down low".

In Alberta the insurance companies who cover local farmer's crops seed the clouds with silver iodide every year in order to avoid hail stones. They used to lose so much money to crop damage that they now spend millions in order to change the weather, avoid the hail and the 100s of millions in claims.

There is quite abit of information on the seeding program on the search engines, here is one of them.
http://www.hurricaneville.com/project_stormfury.html

I'm so sick of this SHIT. It's one step forward and ten back.
Hurricanes
T.C.

They seeded hurricane Camille back in 1969. It ended up being one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It broke all the wind meters, in fact some were stuck at over 200 mph. It devisatated this area.

Camille

Does it make sense to keep building, and building, and building in these Hurricane prone areas. It's inevitable that there will be more hurricanes, nothing is going to stop them. Now we are in a cycle that will most likely bring more Hurricanes to the southeast US.

How many Billions of dollars will the taxpayers have to pay to bail-out the insurance companies that will surely go under with all damage claims.

I understand that most of the year Florida has nice weather, but is the risk worth it, why should we all that don't enjoy the mild weather year round have to pay to fix/clean-up Florida.

Oh well, when the polar ice caps melt half the state will be underwater!

Nothing against all you Floridians out there, just my rant.

Don't worry, we're the ones paying. If you saw our insurance premiums and tax bill, you would

dr

I'm here, in Tampa.

I've got power, cable, everything.

Going back to S. Fl for this one though, and depending on how hard we get hit, I am bring a generator back.

I disagree. Should we stop building in earthquake prone areas? And what about with all the tornado prone areas? Hawaii too? Since it is a volcano?

Just doesn't sound practical to me.

I figured I would get some flaming for my comments. It is not practical to stop builing in these areas. I just think that people need to take a look at what is being built. Why do Manufactured home parks continue to get built when one storm can wipe out the whole place?

And there definitely should be no complaining, because if you live in these disaster prone areas you know that eventually it's going to happen.

My .02 (agian) so maybe my .02 x 2.

I heard that there has been a 30-40 year period of few hurricanes and that an era of greater frequency may be upon us. If so, I expect the number of people moving to Florida will at least slow. These three are probably giving some northern retirees second thoughts on where to spend their golden years.

I wasn't trying to be a Richard Cranium, just expressing my 2 cents also.