Weather-Cocked Season Started, or "Here We Go Again!"

[CPMcGraw]

Mobile, Alabama has a "Kick Me" sign stuck on its back... :p

We're preparing to 'receive' Arlene on Saturday, here at the start of the 2005 Hurricane season. All of the projections show this storm as being mostly a rain event, so we're not panic-stricken. However, there are still hundreds of homes in the area which continue to have Ivan-related damage repaired, some of these still with blue tarps covering the holes in their roofs. To say we don't need this storm is an understatement... :mad:

I've now got to go out tomorrow to put back up the wind screens I built for Ivan; I only just took down the last set of these this week... :(

Craig McGraw

[A Fish Named Wallyum]

Mobile, Alabama has a "Kick Me" sign stuck on its back... :p

We're preparing to 'receive' Arlene on Saturday, here at the start of the 2005 Hurricane season. All of the projections show this storm as being mostly a rain event, so we're not panic-stricken. However, there are still hundreds of homes in the area which continue to have Ivan-related damage repaired, some of these still with blue tarps covering the holes in their roofs. To say we don't need this storm is an understatement... :mad:

I've now got to go out tomorrow to put back up the wind screens I built for Ivan; I only just took down the last set of these this week... :(

Craig McGraw

Figures. My brother, he of the lime green/burgundy metallic Beta, leaves tomorrow for a week in Gulf Shores. :rolleyes: That'll teach him to skip out on Sarah's birthday.

[CPMcGraw]

Mobile, Alabama STILL has a "Kick Me" sign stuck on its back... :p :mad:

Arlene didn't blow the sign away, and neither did Cindy...

Cindy just tried to wash it away -- 4-5" of rain in less than 12 hours...

Looks like Dennis the Menace is going to take a stab at wiping our collective backsides off the coastline, this time. Already a Class 1, expected to become a Class 3 (winds between 115 and about 130, I think; same as Frederick in 1979), with some wags suggesting it might reach Class 5 status (1969 Camille-class, "Biggest Bertha", thermonuclear blast-category) before US landfall... :mad:

Sunday night through Monday looks like zero-hours for the Central Gulf Coast... :(

We're in the absolute center of the current NOAA "Cone Of Uncertainty" path projection... :(

If it's not too windy (Calm Before The Storm), I'm determined to fly some new models Saturday, even if only on A8-3's... :D


Craig "Standing Deep In The Heart Of Dixie, but also apparently standing in deep something-or-other" McGraw

[A Fish Named Wallyum]

Maybe we won't plan that post-Naram vacation for Gulf Shores after all. :confused:

[CPMcGraw]

Sunday night through Monday looks like zero-hours for the Central Gulf Coast... :(

We're in the absolute center of the current NOAA "Cone Of Uncertainty" path projection... :(

If it's not too windy (Calm Before The Storm), I'm determined to fly some new models Saturday, even if only on A8-3's... :D

Well, we just got word that Gov. Riley has ordered all of Mobile County (500,000+ people) to evacuate, so I probably won't be flying rockets Saturday...

Mobile County has never been given such an order before. It's very confusing to people here because our neighboring county to the east, Baldwin, has only been ordered to evacuate south of US90.

I'm getting worried now about the number of folks who are going to be in harm's way with this order. There's going to be a lot of people stuck in traffic when the high winds start hitting the area. My mom and I are hunkerin' down here in Tillman's Corner (about 8 miles from downtown Mobile, following US90 west). See this image: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/refreshmap.adp?z=5&rand=7643

We have too many combatant pets to try to travel with, and nowhere to go with them even if we did. I feel safer in this wood-frame house that withstood the likes of Camille, Frederick, Georges, Opal, and Ivan than I ever would trying to outrun Dennis.

We're hoping the storm doesn't regain as much strength as it had before it struck Cuba. It's dropped for the moment to a Category 2, but the models are still saying Category 3 before landfall along the Gulf Coast.

I'll try to keep sending something as long as there's power and a phone line available...

Craig McGraw

[CPMcGraw]

In case anyone wondered how close the schoolyard is where I fly, see the attached images. Image #2 is where I live, image #3 is the school.

Be advised, however, both maps have the stars in the wrong place. They should be shifted to the right just a tad...

I just hope I'm no more than a tad off-kilter when Tuesday comes... :eek:

Craig...

[A Fish Named Wallyum]

Unreal. I don't remember another season like this one in my lifetime. Seems awful early. :(

[CPMcGraw]

Unreal. I don't remember another season like this one in my lifetime. Seems awful early. :(

It is. The last time we had a season like this, the second half was much worse. We don't have that El Nino effect in the Pacific to drive them away. What we have is a "Bermuda High", as one weathercaster says "driving this bus" right through our neighborhood.

The winds right now (10 AM CDT on Saturday) are at 100 MPH. A far cry from the 150 MPH winds at the time it hit Cuba, but there's still 475 miles of Gulf water between us and it.

Craig

[Nuke Rocketeer]

Unreal. I don't remember another season like this one in my lifetime. Seems awful early. :(

A couple of years ago, someone took all the hurricane data from the 1800's on and plotted the number and strength on a yearly basis. He noticed that there was indeed a cycle that tended to run on 40 or 50 years. Projecting from this, it was stated that we were WAY overdue for a high cycle like was experienced in the 30's and 40's. When the global warming fanatics started baying about GW causing all the hurricanes last year, this plot was published showing that the cycle started winding down in the late 50's, bottomed out in the late 70's and early 80's, and then slowly started creeping back up in the mid 80's, continuing to rise slowly all through the 90's and into 2003. They had no really good theory on what caused the cycle, except for solar energy cycles. A rough plot of solar output overlain over the hurricane plot had some similarity with a 10 year or so lead. Hopefully when the warming nazis start their everlasting whining about this year's hurricanes, this will be resurrected. The professor who did the study was blasted right and left by the warming nazis, so I don't know if he'll have the cojones to bring it back up.

Joe W

[CPMcGraw]

The sky is now falling here in Mobile, at 1:35 PM CDT. We were listening to the rumble of thunder for about 10 minutes before the rain started dropping. The lightning is picking up in my immediate area, but I expect this band to exit just about as quickly. The good thing about this band, it will cool us off quite a bit. The temps here are in the mid to upper 90's and should drop about 20 degrees...

Craig...

[CPMcGraw]

The sky cleared a bit after about an hour, and even had the sun popping out to warm the place back up to its normal stickiness. We're back to looking at a Cat-3 storm once again, with a little more strengthening expected. The Wal-Mart in front of my house is virtually deserted, which makes it all the more eerie.

A bit too breezy for flying. Rats... :(

Craig

[A Fish Named Wallyum]

A bit too breezy for flying. Rats... :(

HEY! You know the rules. No biological payloads. ;)

[CPMcGraw]

HEY! You know the rules. No biological payloads. ;)

Tell that to the rats. They keep delivering more payloads than I can cope with... :eek:

Dennis is back up to 125 now. I keep seeing the movie Twister in my head, you know, the "Debris!" scene...

Craig

[CPMcGraw]

Category 4, 145 mph winds...

It's 8 AM CDT, and we're getting a little rain. Little is, of course, a relative term, but it's more like a steady drizzle right now. That will change between now and 1 PM, which is the general beginning of the landfall time.

The storm has taken a very slight shift to the north, which might prove significant when the eye wall crosses the coast. This storm is tightly compact, with the Cat-4 winds only reaching out about 40 miles from the center. A couple of degrees now could reduce the maximum wind speed where I am. Bad news is, someone is going to feel the full brunt of this one.

The evacuation seems to have gone much better than I thought it might. Gov. Riley ordered I-65 from Mobile to Montgomery be one-way northbound, and the report was that 6500 cars per hour got out of the path. Normal traffic for this stretch of interstate is about 2200 cars per hour. Don't look for a hotel room in Alabama right now -- there are none available.

Here's what we're facing:
http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm4/dennissatrad_large.html

I'll keep trying to post something as long as the power and phone hold out...

Craig McGraw

[CPMcGraw]

The storm has taken a definite turn to the due north. It puts Pensacola again in the crosshairs, and Mobile is going to be brushed on the downwind (western) side of the storm.

We are having steady straight-line winds of about 20 MPH here in Mobile, with a light drizzle.

Big Bertha, the fat lady, ain't singing yet; but she's tuning up and getting her girdle on...

Craig...

[CPMcGraw]

The winds here are gusting to about 45, with steady-state winds in the high 20's to mid 30's. The temperature is down to about 72. We're getting the rain in buckets now.

Dennis has dropped to a Cat-3 storm, 135 MPH winds, and the hurricane-force winds are condensed to a very small area only 8-10 miles out from the center. Lots of rain is expected, maybe from 12-15 inches over the next 24 hours, and the storm is expected to remain a hurricane as far inland as 100 miles. Local Doppler radar scans are showing the eye moving now almost directly toward Milton, Florida. This is east of Pensacola, which may save those poor folks from the worst of the winds. They're going to get bruised and scratched up, but it may not be as bad as Ivan was.

Estimates are some 6000+ residents in Mobile County who didn't evacuate completely are in shelters. None of these are rated for Cat-3 storms, but they were opened up anyway because many of these folks couldn't go anywhere else. This is something that our local officials and school board are going to be grilled and criticized for in the aftermath -- none of our schools, which generally serve as the emergency shelters for the county, are designed for Cat-3 storms. Here we are, in a prime hurricane zone, and none of our schools are designed to survive a Cat-3 storm. The Red Cross didn't even want to open these shelters at all! They didn't want to put their own people in them!

Our satellite dish is still receiving signals, but it's beginning to get chopped up from the rain in the clouds. Our receiver dish remained pointed at the satellites all through Ivan, and it seems to be holding steady during Dennis. It's on the south-side of the house, and the winds right now are out of the north, so it's sheltered a bit.

Phone lines are still intact for the moment, and power is still solid. For now. Landfall is still a couple of hours away, so a lot can change between now and then.

More later...

Craig

[CPMcGraw]

Landfall occurred at 2:25 PM CDT over Santa Rosa Island, with wind speeds of 115-120 MPH. This makes it a Cat-3 hurricane. The hurricane winds were even more tightly packed, only about 10-15 miles across, beyond which the winds dropped off to tropical storm force of 74 MPH or less.

Some of the warnings are now being removed in Mississippi, but there are reports of tornado activity around the core. No confirmed tornado touchdown or damage to this point, however.

The winds are now 105 MPH, Cat-2, with a forward speed of 21 MPH to the north. It's heading for Atmore and Brewton, in Escambia County, Alabama. Pensacola and Milton took the eye wall, but apparently the concentrated nature of this eye has prevented the outlying areas from receiving the same damage as Ivan brought. Won't know until WKRG (CBS) can get their chopper in the air to take pictures. Probably not before tomorrow.

Mobile has recorded a wind gust of 47 MPH, with a rainfall of 2.5" at the WKRG station in Midtown Mobile (around the Malls, Airport Blvd. at I-65). Our official weather station is farther to the west at the airport, and they recorded about the same.

So far, although many areas of Mobile are without power, and the cable TV provider is off-line in my immediate area, my power never blipped once (no promises that it'll stay that way -- the power company ain't called "Alabama Flicker & Flash" for nuthin'...). Give 'em credit where credit is due, though. For me, the power stayed good through what I would call the worst of the storm. Our satellite also stayed locked on the birds; the signal dropped out during the heaviest of the rain bands, but quickly came back up.

As the storm passes farther north of us, we should start seeing the winds shift direction from the north to the west. There are still some strong gusts through my area, but they seem to be slacking off. Good sign the storm is weakening.

Later...

Craig McGraw