I Just Can't Walk Away

I am confused with Idalia, and possibly storms in general right now. Are my tracking skills rusty or did they change how they track shit? I ask because Idalia's track ran (is running?) about what they said it would on our end with one seriously big exception: the timing for everything.

For days if you looked at the forecast, they kept saying overnight, overnight, overnight. Yeah, our tornado fuckery? This afternoon when people were trying to go home from the jobs that didn't close until 5pm, which is when a good chunk of the rain/wind kicked up, btw. Or picking their kids up from half days at school, for the earlier part of the afternoon. But I've been awake since *thinks* 11pm or so, and other than the occasional light band of rain and a few gusts (I'm being generous with those), it's been very, very quiet. I won't say that other parts of the area are feeling the same things, because work is pretty close to the beach, and downtown is likely underwater just because we're below fucking sea level, but yeah. I'm thinking while I dozed on the couch after dinner (so 8-10) we had some heavy rain bands based on what Mums said, and what I could hear anytime I woke up briefly, but the timing of everything just felt off.

I'm not complaining about the storm not being more, though. Just that trying to figure out the timing seems waaaaaaaaaay off compared to any other storm. Maybe it's how Idalia was shaped? I did sleep through the afternoon entirely (well, from 1 onward), so it's possible/probable I missed a good chunk of stuff, but even then, they weren't calling for it to be as severe then anyway. So again, I ask, wtf? If anything, the tornado action proved that they should've just called Wednesday a major weather day and cancelled everything to keep everyone off the road. But at dinner they kept talking about how we were getting "part two" of the storm and um...k? I'm not saying that had one been dumb enough to be out in it they wouldn't have regretted it, especially on ANY bridge (we have to cross 4 to get to work, though they are varying sizes and one is technically an overpass but I'm counting it) but part two didn't feel like much either.

I am curious as to how they'll report stuff in the morning.


It was great fun having to walk someone through their first tropical storm of any kind. She had so many questions and the timing of shit made telling her what to expect so much of a pain in my ass.

Now I wait for the headache to go away. Might have to find a hand towel and just apply heat because fuck this. Gonna try and walk around once the sun comes up, depending on the wind.

Alright, let's do this update. I had one planned this morning but the 5am update was pretty spiffy and then the 8am one tanked it and made things look like a giant case of "ohmygod, we're all gonna die!"

The later updates kind of negated that one really bad one but still, I figured I'd wait and see if there was a more concrete outlook. Well, as much as one can be when discussing a force of nature, that is.

Looks like we'll be getting the storm late Friday/early Saturday (1am Saturday is currently projecting the highest winds but they only showed up to 8am) and then it'll be hanging out all day Saturday. JOY. But as a Cat 1 and not a Cat 2, and definitely *knocks on wood* as a Cat 4.

The flipside to this is that the storm looks like it's coming closer inland than originally anticipated. But it also seems to be a storm that does not do well over land and since Florida's ready to put up a fight, I guess we'll see how it goes.


On a related note: one of the local stations put up a list of stores/pharmacies/whatever that are still open. It also included the ones that were closed, and work was on that list. And people were going in hardcore over the closing. To be fair, I do think that the person who dropped off a prescription on Tuesday at 9:30 should have been warned that the store was closing for the rest of the week. But everyone else? Really? Tuesday was when the evacuation notice went out, so it's nice that hell froze and work actually gave their employees time to get the hell out of dodge. Geez.


Kay. I should probably resume cleaning a bit. Or something.

When there is a storm heading right towards you, you do not want to hear about the one that's three or four days behind. You want to know about the tone hours away. So for this, you fail, Weather Channel. FAIL. Obviously that one is far more interesting than ours for other people, but one thing at a time. So please stop with your fear mongering ways.

Funny thing. I spent all yesterday bitching that while, somewhere in my brain, I was sure there was something that would explain this strange push everyone said would happen, slamming Hanna into NC for landfall, it irked me to no end that no one would show me what it was.

Guess what doesn't exist? That's right. There's no push. Every time they adjust the expected landfall, it dances closer and closer to me. Hell, as it is, the fun side is going to bitch slap me if the current projections are correct. And what will they not do? Close the goddamned bridges. Because it would be too dangerous for the workers to do so.

No cookies for anyone at this point. They get points for telling me this, but points off because I still don't know when this fun is going to happen. Only that the winds should kick up at 2pm.

Bother. This is one of the serious downsides to working overnights.

Must go forage for something. Anything.