Damn, maybe the Californians are better off with earthquakes that are over before you can worry about them. Priority #1, be safe, man! If your past gets blown away, I'll give you mine :grouphug:

you guys just hang in there and well, shit, you've had your share of storms this year, i guess h-town could take one for the team. just as long as i get my multi-engine commercial rating out of the way before it gets here! just in case, be safe and for god's sake, protect that bottle of rum!!!

well hell.....Infrared of the carribean sea

Yeah, good luck.....looks like your in for some *shit*.

Yeah, good luck.....looks like your in for some *shit*.

Wrong! WRONG! Thats just wrong.

All the unknowns are making everyone uneasy, but we're starting to feel a little bit better, here. My friends in New Orleans, however, sent a one word e-mail along with a URL for the Wednesday 8am computer model for Ivan: "Uh-oh".

Yeah, that picture looks like the hands of God rippin' someone a new one!

....

105mph? Peh. Its a wee baby.

Don't the Pacific ones fizzle out long before they reach the California coast? The water there is ass-cold!

I don't remember ever hearing anything about wind damage from those west coast storms. They do get tons of rain from them occasionally, which causes massive mud slides. I guess in the surfing culture, house surfing down the mountain, would be the ultimate. :eek:

Life is good, Kit. You had a chance to inventory your possessions and revaluate your priorities. :thumbsup:

Life is good, Kit. You had a chance to inventory your possessions and revaluate your priorities.

No doubt -- this season had provided some good lessons.

Charley: Changes in strength and direction can happen at the last minute. So can pants-shitting.

Frances: Flashlights, batteries, gas, water, and food are all mandatory, direct hit or not. I also found out they can ban the sale of alcohol after a storm. With no power and nothing to do for days, what a nightmare that would have been! (Note: as of today, some people in Florida still didn't have power restored.)

Ivan: Besides figuring out what is important to pack and checking for insurance validity, I seriously hope Ivan has nothing to teach me. Really, I've learned my lesson. Do you hear me, weather gods? I don't need to learn anything else, like how a roof holds together in catagory five winds or how deep flood waters can get in a state that is essentially nothing more than a large sandbar. At least I found neat old photographs and newspapers in my searches, which was good, and I finally got to generate a proper keepsake box. A waterproof one. :D

We're all hoping that wherever Crazy Ivan and Rain of Terror hits that everyone fairs well, and that includes my friends in New Orleans who are, I think, well into Northern Alabama by now to stay with family to weather it out, although it certainly won't get them away from it. At last word, hurricane-force winds exptended out more than 110 miles from the center and tropical storm force winds extended out more than 200 miles. Atlanta residents were told yesterday to expect possible catagory one winds. This thing is just now edging past Cuba and around noon, today, we looked up to see "hurricane haze" at high altitudes -- the outflow from an approaching hurricane that starts out as rippled cirrus clouds that melt to a thick overcast layer. All the way in Tampa, we're supposed to get some good winds even if it hits West of the panhandle.

That is madness. :eek:

And while he was busy watching the Gulf of Mexico, look what popped up behind him:

That's 105 knots or about 120 MPH. Its the 10th major storm only in the eastern Pacific. There is a whole different name system for all the hurricanes (typhoons) that try to get at Billy in China. And yes, the western Pacific has also suffered a large number of typhoons this year.

And while he was busy watching the Gulf of Mexico, look what popped up behind him

I need to start up a betting pool for these things. My guess: TD11 is headed for the Carolinas with the high that is in place over FL right now -- the same high that might be saving us from Ivan. ("Might" because, well, anything can happen in the wonderful world of random weather and drunk, stumbling Russian hurricanes.)

Watch the sky for me
watch the night...

That's 105 knots or about 120 MPH.

I was reading the predicted location at 120 hours past last reported position.

Trust me, I'm getting real used to reading these maps. ;)

My favorite ones come from Wunderground because you get to see the original computer models they base the predictions on.