Hurricane Irene Path - VIdeo and Graph of Hurricane Irene - The Daily Green

not looking forward to this...

I hope you miss the worst of it. Good luck

__________________

Black with white around his private area



Black Tortoiseshell




R.I.P Patch my well behaved boy dog
R.I.P. Abby and Rebel my beautifull litter sister cats

i think we will need all the luck on offer, & to borrow more, yet.

my apt is in an area flooded by a Cat-1; this is a Cat-2 which they thought may GROW to a Cat-3.
i am evacuating to a hotel in an area that should be OK - rated for Cat-3 flooding. i hope it does not
come to that.

my garden-shed, which in the 2009 Nor'easter had a foot of water inside it, was already 14-inches off the ground.
today the man who moved it for me will try to elevate it in place. All fingers crossed.
i fully expect to lose POWER & all my frig & freezer food, too. Nothing i can do about that.

will try to keep U posted from the hotel.
here's the storm-tracker link
Hurricane - wtvr

look to the BOTTOM RIGHT - just above the words 'i-MAP' is a little whirly symbol in bright white.
click on it for the latest recorded explanation of expected conditions.
DoG bless us all, off to pack,
- terry

PS - as of yesterday 2-PM, Irene was supposed to hit Va Beach dead-on, with the eye passing right over
the city. It does not get any more 'direct' than that.

Hope everyone stays safe over there xx

__________________

i called the fella who was supposed to lift my shed;
he's changed his mind overnight. i have to assume that everything in it, & anything that i leave behind,
will be a total loss. Nothing i can do. ah, well. the rain is not supposed to begin until 9-pm.
i have to check-in by 4-pm. Hopefully the buses will still be running.

i was SUPPOSED to have a fella coming to pick up items for an auction; he's not answering his phone.
our appt is for 3-pm; i hope he calls me back, ASAP, to adjust the time.

if not, i'll move what i moved DOWNstairs, back upstairs, if i can... Dam* it, anyway.
the best-laid plans of mice and men, gang aft agley.

__________________
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*wolves R wolves, dogs R dogs, + primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2007

i made it to my hotel - not without drama, of course. Google-maps said i could walk there,
from the 3rd bus... Wrong. i had to ride the 3rd bus to a mall where there was a line-up of many buses,
transfer to a 4th... and she dropped me off on the WRONG side of a 14-lane wide highway, which i crossed
by the grace of God without being killed - one man in a massive Chrysler didn't want to slow down
or change lanes to avoid killing me... ONLY TO FIND i was at the wrong hotel.

there are 3 Econo-Lodges on this one highway! i phoned the one i should have been at,
& they were picking a guest up at the airport; they picked me up on the way back. Whew.

supposedly the heavy rain will begin at 9-pm EDT; the high-winds will begin after 10-am tomorrow.

Norfolk decided to make Ocean View a mandatory evac area - but they made that decision AFTER 11-pm last night.

anyone who went to bed after the news - or who, like me, gets their 'news' on-line - would have missed it.

then while i was on the city bus, heading for my hotel [with 2 missed connections due to late buses
of 3 buses; 66% really sucks for a success rate], there was an intercom announcement from HRT:
"all bus service will STOP at midnite tonight."

anyone who, like me, owns no car & depends on the bus is now officially stranded after 12-am -
with an EIGHT AM Evacuation Order. How frickin stoopid can they get? Don't the bus authority
& the emergency services TALK to each other?!

the actual storm is supposed to arrive around noon; evacuating car-less families & residents would be
a simple process, if they began at 6-am & stopped at 11-am.

as it is, odds are very good that people will die because of this poor decision,
a one-two punch for folks who depend on public transit to get around.

there was already a tornado watch on until 11-am; now there's a tornado warning in addition,
meaning one or more funnels have been sighted; the watch included Va Beach & Chesapeake.
the warning is specific to parts of Chesapeake & VB.

during Isabel in 2003, at one point there were 26 tornados in the state of Virginia alone.

the wind began roaring in sustained gusts at 6-AM, lasting for 15-secs to a minute or more.
it's now a strong sustained wind of about 35-mph with stronger gusts.
the rain is steady & heavy.

8:40-am
Norfolk & Portsmouth were added to the tornado watch-list, but only till 9:30-am.

at 7-am, an estimated 20k people in NC were without electrical power.

by the time this storm leaves New England, that number could be in the millions. [EDIT: 'will be' in the millions.]

15-mins ago: Flooding, power outages among concerns as Irene moves up the coast | StarNewsOnline.com
QUOTE,
'In New Hanover County alone, more than half of Progress Energy customers - 61,000 -
were without power Saturday morning.'

that's just one county, & not a very populous one, at that.

at 9:10-am, an estimated 220,000 to 250,000 people were without electric power, mostly in NC.