August 13, 2004
Blogging Charley
Wow. Everyone thought it was coming right up the mouth of Tampa Bay. I’m not looking forward to all the work taking down plywood and such, and I guess I have a lot of food to eat tonight and tomorrow, but I’m so glad we missed the brunt of this storm.
Actually, Tampa missed just about everything. A few stray tornadoes, some rain, but nothing big. Winds are out of the Northeast right now, which tells me just how far away the storm is. I had prepared for winds from the South and Southeast, shifting Southwest based on all the predictions. With the rotation of hurricanes, wind direction is determined by one’s relative position.
Anyway, I’m still expecting some more rain, some heavy storms, but nothing stronger than that which we face every day during the summer rain season.
Charlotte Harbor and points inland from there are really getting hammered right now. Huge winds are reported, and they’re gonna face the same storm surge problems that this area was so worried about.
Our local TV stations are wondering what to do right now, since they planned on being in full Bay Area disaster mode this evening and the storm seems to have not cooperated. Charlotte Harbor is just a little too far South to be considered local. I have a feeling they’ll be returning to regular programming any second now. Interestingly, most stations (all?) never stopped breaking for commercials, and they never apologized for it either. Don’t know if this would have changed as had the storm been devastating to this area.
Posted by Norwood at August 13, 2004 06:24 PMWe left Tampa and went to Orlando to escape Charley and instead, he came right at us! It was crazy! We had a fun hurricane party, though. I moblogged lots of pics to my site.
Posted by: Sarah at August 14, 2004 11:39 PM