Here's a message from ShadowMom:

Charley missed us, and except for a few feeder bands, this one missed us, but they are threatening us with Ivan, which is already a Category 4. I live in deep south Dade County, and so far we have been lucky this year. But we still live with the memory and the vacant lots left by Andrew. In fact, when they draw the circle for where Andrew came ashore, that's exactly where I am--to the east of the infamous Country Walk (also known as Mickey Mouse land), and each of these storms takes a toll on us. We were in the northern eye wall of Andrew, where the "cavalry" didn't come nearly so fast as it does now. I hope your mom is okay in Tampa; I don't think it was so bad there, but one report I saw today said 1.5 million people were without power at one point today. I hope she's not one of them. Thanks for your concern. I actually got to the grocery store today, and there wasn't one loaf of bread in the store. And no more trucks until the storm passes. Down here in the humidity, bread will get mold on it in about 3 days. Let's hope this thing goes away soon. Watch out, Shmoo, it's on its way up to your house. And my Dad's in Tennessee, too; and my brother is in the panhandle of Florida, not far from Tallahassee. All of you up that way, be safe.

My mom is actually 35 miles north of Tampa so it was a tropical storm when it got there but she's at the northern eye wall. glad to hear you were missed Shadowmom. we'll all be watching Ivan. Maybe we can sue Ivan for copywright infringment since it's copied Charlie and Frances Cat 4 status. maybe with a couple high powered attorneys we'll scare it back out into the Atlantic.

ShadowMom,

I wish you the best with the hurricanes. Being a native of Florida I sort know what you are going through.

Never lived that far south and to be honest with you never wanted to. Its a long way to run from Dade to Duval trying to get away from something that could chase you the length of the state.

Anyway, hang in there. I pray your power and water remain on through out and your roof stays intact. It is when the small things disappear from your life that you really miss them.

The sun will shine once again, it always does. Just protect your loved ones till it comes.

Ok, sorry I was off topic before. Colorado is sending a relief package through the red cross. (or more correctly the red cross here is collecting stuff and sending it to the relief effort.) The company I work for is also collecting donations. Hope it helps.

just for the record I heard Frances dropped almost 20 inches of rain on some places. That's more rain than we've gotten here all year long.

We're all praying for you guys down there. Hopefully things can get back to normal soon but buckle down just in case, I hear Ivan is a category 4 already.

Oh, for your bread...

Buy two loaves and freeze them. Nuke 2 slices frozen for 1 minute in the microwave. Lasts a good bit longer that way.

you can read about the national call center they set up here to help with hurrican relief here

http://9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=d0c26af7-0abe-421a-01d9-fb3d28c0c766&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

Tom, this is great. This should be a regular feature on boycott when something horrendous is happening, whether it be terrorist or weather related.....a special talk and tribute post.

Living on the Canadian prairie has its ups and downs, blizzards in the winter, the odd tornado touchdown in the summer, but something like these Hurricanes that hit you guys is unreal...we just don't get the 100 + mile an hour winds

....so its good to hear first hand how folks manage to get through these things... Heck, I was absolutley astounded at the kind of rain that Nashville and San Antonio gets, tropical humidity WITH heat...couldn't keep a curl in my hair for nothing I'd die in Florida

Shadowmom, compmore, I tip my hat to you and your families....you must be a brave lot to handle all that stress! Lets pray Ivan away!!!!

I hope everyone is ok! Good luck and be safe!

Shadowmom, you and the rest in Florida keep your heads down, stay indoors and under cover. (Or leave and come north for a while!) Please be safe. Be careful because once Frances has passed ...Ivan is right behind.

Praying for ya guys!

Shadowmom and all the folks from florida who have been going through a very busy hurricane season, keep safe and be careful when the storm passes....sometimes that can a very dangerous time also.

Here's hoping Ivan takes a walk in the mid-atlantic.

ShadowMom and all folks in the path of the storm..love,blessings, and prayers for safety.

Take care ShadowMom! We love ya!

Also to compmore...praying for your Mom

My house inside ALREADY looks like I was hit by a hurricane...dunno how it would look different...except my roof would be gone...

All together now....

No Rain!
No Rain!
No Rain!

Thanks Tom. Great idea.

I live in tornado alley, and understand wind, but not like you guys have had.

I have lots of friends living in Florida, and are praying for y'all to come through this in fine shape.

Let's chant Ivan back out to sea.

Thanks to all of you--the people in the middle of the state will have the worst cleanup of all. But this one could have been a lot worse, had it not stalled and lost some of its speed over the Bahamas. People who live down here learn to deal with it, and the forecasters become local heroes, with good cause. It's always toughest after the storm, because things you take for granted are gone. If you have electricity and phones, you are extremely lucky. My worst memory of Andrew was the smell of garbage in 95 degree heat, and I still only eat tuna fish and peanut butter as a last resort. Supplies (like gas, ice, and clean drinking water) can be very hard to find. It took weeks for them to get the electricity back on here after Andrew, and they say they learned a lot from our experiences. I hope so. I know the state won't be back to normal for weeks, or even months, but it will be okay in the end. Down here, the problems are minimal, but since everything is trucked in or shipped in to the ports, we have to make do with what we have until the roads are open and the ships can get back into the port.
The scariest thing about Ivan is that if it does hit Florida, FEMA and all the emergency agencies are already going to be so low on supplies and manpower that whoever does get hit is going to have an even harder time recovering. On the good side, it looks like Ivan is getting a little raggedy, so everybody just cross your fingers and think happy thoughts, and hopefully it will turn north and die.
Again, thanks to you all--I really missed my news and chats on here the last few days. Oh, and rocknrollwoman--I think I prefer a hurricane to a tornado--we know for weeks ahead of time when a hurricane is coming, but tornadoes just scare the hell out of me!

The fear of hurricanes as opposed to others perferring earthquakes or tornados always amazed me.

As ShadowMom mentions, you usually have a couple of weeks to get ready for the blow. On the average you just go the the motions and the hurricane goes elsewhere. Once in a while it comes to visit.

That the ground could betray you and literally not be a stable walking surface just shakes my world.

Tornadoes I have dealt with though not the full scale monsters that Tornado Alley sees. Much like the hurricane, mostly it goes elsewhere. It is that one time it doesn't that means everything. With very little time to prepare for one, it is easy to get caught in unprotected places.

The blessing of a hurricane, if there is one, is that it is scattered over a large area, not concentrated into a small place. The tornado focuses all its energy into a releativitly small area rendering all within that small focus area the brunt of its damage.

Give me a hurricane anytime. I can look, know it is coming, and decide to ride it out or run like hell for other places. That is something I can't do with the other two disasters.

You got that right, wet1--give me Florida any day. The ground never shakes, and I can see things coming a long way off. The thing I love the most about this state is its skies--clouds, sunsets, and even the thunderstorms. But I've always had a fear of heights and falling, so the thought that the earth could move beneath my feet scares me. And like you said--you can walk faster than most hurricanes. Look how few people actually get killed--so far Frances has claimed 4 lives, and 2 of those were post-storm injuries not directly caused by the hurricane. It's a very big inconvenience, but not nearly as deadly as some other natural disasters.

wet1 I agree however keep in mind that Hurricanes bring tornadoes as well. so they get both. I grew up in Michigan so I went through dozens of tornados in my life and was never scared. I now live on the west coast in Oregon. Earthquakes and Tsunamis are a threat. I just live life and deal with the events as they come.

Being a Floridian myself, I've put the shutters up twice in the past few weeks, and now I'm keeping them up another few, just in case... but there's a root question, why is this heavy hurricane season happening?
Because air pollution releases hot, dense gases into the atmosphere... which trap both solar heat and heat from emissions close to the earth's surface... which causes global warming (which, amazingly, some people still 'don't believe in,' like it's a religion or something you can choose to disavow)... which, in any event, makes the oceans warmer in the summer... which leads to stronger and more frequent hurricanes... which leads to death and destruction, right here in my home state of Florida.

Let me rivet my previous post back to the original purpose of this website by adding that the same type of mentality drives the politicians to support the backward economics of the RIAA that drives those same politicians to support rollbacks in pollution standards in order to strengthen the economy. In the long run, both are doomed to fail, and hurt a lot of innocent people along their downward spiral.

Shadowmum I have left a message for you in the Oral Hatch section.

There is a cycle to hurricanes. It is one of the things used by David Grey to predict hurricane seasons. You may fault him for being 1-3 hurricanes off but he usually isn't that far off. Before him, you just as well go pull a number out of the hat as far as how many you would have a season. You had the likelyhood to be as accurate as anyone else.

When I was a youngun we had them come through the center of the state. Laying down monster trees, tearing up roofs, and flooding everything in site.

The hard packed clay road was not passable by anything short of a 4 wheel drive jeep and that was iffy. Horses didn't fair a lot better going through the sandy orange grove. That porous sand that always was dry 15 minutes after a rain was mud up the the horses knee or better depending on where he stepped.

When you back up another one on top of that you are going to see flooding. The water simply doesn't have time to get out of there before the next week and a half of rain gets there.

During those times the hurricanes aways seemed stronger than they have over the last decade or so, for the average. Maybe that is just me. But I remember looking out at the tree just outside and seeing cracks in the ground where the roots were trying to come up.

While you can argue damage estimates till the cows come home, it just means more people built up and moved into an area than were there before. When the "big blow" don't come for a few years, both new folks and those that live in the area tend to forget what the last one was like.

I am happy to see that people made it through another one. Having a hurricane party was one way to do it. Was sort of your way of shaking your fist at the sky and saying, " You are not going to run me off."

Charley got in my area to (Orange County)and did alot of damage to alot of people

I made this post last night on the Oral hatch thread and it should have been here:

[Some good news, shadowmom and for your mom, comp...It's still early but the latest track for Ivan is south and away from Florida. It may even come this way, across the Yucatan to Brownsville. I don't mind, we'll take our share of the burden of hurricane season if it means no more hurricanes this year for Florida.] Posted last night at 2 am central. I know I should have been in bed, not going over hurricane computer models.

Well, the bad news is that yet again, early predictions are just that...predictions...I'm sorry to say that the track for Ivan is again heading towards Florida.

I'm sure the good people in Florida are taking weather forecasts this early with a grain of salt. Best to prepare for the worst and then have a good laugh when it goes some where else.

The Canadian model [which is the best ] is still predicting Ivan to come towards Texas, so maybe we still can do our bit to draw fire away from Florida.

kimdownuder- Thanks, I got your message. Things are already almost back to normal here, except for all the shutters still up, in case Ivan doesn't stay south. Sometimes people just leave these shutters on for the rest of the year, like people who never take down their Christmas lights. I see the long lines in the middle of the state for gas, water, and ice and I know how they feel. You wouldn't believe how important a simple bag of ice can be in 95 degree heat and the humidity right now doesn't help. They will be okay up there, just extraordinarily uncomfortable for a few days. Thanks for the message, kim and everyone else.