Late Night with Hurricane Frances
Our position: 27.88 N, 82.28 W
Frances' position (as of 11 p.m. EDT): 27.1 N, 79.7 W
Tornado warning in effect for the county to our east
The western portion of the eyewall has come ashore on the east coast. We're starting to see video out of the West Palm Beach area and other east coast outposts, showing the sideways rain and palm trees whipping to and fro.
About 7 p.m., with a light drizzle falling outside our windows, we thought it might be a good idea to take the kids to the neighborhood Chick-Fil-A and let them burn off some energy in the indoor play area before putting them to bed. We flipped the radio to the local news mouthpiece, which has been doing wall-to-wall hurricane coverage since late last night. The guy on the radio was in full War of the Worlds mode, telling of death and destruction and death and stuff, headed right for us.
One side of my brain said, "Settle down, Beavis." The other side of my brain said, "Let's just go through the drive-through and go home."
The other side won. The activity level in eastern Hillsborough County looked only slightly less than normal for a Saturday evening, but with the rapidly greening sky and the occasional mild gust of wind, it just seemed a little eerie. We took our Chick-Fil-A home and put the kids to bed.
Now we're debating whether one of us should stay up overnight and listen for tornadoes. We have no tornado sirens in Florida; the sound of the freight train likely wouldn't wake us up before windows started breaking.
We're told the serious bad weather should begin sometime around 8 a.m. Sunday. It's raining pretty hard now, but the winds are relatively calm. We'll be sleeping with one ear open.
Frances' position (as of 11 p.m. EDT): 27.1 N, 79.7 W
Tornado warning in effect for the county to our east
The western portion of the eyewall has come ashore on the east coast. We're starting to see video out of the West Palm Beach area and other east coast outposts, showing the sideways rain and palm trees whipping to and fro.
About 7 p.m., with a light drizzle falling outside our windows, we thought it might be a good idea to take the kids to the neighborhood Chick-Fil-A and let them burn off some energy in the indoor play area before putting them to bed. We flipped the radio to the local news mouthpiece, which has been doing wall-to-wall hurricane coverage since late last night. The guy on the radio was in full War of the Worlds mode, telling of death and destruction and death and stuff, headed right for us.
One side of my brain said, "Settle down, Beavis." The other side of my brain said, "Let's just go through the drive-through and go home."
The other side won. The activity level in eastern Hillsborough County looked only slightly less than normal for a Saturday evening, but with the rapidly greening sky and the occasional mild gust of wind, it just seemed a little eerie. We took our Chick-Fil-A home and put the kids to bed.
Now we're debating whether one of us should stay up overnight and listen for tornadoes. We have no tornado sirens in Florida; the sound of the freight train likely wouldn't wake us up before windows started breaking.
We're told the serious bad weather should begin sometime around 8 a.m. Sunday. It's raining pretty hard now, but the winds are relatively calm. We'll be sleeping with one ear open.
posted by rj at 11:45 PM
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