@BWR1953 somehow I missed you were in that area all this time. I love hearing the experienced Floridians: "it's just a 3 and it's veering off a little north of us ..."
I'd be shaking in my boots.
Yep, it's been a stressful few days, but Ian changed direction late this morning and now looks like it'll hit over 100 miles south of us. That really lifted a weight off our shoulders.
Back in 2004, I got caught in hurricane Charley and that was a mess. I was living in the Tampa metroplex at the time and that storm was forecast to hit the pier in my neighborhood. So we evacuated to Kissimmee and Charley made the hard right turn and went straight for us! My daughter and I were in a big motel in Kissimmee. When Charley started changing direction towards us, I contacted the local sheriff to see if it was safe for us to head back to Tampa. His reply that it was safe, but that the Highway Patrol had closed the roads and we
couldn't get back! The storm went right over top of us; ripped the roof off the other side of the hotel and knocked down trees, power lines and other stuff all around. We rode it out and luckily we were able to go back home the next day. Back in Tampa it was just a cloudy day. Then followed Jean and Frances. Ugh. Bad year.
In 2017 when Irma came through, with my wife and the boy, we had plenty of warning. We did our preps, including taking down a suspect tree, then went to a local hotel and rode it out, going home the next day. We had one tree down but that was it. We never even lost power.
This storm, like every storm, is different.
