318 replies to this topic

[liftmech]

Back from Washington- tired, but a good time was had by all. Unfortunately I never did get up to Baker but I've got some pictures from an undisclosed area which may end up somewhere on the board.

[Bill]

Yeah John that was fun... and so many

[Bill]

Ok - My turn for a vacation. You wont see me until Wednesday or Thursday. Keep it clean I will see you all in about 4 days. Going to Lake Chelan.

[floridaskier]

Oh boy, we're screwed: http://www.weather.c...ndex_large.html

We're directly west of the word 'THU PM' on the map straight west along the eastern coast. Which tells me that Frances should be here by around Saturday Morning. They forecast the eye to pass right, exactly over us. Schools are closed starting tomorrow morning. We are being evacuated and need to be gone by tomorrow night or Friday morning. When we get back, there will be no power for who knows how long. Our house shouldn't be too bad, we've got plywood over the windows and the walls (like every house is required to be now here) are made of concrete blocks and steel over 10 inches thick. So we're packing up, bye guys for a little bit

[Kicking Horse]

Good Luck Tyler

Stay Safe.

[floridaskier]

Greetings from White Plains, NY, where we have gone to stay with my mom's family until PBI airport reopens. It's weird seeing places that you go through every day on the Weather Channel (Riviera Beach is the next town south, and West Palm Beach is south after that. Juno Beach is one town north) They interviewed two of mym friends on the weather channel at the beach before the storm. Who knows what we'll find when we get back. On the bright side, school was canceled for a week

[Kicking Horse]

But won't that extend the school year now???

[crazyskier91]

Earlier last year we missed a day of school but our science teacher wanted us to make "Observations" of the storm outside, he had us all write our numbers down so he could call us for our observations, I gave him the number for the pizza place down the street.

[CAski]

So it seems that New England schools have "snow days", Florida has "hurricane days", and San Diego has "fire days". Fascinating.

[floridaskier]

From the public library, which has power:

Nearly everyone's got their power back now, but we're not among the everybody. The first few poles starting down our steet were snapped in half and the wires are wrapped around houses and lying across the street. We need about 4 new poles. But the worst part of it is that not one single FPL (our power company, Florida Power & Light) truck has been seen trying to fix it. I guess we're on the very bottom of the list, since fixing those poles only restores power to about 200 houses. First are hospitals and law enforcement, then traffic lights, then easy fixes that put up lots of people, and then difficult fixes that only put up a few people. Which leaves people on our street and others in the 80% humidity and 90 degree summer hear sweating and eating out for every meal. The paint on my room is so moist that it's starting to bubble up, as is the carpet. I took some pictures of my house right after we got back that I'll post when the power's back on. Some people have been picketing outside the FPL headquarters which happen to be right near s, screaming 'Where the hell is FPL?!!!" over and over. Today I saw the first FPL truck since the storm. People are screaming in letters to the Palm Beach Post that FPL was waiting on Hurricane Ivan to repair power lines, and I'm with them. Nobody else saw any trucks either.

PS Don't mean to make it sound bad, but the smell of the decaying, unfiltered swimming pool, ice cold showers, and the hear would make anyone cranky.

[liftmech]

That sucks, but at least you and your family are okay. Hopefully Ivan won't be as bad, or will go somewhere else altogether.

[SkiBachelor]

Well I'm heading off to california tomorrow. I hope to stop at Mt. Shasta ski area on the way down there too. I will probably skip ashland though or try to hit it on the way back. Zack and I are planning on hooking up when I'm down there too. After being in the bay area for a few days, it's off to Lake Tahoe and I plan to visit some more ski areas when I'm there.

[Bill]

Hey get a picture of you and Zack together for the board. :)

[iceberg210]

Speaking of which if anybody ever comes down to Salt Lake conntact me I'd love to meet you guys and go skiign in the winter at least.

[floridaskier]

Power came back on today 14 trucks from one of the many power companies from all over the country that came to help out down here ( IRBY Electric from Louisiana and Mississippi came to fix all the snapped poles and lines on our street. Took them two days to do it. Came back on at 6:30. As promised, here are some pictures taken on the first day after we got back home

1. The 4 big trees in our front yard, taken from across the street on the Tuesday after the storm hit (saturday). Nearly all of the leaves were blown off, and we spent 3 hours cleaning up all the branches (with a chainsaw to chop them up). Trash pickup only came by yesterday to clean it all up. They look pretty dead now.

2. The pile of crap under which our old basketball hoop is lyinbg under (you can just barely see it)

3. The pool. Not so bad, right? A bunch of leaves, a few palm fronds, but nothing major. Give it two days without a filter and decaying leaf matter and whatever else was in there (incuding a dead frog that we didn't find until after the camera battery ran out)

4. The public golf course pond behind our house. Amazing what 13 1/2 inches of rain in two days will do to you. There used to be a little beach there. And the bushes next to it, there used to be a little shed around some utility pump. No longer.

5. The hot tub off the pool on the first day (it hasn't been hot since the heater broke a few years ago

6. Anyone up for a swim?
This is how the pool looked for most of the time without power. The leaves decayed and you couldn't even see the top step of the ladder, much less the bottom. This is three days after the first pictures were taken. The worst part was how bad the decaying leaves smelled. Taken through a screen so it didn't come out the way I hoped

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•  Frances_2__basketball_hoop_underneath_pile.jpg (66.6K)
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•  Frances_3__pool_1st_day.jpg (55.16K)
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•  Frances_4__lake_1st_day.jpg (86.88K)
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•  Frances_5__hot_tub_first_day.jpg (63.71K)
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•  Frances_6__pool_3rd_day.jpg (48.56K)
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[Kicking Horse]

@ least u r safe and sound :)

[floridaskier]

Well...maybe not:

Hurricane Jeanne has made a complete 360 degree turn and is now heading straight for the exact same spot where the eye of Frances hit. This really sucks for us once again. We haven't had a season like this in my lifetime...Palm Beach county has not been hit for 30 years before this, and now two in the same year. Anyway, we're staying for this one. I really feel sorry for everyone in the Bahamas...Jeanne smashed the Bahamas once, then made a 360 out on the Atlantic, and is heading back over it again.
However, there are some things about this that are better than Frances:
Everything that can break in a Category 3 storm has been broken, and not much else is left to get blown around. All the old power poles have been snapped and now replaced, and every tree that could have fallen on the lines has done so. We are all now conident after the first real test of everyone's houses' structural strength in a category 3

Ya know, canned tuna fish for 11 days isn't really all that bad

[liftmech]

What a season down there. The meteorologists are calling this the worst storm seadon in possibly recorded history. I think I'll stay in my perch, where the worst that can happen is I-70 will close and people will think we've been 'cut off from civilisation'. I don't mind being snowed in- that's what the pantry is stocked for, actually.