Ooooh.  keep your head down!

quote:

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Originally posted by: JonnyStead
"Thats a motto for life for all women..........."

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Beware the Frances!!!.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Susan
"  Stead!"

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Indeed!

Good luck And!!

Stead man:

Yeah man, keep your head down! (hope it doesnt cause too much damage, me and a few mates a doing a road trip in that area next year)

However - hurricane party....

Yeah.  He seems to be doing all kinds of weird things, don't you King?

Here- this page has a live (ish) sattelite pic.

Uhoh, again!

MIAMI -- Floridians might have a third major hurricane to worry about: Hurricane Ivan formed Sunday in the central Atlantic with a long-term forecast that could bring it to the state by early next week.

With top sustained winds of about 115 mph, Ivan became the fourth major hurricane of the season on Sunday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

The Category 3 storm was about 2,400 miles east-southeast of Miami, too far away to tell with any certainty whether it would hit the continental United States. It was expected to keep strengthening, with hundreds of miles of warm water before the nearest land.

But particularly after the back-to-back Hurricanes Charley and Frances, Floridians should monitor any hurricane on a general path toward the state, forecasters said.

"Hopefully they won't let their guard down too much over the next week," said Eric Holweg, meteorologist at the hurricane center.

Even as Frances pummeled central Florida on Saturday with 95 mph winds and heavy rains, emergency officials were preparing for Ivan, said Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We're watching for it just as we're gearing up and watching for wildfires in California and floods through the Midwest," Brown said.

At 1 p.m. EDT, Ivan was about 995 miles east of the Windward Islands in the southern Caribbean. It was moving west near 21 mph. It was expected to turn gradually west-northwest over the day.

Ivan was expected to approach the Lesser Antilles by Tuesday and reach the Bahamas by Friday. The path was similar but south of Frances' track into Florida's east coast.

"You might want to be smart about whether you take down your shutters," Miami-Dade County manager George Burgess said Sunday at a briefing on the aftermath of Frances.

Both Ivan and Frances formed as tropical storms near Cape Verde off the African coast, an area known as a breeding ground for storms that become big hurricanes.

"They tend to be stronger systems, just because they have such a great environment to grow in as they cross the Atlantic," Holweg said.

Ivan was already causing some worry at the National Hurricane Center. When Max Mayfield, director of the hurricane center, first saw a satellite image of the strengthening storm, his reaction was, "Oh no."

Holweg said it wasn't unusual to have so many hurricanes at this time of year, which is nearing the peak of the hurricane season. What was unusual, he said, was for one state to be hit in such quick succession.

Center officials have predicted that there would be more tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic over the next several years.

Hurricane Charley hit Florida's southwest coast with 145 mph winds on Aug. 13 and crossed the state, killing 27 people and causing billions of dollars in damage. On Sunday, Hurricane Frances made landfall near Stuart with 105 mph winds.

More news from Florida.

TAMPA - About 2.9 million Floridians, including about 400,000in the Tampa Bay area, were without power Sunday evening after Hurricane Frances raked the state, knocking down power lines and leaving the peninsula's electric utilities and consumers to pick up after the second major storm in three weeks.

Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light reported the hurricane, which first made landfall in FPL's service area on Florida's Atlantic coast, affected 2.5 million of its customers, some 1.8 million of whom remained without electricity late Sunday.

Among utilities with a presence in the Tampa Bay area, Tampa Electric reported about 193,000 Bay area customers were without power about 10 p.m. Sunday. The majority, 158,000, were in Hillsborough County.

Progress Energy Florida, based in St. Petersburg, reported more than 495,000 customers - nearly a third of the utility's 1.53 million customer base - were without power. The outages were spread across 12 counties.

More than 86,800 Progress Energy customers in Pinellas County were in the dark Sunday evening, a number that was likely to grow as the storm pushed into the county, said Deborah Shipley, a company spokeswoman.

In Pasco County, about 51,500 customers of different energy companies were without power Sunday night. In Polk County, the number was 76,000.

Tampa Electric outages were widespread, spokesman Ross Bannister said. Some people will be without power for two to three days, and some for longer.

``This is going to be a big event, and it's going to take patience on the part of our customers before we get all the lights back on,'' Bannister said.

Tampa Electric had 2,500 workers on its own crews, and 3,000 from other utilities and contractors poised to begin work, Bannister said. The crews from out-of-state utilities and contractors were waiting out the storm in Valdosta, Ga.

Both TECO and Progress Energy will begin today by assessing the damage. The first priorities will be restoring power to police and fire stations, shelters, hospitals, schools and water treatment facilities.

The repair work will spread out from there, starting with large transmission lines and eventually making its way to individual houses.

Sometimes power can be restored by flipping a switch, Bannister said. Sometimes a line must be rebuilt.

Small pockets, such as one or two houses, could have the longest waits.

The nature of the storm, moreover, could complicate that task.

In some places, crews will not be able to get in to to fix equipment until water subsides, said Rick Janka, a spokesman for Progress Energy.

Some of the damage could come days after the storm has passed as trees in saturated ground continue to fall, taking down power lines.

A spokesman for the Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative, which serves parts of Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties, did not return telephone calls.

Telephone service in the Bay area fared better. As of late Sunday, telephone service outages were limited to about 8,100 of Verizon's 2.2 million customers in six Bay area counties, Verizon spokesman Bob Elek said.

Sprint reported that a generator malfunction caused a disruption in service for its Tampa area wireless customers. It could not estimate when repairs would be completed.

Still no word from And?!

Andromeda is safe and sound.  She's currently without power so obviously has no way to reach the board, but she misses all of you and now I'm about to leave my air conditioned/powered parent's house to keep her company.  She should have her power back by tonight/tomorrow though no telling if internet will be working at that time.  Give her a little more time and she'll be back terrorizing the board like before!

Darrin/undeadair

Thanks for the update, Darrin.  Glad you're both ok!  We're all thinking of ya!

(psst, katie - here's your chance to wipe him off the scoreboard!)

-- Edited by ddvmor at 23:54, 2004-09-08

Well we shall continue to envigilate until that time comes, And.  ( i don't think I could last 2 days without power, let alone another week   You don't realise just how dependent you are on oput mod-cons until you can't use 'em!)

-- Edited by ddvmor at 12:19, 2004-09-11