Weather Alerts

[Rolodex]

Reporting in from the edge of cone of uncertainty. It seems to have wobbled a bit to the east, which is bad for Georgia, but better for us in Alabama.

It started raining here about 9am central and so far it's just a light rain, and no wind. It should get worse as the day goes on, with the worst early this evening (unless Helene wobbles again).

Y'all check in if you're in the path and let us know what's going on.

Not sure if it was an omen, but early this morning after I poured my first cup of coffee, I went to look out of a set of windows/french doors on the front of the house. On one window was a snail, scooching his/her way up the window. Meanwhile out on the driveway, there was a turtle "scurrying" along. A race of the slows.

[Foggy]

Dry as a bone in my neck of the woods, but not for much longer.

.

bone.jpg (222.71 KiB) Viewed 1177 times

[Slim Cognito]

Friends in the Cape Coral/Fort Myers area just told me it was still dry but the winds are picking up.

[neonzx]

Wind is steady around 30mph with gusts around 60mph.

Rain not heavy.

The School District of Lee county has announced they will reopen tomorrow on the regular schedule.

[Volkonski]

Helene has become Cat 4.

[Rolodex]

It seems to have slipped a bit more east again. It's barely been sprinkling here all afternoon. I expect rain and wind to pick up later this evening.

The Weather Channel app on my Roku has a thing called "Florida Landfall Cams." There are 4 wind)ows on the screen, live cams from Sarasota, Cedar Key and Mallacha and the 4th with Weather Chan people (it's the normal WC channel. They're interviewing DeSatan right now so I have it muted. Earlier today some moron was running up to one of the cams with his big ass trump flag. With waves splashing over him.

Hope everyone got out of the serious surge areas. I saw a post on my fb that Taylor Co (Perry, FL) told residents who stayed after a mandatory evac to write their name and SS on their arms with a marker. They had even provided buses to help folks leave (it's a high poverty area).

[Chilidog]

The latest image

IMG_2896.jpeg (399.41 KiB) Viewed 1105 times

[Chilidog]

IMG_2897.jpeg (241.13 KiB) Viewed 1102 times

[neonzx]

Hope everyone got out of the serious surge areas. I saw a post on my fb that Taylor Co (Perry, FL) told residents who stayed after a mandatory evac to write their name and SS on their arms with a marker. They had even provided buses to help folks leave (it's a high poverty area).

I recall earlier today that that the storm surge was unsurvivable. Or similar word. As much as 20ft of storm. Surge.

[Rolodex]

...and now there seems to be a disturbance below the Yucatan peninsula, where Helene was born.

[Shizzle Popped]

Hope everybody in the path stays safe and dry.

We're just up for a little collateral damage here in Indy but they're still forecasting 50 mph gusts and a couple of inches of rain. My wife was supposed to come back from my dad's outside of St. Louis tomorrow afternoon but has decided to wait until Saturday. She got caught in a storm earlier in the year and watched a couple of semis get blown off the road. She's understandably reluctant to drive into another storm.

[AndyinPA]

Smart lady!

[MN-Skeptic]

This may have been posted at some time, but I’ll share it here. A map of the U.S. showing the past 24 hours rainfall. I have a sister in the North Carolina area which is getting a lot of the rain.

https://maps.cocorahs.org/

[RVInit]

It's getting blustery outside now. windy and we've had a little rain so far. I am watching the trees blowing around.

[Volkonski]

Helene up to 140 mph.

[Rolodex]

The jog east has made everything pretty much bypass us. We even had our supper club meet and it was like a slightly rainy night; no standing water or flooded streets (the ones that usually flood in a downpour). Little to no wind, but that might pick up later.

Hope everyone here keeps their power!

[AndyinPA]

Good news for you!

[MN-Skeptic]

There's a pediatric emergency room doctor I've recently started following on Instagram. She lives in the Tampa area and knew that there was a strong possibility that her house would be affected by the storm surge. Her children are at her parents while she is at the hospital for the duration. They moved a lot of things out of the house earlier today and installed a camera inside and outside to monitor. Yeah... her house is flooding.

Her Instagram site -

Her Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/drbeachgem10

[RTH10260]

Hurricane Helene live tracker: Storm makes landfall as Category 4 in Florida, latest updates and projected path for Georgia

Yahoo News Staff
Updated Fri, September 27, 2024 at 5:42 AM GMT+2

Hurricane Helene made landfall Thursday night in Florida's Big Bend coast as a monster Category 4 storm, lashing the state with winds up to 140 mph and life-threatening storm surges.

More than 900,000 customers were already without power in Florida, as the exceptionally large storm brought damaging conditions hours ahead of its arrival. Flooding was reported up and down Florida's coast, from Fort Myers to Clearwater, with record surge levels reported across the Tampa area. Storm surges up to 20 feet had been predicted for the storm.

Officials have been sounding the alarm for days, urging residents to heed evacuation orders and not underestimate the storm. A state of emergency was declared in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

Helene will bring far-reaching effects beyond Florida, with the storm expected to carry heavy rains, strong winds, and the potential for flash flooding as far as the Appalachian Mountains.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/live/hurrica ... 22132.html

[keith]

Tyndall Air Force Base sent their F-35s to Nevada (Nellis).

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/tynda ... ut-of-way/

Some F-22s were damaged during Michael so they probably don't want to lose a bunch of 82.5 million dollar planes (which is still waayyyyy cheaper than an F-22).

And Las Vegas weather is in the low 100s for the next week and no rain in the forecast.

Should be lots of room at Davis-Monthan since they've retired the A10's

[Volkonski]

Live Updates

Helene batters Georgia after making landfall in Florida

https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/h ... index.html

[Volkonski]

Live Updates

Helene batters Georgia after making landfall in Florida

https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/h ... index.html

5th death from Helene reported after tree falls on home in Charlotte, North Carolina

More than 3.2 million customers across Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and southern Virginia were without power Friday morning, according to PowerOutage.us. This comes as rain and strong wind from Tropical Storm Helene continues to pound the Southeast.

Below is a breakdown of power outages by state as of 7 a.m. ET:

Florida: at least 1,205,659
Georgia: 936,957
South Carolina: 849,968
North Carolina: 264,354
Virginia: 13,794

About 25 people rescued from flooding and swift water emergencies in Atlanta, officials say

[johnpcapitalist]

Should be lots of room at Davis-Monthan since they've retired the A10's

There are still over 200 A-10s in service today (I checked the fleet database just now), but the retirements will pick up momentum over the next two years and they'll be gone by 2028.

Sadly, they're scrapping them. Fortunately, since they're not that rare, I'm sure a lot of planes will end up in smaller air museums and will have open cockpits for the kiddies to climb in and pretend they're shooting that awesome gun, which will probably be a good recruiting tool for the Air Force over the longer term.

There was a proposal a few years back to convert surplus Hogs to fire fighting tankers due to the manuverability and the carrying capacity for stores under wing -- they can haul 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of stores externally plus the weight of the gun assembly and ammunition, which is probably another 10,000 pounds.

That equates to about 3,000 to 4,000 American freedom gallons of water capacity (10-15 cubic meters, for you socialists), which makes them competitive with the purpose-built DHC-515 amphibian and its older relative, the CL-415. They have the limitation of being land-only, of course, but they can operate from short dirt strips and don't have to return to potentially faraway bases with long runways to reload. Also, their hourly operating cost is probably cheaper than C-130s that have been converted to firefighting use (2 engines instead of 4).

It's an awesome plane that has done a spectacular job, and it's universally beloved, but it can no longer defend against widespread MANPADs and other newer networked air defense systems. My current boss is a former A-10 pilot (among many other things) and he's personally sad to see them go but he has said that Congress wasted far too much money keeping the program alive for a decade longer than they should have to pander to A-10 fans, instead of redirecting the money to future development programs.

[Slim Cognito]

Almost exactly 2 years ago Southwest Florida was directly hit by Ian which devastated the tourist areas and hundreds of thousands of lives. Dennis's boss, Eugene, was one of them. His house was flooded and he lived in a fifth wheel trailer in his driveway until last spring when his house was finally repaired enough to move back in.

Here's a photo my stepson sent me of Eugene walking Through floodwaters to his newly flooded house, but this time Helene merely sideswiped the area.

IMG_4158.jpeg (39.12 KiB) Viewed 827 times

[Maybenaut]

My friend’s brother’s house got walloped by Ian (I’m not sure where exactly - near Tampa). He didn’t have flood insurance, but owned the house outright. He slowly fixed it up, and now has two feet of water.