>
> Imagine if Tampa Bay had forcibly evacuated for both
> Charley and Ivan?
You mean Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne:
http://www.uncharted.org/frownland/pix/18.AL0304W.GIF http://www.uncharted.org/frownland/pix/19.AL0304W.GIF
http://www.uncharted.org/frownland/pix/47.AL0604W.GIF
http://www.uncharted.org/frownland/pix/39.AL0904W.GIF
http://www.uncharted.org/frownland/pix/64.AL1104W.GIF
See the first (H) above the orange circle on 18.AL0304W.GIF? That was NOAA's predicted position for Charley at 8:00 PM, nine hours after the map was issued. Charley spun up to 145 MPH, category four, within the next three hours. I knew people in "A" zones on the Pinellas barrier who told me they weren't going to evacuate. (White people, in fact!) It sounded like suicide; had Charley held the bearing on 18.AL0304W.GIF it would likely have busted out a new pass or two from the Intercoastal Waterway to the Gulf of Mexico right through those barrier islands.
My floor elevation is in the mid-50s and there's six feet of fall down my street, but about three minutes after nws.noaa.gov posted 18.AL0304W.GIF I was outside on a ladder with my electric drill and Tapcons, cursing the rain on my eyeglasses as I boarded up the windows that weren't boarded up already.
Charley swerved sharp right, smashed Punta Gorda instead of Tampa (19.AL0304W.GIF) and drove North up the middle of the state. A lot of the cautious people who fled the "A" and "B" zones in Pinellas and Tampa went to Orlando, with all its hotel capacity. Orlando got hit pretty hard and was without power for two or three days, while those who defied the evacuation order on Treasure Island strolled along the beach, the worst weather there being scattered, mild rain.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net
