Hurricane Frances

9-4-04 12:00 noon:

Well, so far everything is nice and clam here in the Tampa area. Yesterday was the first day in weeks that we did not get any rain. As of noon Saturday it is a nice, sunny hot day. Frances is moving so slow she is causing more anxiety than damage so far. Some people on the east coast evacuated their homes three days ago and the eye of the storm is still 80 miles off shore. It is moving at 4 to 5 miles per hour so the worst of it may not hit shore until tomorrow and it may be Tuesday before it is out of Florida. If that happens, some of the evacuated people my be in shelters for a week. The real danger of the slow movement of this massive storm is the amount of rain it will dump on the state. This storm is larger than the state of Texas and it could drop over 2 to 3 inches of rain an hour for over 24 hours straight. Do the math. That could be over 4 feet of rain in one day over most or all of the state. Flooding could be a major problem. But I have other things that take priority now. The Ohio State Buckeyes begin their season in a few minutes so I have to find a sports bar that is carrying the game.

9-4-04 6:00 PM:

The good news is that Ohio State won their game against UC. They made mistakes but there were a lot of good things that I saw from some of the young players. Zwick looked good except for his two interceptions and two fumble that the Buckeyes managed to hold on to. Local Tampa running back, Lydel Ross looked great. Pittman looks like he will make a good running back. He needs to learn to stay in bounds in the fourth quarter when the team has the lead to run the clock down. You know you are living in the tropics when the sports bars have half their TVs set on The Weather Channel.
OK this is the hurricane page, not a sports page, so here is the hurricane update: One feeder band came through the area about 2:00. There were some brief showers and cloudiness but then it got sunny again for about 3 hours. The second feeder band hit about 5:00. High winds, fast moving clouds and scattered showers.  The temperature dropped from 94 to 81 in less than 5 minutes. Now it is sunny again and the temp has risen a few degrees. Still waiting for the bad stuff to hit. It may be another 24 hours or more as slow as this thing is moving. I am beginning to think that Ivan could hit us before Frances gets here. Frances must be on "island time". Even though it is down to a category 2 hurricane, it is moving so slow, structures and trees will be subject to high winds for many hours instead a few minutes so it could cause more destruction.

9-5-04 2:00 AM:

Things calmed down after that band at 5:00 PM until about 1:00 AM. The rain has been constant for the last hour but not heavy. The wind picks up and drops off.  Nothing severe yet. The eye has finally come ashore since my last post. It is predicted to be here by morning but I think that the people in the hurricane center need to take a class in mathematics. At 10:00 PM they were saying that the eye had not yet come ashore on the east coast of Florida, it was moving at 4 mph, and it would be in Tampa by this morning. Now if you think of 11:00 AM as being near the end of morning, then it was over 12 hours away at that time. If the storm is moving at 4 mph, it would only move 48 miles by morning. Since it takes me over 3 hours to drive to the east coast, I am thinking that it is more than 48 miles away.  This storm is moving so slow that the eye may not be here for quite a while. I am hunkered down and waiting for this thing to come and go. If you do not see any more posts after this one, I have either lost power or I am dead. Call first before you come down to claim my possessions.

9-5-04 2:00 PM:

Feeder bands are still coming through periodically with some wind and rain but the center of the storm is still about 50 miles east of here. The storm has dropped to a Category 1 Hurricane and it is traveling a little faster than it was yesterday. The center of the storm should finally get to my area around midnight tonight. I have been outside a few times to clean up debris that has blown into my yard so that it won't act as a missile and do more damage. One of my neighbor's has damage to their fence, there are a lot of limbs down. I noticed a couple of shingles laying on my roof. I am hoping that they came off someone else's roof.

To see some video of what things are looking like here today, click on the Frances video at the bottom of the page.

9-6-04 12:01 Midnight

I lost TV cable and internet access about 4:00 PM. It came back on just before midnight. I never did lose electricity, phone or water (yet). I had several shingles blow off the east side of the house so when the eye came through at 7:00 I went up on the roof to make emergency repairs in an attempt to stop or minimize the water that was coming through the roof in that area. Hopefully it will hold until I can get repairs done. I haven't done any roofing for nearly 30 years but the experience came in handy today. It remained pretty calm until about 10:30 PM when the winds began to pick up and the rain increased. The wind, of course is now coming from the opposite direction since the eye has passed us. The eye should be off shore within a couple of hours but it is still causing tropical force winds in the Bahamas which first began getting hit by this storm on Tuesday so it has lasted for six days down there. It is so large that it is the only storm ever to effect every county in the state of Florida. The panhandle will continue to get hit by this storm for many days yet. Hopefully, Tampa will only have another day and a half of this storm so that I will have one day or two days of nice weather to ride the Harley before Ivan gets here. If you want to see what it looks like outside right now click on this button:

9-6-04 2:00 PM

Things have been a little less severe today. Bands of storms still coming off Frances. She went out into the gulf early this morning and came ashore south of Tallahassee this afternoon. It is still moving slowly and dumping rain and tropical storm force winds on this area. If you look at the Frances video page button at the bottom of the page, you can see what the weather vane looks like today. Winds are coming from the opposite direction now. The roof seem doesn't seem to be leaking today so I think my patch worked for now. I need to get the roof repaired soon.

9-6-04 5:00 PM

The rain and wind has let up again between storm bands. One of the Hibiscus trees in front of the house blew over yesterday so I went out and tried to get it up so it wasn't blocking the sidewalk. Click here to see me using the come-along to get it vertical again. Remember I was in a hurry to get it done before the next storm band came through the area.