Well, this storm is still south of Cuba and hitting Grand Cayman but people here in Florida have been on the run since last Thursday (9-9-04). That is when a mandatory evacuation of Key West began. I have friends here in the Tampa area that also began evacuation plans the middle of last week. Some are going to Georgia. Some are staying in Florida but moving inland away from the coast or to higher ground. There are still hundreds of thousands of people who still do not have power, water or in many cases even a house after the last three storms that have hit this state. People are emotionally drained from waiting and worrying and cleaning up and living without power, water or a roof over your head. So many people are taking this one very seriously. Schools will be closed Monday and Tuesday and the storm is not due to hit until Wednesday so I am assuming that if it does hit the area they will be closed that day, too and then there will probably be power outages that will cause schools to remain closed for the rest of the week.

This stormed was named over a week ago. We started watching it while we were waiting for Frances to hit. It is hard to worry about one storm when you see another one, even stronger coming right behind it. Right now it looks like the storm will not get a direct hit on the Tampa area but even if the eye passes us 100 miles out, we could still get hurricane force winds here. The eye did not hit Jamaica or Grand Cayman but it did lots of serious damage and killed people on both of those islands.

9-18-04

Ivan passed by Tampa with no problems here. The Panhandle of Florida was not so lucky. The storm ended up hitting Alabama just west of Florida. Pensacola was hit very hard by the east eye wall. Several tornadoes hit Panama City. Now the storm is causing flooding and deaths in West Virginia.

Not only are people in western Florida running to out of Ivan's path, the businesses are boarding up more than they have for other storms. I guess by now they are thinking that they might as well protect the business if we are going to get a storm every week or so.
You can click on the thumbnails below to see some stores  that have boarded up.