I've been through too damn many of them I forget their names. But I remember the storms. The worst part is always the power outages. The last two I had come through I was without power for 10 days in August and them 14 days in October. October is still pretty damn hot down here, but the August one was brutal. I've got a generator, but it's not big enough to run the A/C. No power means no A/C, no hot water, no cooking unless you got a grill, everything in the fridge goes bad and lots of folks have medical needs that require power, like my son's asthma nebulizer. If you can leave, leave. Period. I always send my family away now when one's gonna hit. I gotta stay because of where I work, but I'm used to eating cold food out of a can.
-gunny out.
I had the pleasure of having not one, not two, but three hurricanes pass within 20 miles of my house in the summer of 2004, over a six-week period.
Charley - on Friday, August 13. Came ashore around Punta Gorda as a Cat 4. By the time it made it up to my neck of the woods it was a weak Cat 2, with sustained winds near 100 MPH. Very small and fast moving - the wind really started to whoop around 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening, and by 9:00 PM or so it was all over. I had no power for a week, and the service was very unstable, with frequent outages, for weeks after.
Frances - Labor Day weekend, and I mean the whole friggin' weekend. That damn storm covered the entire state, and just crept through. It was a barely a hurricane when it reached me, but it dumped tons of rain. No power after that one for about 3 or 4 days, but after Charley most of the tree limbs that would have knocked down the lines had already been blown down.
Jeanne - a couple of weeks after Frances, Jeane made landfall around Melbourne. Sort of midway between Charley and Frances in intensity and duration. For all of these storms I rode them out with my grandmother at her house, concrete block construction. By then I was thoroughly sick and tired of loading up the camping gear and the pets and everything else and running for my life from the latest storm.
I have friends who lived in Kendall when Andrew came through in 1992 - they lost everything, their house was blown down to the foundation.
That October storm you were talking about must have been Wilma - that was a horrifying thing to watch. It holds the record for the lowest central pressure measured in a hurricane in the Atlantic Basin. For a while there it had
sustained winds of 200-250 MPH, with gusts over 300. Thank God it weakened a bunch before it made landfall, but it was still a very powerful storm.
To everyone in the path of Irene, my best wishes to you.