If you're in Florida...
Lamb Chopped
Shipmate
in All Saints
... and have an iPhone capable of running ios 18, you can do stuff to your phone to make it capable of using satellite after the storm, even if cell networks are down. The Wall Street Journal is where I found the instructions, in an article which is apparently NOT paywalled: "When Cell Service Is Down, You can Send iPhone Texts via Satellite." Search for it if you're interested, I can't provide a link at the moment, I'm sorry. But wanted you to have this.
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Doublethink, Admin
2:14 am. Wind and rain sounds have died down a lot. Frogs are chirping. From seeing posts by various friends, I consider myself extremely lucky to have only lost power. Prayers and love going out to everybody who is going through this especially those going through much much worse. I think I’m going to try to get some sleep.
I'm also safe! I'll be staying with my kiddos for a while until my power (and hopefully internet and cell service) are back to normal.
With Ian two years ago, I lost about half of my huge laurel oak in the back. The limbs landed on my orchids. There were some big branches down this time, and a lot of sticks, but nothing like I had before. My orchids are a bit miffed at me, but other than having blooms blown off, they are in good shape.
Lots of trees down in my neighborhood, including a huge bough from my neighbor's oak that crashed into the street. There was some flooding, but not the five feet of water from Ian, which is a wonderful blessing!
Two weeks ago today we had Hurricane Helene and I lost a bunch of soffit. No extra soffit came down last night. I had wondered if the roof would float up from the winds, but it doesn't seem to have happened. Whew!!
Prayers for all affected
Also see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index
It was good getting out of the apartment in an air conditioned car, listening to the latest Holy Post podcast, regardless.
A grocery store called Publix did open up, and when I went in, the deli and fried chicken lines were insanely long, so I got some pre-cooked refrigerated stuff (only that which I could eat in one sitting, with no power for the fridge), and finally ate breakfast/lunch/brunch at 5:48 pm. Then I slept for a while, and now it’s 8:57 pm. I hate the heat. But I’m not sure it would be wise, even if I were to just drive around to be in air conditioning, to do so with so few functioning stoplights and probably street lights.
Eager for there to be a place to go with the laptop and do school stuff. Maybe Friday?
Hugs to everyone. I know so many people have it much worse than I do. Prayers welcome for me and definitely for them.
And yes, we found a Publix open in Asheville the day after Helene. Ten checkout lines open (including the deli line and the service desk line), all about two hours long. (Yes, we stood in line.) There was a separate line for people waiting for a gallon of water.
When my wife said something to someone working there about them having power, his answer was “We’re a Florida company. All of our stores have big generators.”
Yes, indeed.
I fear that with a continental climate the places in the US that are out of earthquake, volcano, forest fire and hurricane zones are likely to be drought prone (Arizona, New Mexico) or get caught by bad winters (New England, Mid-West, Plains States, Alaska).
The heating of the gulf is likely to continue to provide an increased energy source for tropical weather systems, so I suspect you're going to expect several feet of storm surge in Clearwater once or twice a year on an ongoing basis. And the thing about hurricanes is that they are large - when they happen, they affect a lot of people.
The midwest has "tornado alley", and tornadoes can be very destructive, but they're quite small. Severe winter weather in northern states isn't all that destructive (but can be a bit disruptive), but someone accustomed to Florida would probably be rather uncomfortable in a cold winter.
2:12 pm. A diner called Lenny’s is open till three pm. Heading there!
Blessings,
RR
Like all y'all!
I came home today! The power is on, and the internet and cell service are not too bad!
Yay!!!! ❤️❤️❤️
(Please pray for mine to return soon as well, of course.)
I’m afraid we have friends in western NC still waiting for the power to come back on, two weeks after Helene. And many there who do have power still don’t have water.