An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

A few days over 13 weeks.

One of Lake City's forecasts said 90 mph gusts, and that's 20-25 miles north of me. I am only worried about 2 trees that are on the wind side of my house. With the direction the wind is coming from, I moved the truck and trailer to the Love's 15 minutes from me that has no trees to worry about crushing them. The wife and I are gonna take one of our pickups back up there and sleep there tonight. That way we won't have to worry about having a 3' diameter tree taking us out in our sleep. I will deal with whatever damage happens in the morning

 

That front is sucking a bunch of rain that way, I saw the radar and it looks like you're gonna get as much rain out of that front as you are out of what's coming with the hurricane.

 

They rolled up the sidewalks early in this area. The Winn-Dixie closed at noon so they could put up their hurricane window protection. The only thing I see open around here is the Hardee's here at the Love's, and we don't care for Hardee's. High Springs was a ghost town by mid-afternoon, most of the businesses had their window's covered with the standard hurricane protection product (the all mighty plywood). Should be an interesting night. Never tried the taco place. We do most of our dining in High Springs or Alachua.

 

It was just upped to a Cat 4 and it's still hours from making landfall

 

We survived. Woke up at my usual 0200, and the storm was past us. Decided to hop in the pickup and go back home and start my generator and hook up the fridge. Took me almost 2 hours to go 11 miles. There were trees down everywhere. Every cross road was blocked by trees. Had to go all the way into High Springs then US27 had power lines down. Got to my neighborhood and the 1st road leading to my road was blocked by a bunch of uprooted trees, got around that then my road was blocked by down power lines and fallen trees. Finally got to my driveway and I couldn't see my house from the road from all the limbs down...some look like the whole tops of trees, but no damage to any structures. Got the generator going, plugged in the fridge and tried to get out of my neighborhood a different way, and saw snapped off power poles and more downed power lines. We're gonna be in the dark ages for a good while. Once I got back to US-27, I took a different route out, which was blocked by downed trees and power lines. There was even a stuck county rescue truck who chose to ditch it rather than hitting power lines and a big arse tree. I offered to give him a pull to get back on the road, but he said there was an engine on the way to pull him out, but based on the number of ditch detours I had to take with my Silverado, there is no way a fire truck was getting thru to him. I even stopped and helped some troopers clear some of the road debris (the tree trimmer crews can't just dive in, they have to be assigned an area by the state, but the troopers said they don't ask, they just clear a path so nobody kills themselves hitting downed trees.