This is a note I sent to work so that those who have only seen a little can grasp the magnitude of what just happened. It doesn't reflect the effects of Charley or the potential from Ivan.
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Subject: Hurricane Frances
For Marion County, where I live, Hurricane Frances came across Florida very slowly, allowing it to rip sections hard for much longer periods of time than most hurricanes. Here in Marion County, the eye was to the south of us and turned northward to the west of us, so we were on the upswing side of the storm the whole time. The upswing is the strongest section of winds. Typically on a west-moving hurricane, this is the winds from 3 o'clock counterclockwise to 11 o'clock when viewed from above.
To give you an idea of the magnitude of a hurricane, the area impacted in Florida alone with damage is equivalent to all the land between California Hwy 1 and I-5 from San Jose Airport down to Santa Maria and that isn't completely accurate. Damage stretched from West Palm Beach on the south (and actually further with some damage) to Daytona Beach on the north, nearly 200 miles away. It swept across in a northwest arc of decreasing cross-section to where it was only about 100 miles wide when it hit the Gulf of Mexico.
Up until a few hours before landfall, the target was still a stretch of coastline that was over 100 miles long, so everyone along nearly 300 miles of coast were potential victims.
This was the largest mandatory evacuation in Florida history.
There have been curfews from basically dusk to dawn over most areas. They have said you will spend the night in jail and you would be charged, no exceptions. Of course, the courts didn't open yesterday so anyone who ended up there probably could not get out on bail anyway.
There are over 9000 power employees in the state from other states helping out.
FEMA has set up a headquarters here in Ocala at the K-Mart Distribution center with help from the National Guard units from Texas and Alabama. Many of our NG units were down in the coast areas where Frances made landfall. President Bush is supposed to be here today and Gov. Bush is also supposed to be here,
Saturday evening we began getting hit with feeder bands of severe thunderstorms and started getting the hurricane itself early Sunday morning, with most of it over by evening. We had wind gusts between 35 and 74 mph throughout Saturday night and Sunday. We continued with outer bands through Monday and was hit with the last of the feeder bands on Tuesday. Tonight is supposed to be the last of what was part of Frances.
Over 6 million in the state were without power. Unknown how many without phones. This also meant most utilities were out, such as water and sewers. There were restrictions on water and sewers for those who had them because the pumping stations and the sewage lift stations were not working. Some areas had raw sewage overflowing because there was no power to pump it to the treatment plants. Many in Marion County began losing power Saturday and there are around 77,000 who still do not have it back in Marion alone as of Tuesday night. Roughly 160,000 are without power in Volusia County (Daytona Beach).
Hurricane Frances spawned 74 known tornadoes, however there are many sections we have seen where the small tornados that rip at treetop level for a few blocks and disappear have been and have no idea if these were reported or not. Probably not.
We are still getting hit by some feeder bands as Frances moves through Georgia. Yesterday we had a larger tornado in SW Ocala and moving northwest across town until it reached Anthony, about 10 miles away. It was reported on the ground in the SW section but I haven't heard about the rest of the track.
We got telephone service back sometime around 11 Tuesday morning. Power came back Tuesday evening. 27 power crew trucks from Tennessee were in the SE quadrant of Ocala alone (our area) Tuesday trying to restore power. 43 power crew trucks arrived here Tuesday from SW Power Coop in Houston. Georgia Power & Light already was here.
For us, we had some tree damage, lost a large section of fence, and the barn lost a section of roof. The water level in Jessica's pool has risen over 12 inches. It would have been higher but we have used pool water to flush toilets for the last couple of days. On our block, there are several trees down, with several blocking the road. Most of the food in the refrigerator and deep freeze is in the trash. Jessica's tree house split in two from the two trees it is in now being several inches further apart. The yard is covered in branches, enough to cover a 100 x 100 ft. lot about 4 foot deep.
I have phones but no DSL. Sprint is reporting the CO was damaged and 14000 are without DSL from it. They have no estimated time to repair on the CO due to the load of work trying to restore phone service throughout the county. If someone has some pull with Sprint ...
And another one, Hurricane Ivan, is moving along at a Category 4 strength with potential to go anywhere.
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Subject: Hurricane Frances
For Marion County, where I live, Hurricane Frances came across Florida very slowly, allowing it to rip sections hard for much longer periods of time than most hurricanes. Here in Marion County, the eye was to the south of us and turned northward to the west of us, so we were on the upswing side of the storm the whole time. The upswing is the strongest section of winds. Typically on a west-moving hurricane, this is the winds from 3 o'clock counterclockwise to 11 o'clock when viewed from above.
To give you an idea of the magnitude of a hurricane, the area impacted in Florida alone with damage is equivalent to all the land between California Hwy 1 and I-5 from San Jose Airport down to Santa Maria and that isn't completely accurate. Damage stretched from West Palm Beach on the south (and actually further with some damage) to Daytona Beach on the north, nearly 200 miles away. It swept across in a northwest arc of decreasing cross-section to where it was only about 100 miles wide when it hit the Gulf of Mexico.
Up until a few hours before landfall, the target was still a stretch of coastline that was over 100 miles long, so everyone along nearly 300 miles of coast were potential victims.
This was the largest mandatory evacuation in Florida history.
There have been curfews from basically dusk to dawn over most areas. They have said you will spend the night in jail and you would be charged, no exceptions. Of course, the courts didn't open yesterday so anyone who ended up there probably could not get out on bail anyway.
There are over 9000 power employees in the state from other states helping out.
FEMA has set up a headquarters here in Ocala at the K-Mart Distribution center with help from the National Guard units from Texas and Alabama. Many of our NG units were down in the coast areas where Frances made landfall. President Bush is supposed to be here today and Gov. Bush is also supposed to be here,
Saturday evening we began getting hit with feeder bands of severe thunderstorms and started getting the hurricane itself early Sunday morning, with most of it over by evening. We had wind gusts between 35 and 74 mph throughout Saturday night and Sunday. We continued with outer bands through Monday and was hit with the last of the feeder bands on Tuesday. Tonight is supposed to be the last of what was part of Frances.
Over 6 million in the state were without power. Unknown how many without phones. This also meant most utilities were out, such as water and sewers. There were restrictions on water and sewers for those who had them because the pumping stations and the sewage lift stations were not working. Some areas had raw sewage overflowing because there was no power to pump it to the treatment plants. Many in Marion County began losing power Saturday and there are around 77,000 who still do not have it back in Marion alone as of Tuesday night. Roughly 160,000 are without power in Volusia County (Daytona Beach).
Hurricane Frances spawned 74 known tornadoes, however there are many sections we have seen where the small tornados that rip at treetop level for a few blocks and disappear have been and have no idea if these were reported or not. Probably not.
We are still getting hit by some feeder bands as Frances moves through Georgia. Yesterday we had a larger tornado in SW Ocala and moving northwest across town until it reached Anthony, about 10 miles away. It was reported on the ground in the SW section but I haven't heard about the rest of the track.
We got telephone service back sometime around 11 Tuesday morning. Power came back Tuesday evening. 27 power crew trucks from Tennessee were in the SE quadrant of Ocala alone (our area) Tuesday trying to restore power. 43 power crew trucks arrived here Tuesday from SW Power Coop in Houston. Georgia Power & Light already was here.
For us, we had some tree damage, lost a large section of fence, and the barn lost a section of roof. The water level in Jessica's pool has risen over 12 inches. It would have been higher but we have used pool water to flush toilets for the last couple of days. On our block, there are several trees down, with several blocking the road. Most of the food in the refrigerator and deep freeze is in the trash. Jessica's tree house split in two from the two trees it is in now being several inches further apart. The yard is covered in branches, enough to cover a 100 x 100 ft. lot about 4 foot deep.
I have phones but no DSL. Sprint is reporting the CO was damaged and 14000 are without DSL from it. They have no estimated time to repair on the CO due to the load of work trying to restore phone service throughout the county. If someone has some pull with Sprint ...
And another one, Hurricane Ivan, is moving along at a Category 4 strength with potential to go anywhere.
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