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If It’s Just Raining Like Cats ‘n’ Dogs, That’s a Win
Dorian is inbound. Bottled water is gone from the grocery stores. Gas lines are hours long, and every gas station I’ve seen today has a police patrol car stationed at it, probably to encourage civility. People are putting up shutters or boarding up their windows.
The problem with Dorian is that the cone covers a huge part of FL. Hey, man, don’t tell me you can predict “climate” 40 years out when you can’t even predict the path of a hurricane four days out.
We did our hurricane shop last night — which was the coolest hurricane shopping I’ve ever done. The lovely and talented Mrs. Mongo and I shacked up the list, pulled up the Publix app, and boom! Two hours later the driver showed up with our groceries. Who can do that in a socialist country? Well, maybe if you’re a Party bigwig.
To get out of harm’s way, we’d have to leave the state, so we’re going to ride this one out. Hopefully, we’ll be catching bands of winds and rain, but not suffer hurricane effects.
I wrung some fun posts out of Irma, but I have zero desire to work through that sort of devastation again. So Labor Day is going to be less a happy holiday, and more a hunker-down-and-pray kind of weekend. Too, we’re in our “cozy” house now (the lovely and talented Mrs. Mongo decreed that I have to say “cozy house,” not “tiny house”) so that’ll be fun.
The silver lining is that I’ve got a bit of a wee story I’ve been mind mapping for a couple of weeks without lifting a finger to actually, you know, write it. Maybe this’ll give me the time and motivation to post another story.
If I have internet. And electricity.
And a house.
Published in General
It’s where I’ll be.
As a friend of mine once said: “You can’t live in paradise all the time.”
The very best place to have a hurricane party is at a tiki bar in the Valley of the Sun.
Uhm? You know that cargo planes cost a whole lot more than trucks? And trucks cost a whole lot more than rail cars? And all of the above are limited resources that pretty much cannot be just whistled up on a dime? (Ask our illustrious Original Poster about the cost of lifting hundreds of tons of military from place to place on a moments notice.)
Now, if a supplier could actually charge an arm and a leg for the extra supplies, you might get some. You are whining about the side effects of laws against price gouging, combined with the simple logistical nightmare of moving hundreds of thousands of tons of consumer goods in a hurry. If you don’t like it, convince your representatives to repeal such ridiculous and counterproductive laws. Then you’d see two very, very good results:
So, you get more stuff to buy ahead of the storm, you get more stuff to buy after the storm, and the guys who got it to you get paid for their trouble.
Is it wrong for a man to love another man?
I’m in Orlando, and the way the current guesstimate is running, it’s going to be tropical storm force winds and a couple of feet of rain over the course of a day or so. That’s basically “extended thunderstorm” weather around here.
I’ve been doing my prep, though: eating all of the frozen food first, concentrating on the ice cream, while saving the “fridge food” for right after the power goes.
I just hope the Cool New Flashlight I ordered manages to get here from Amazon before they shut down deliveries. Couple of thousand lumens, six to eight hours run time, rechargeable.
Well done. Youse gots to have your priorities straight.
Heh. I was walking to the counter with a rechargeable headlamp when I thought about keeping it going for a week in the backcountry … Ok, put that one back.
I’ve got a combination flashlight/AM-FM radio with one of those handcranks for recharging in the trunk in the boogie-box, along with a few firestarters, a rain poncho, a couple of those space blankets, and assorted other doodads.
Sometimes, my back aches slightly from carrying my laptop in my backpack.
The struggle is real.
But that’s where the Michigan commies know you’ll be.
Oh, goody, goody. Looks like @bossmongo can start breathing a sigh of relief (somewhat) and, as usual, we here in the Carolinas have to finish getting ready. Wish our butt didn’t stick out so far.
So….cargo planes. After they land in a hurricane zone, laden with delicious dry goods and hurricane evacuation kits, are they to then fly off into a hurricane for another logistics run? What if they do land, then get grounded – in a hurricane?
One of the glories of the shiny new world we live in is just in time supply chain. So you don’t have acres of inventory sitting around, driving up costs, not moving off shelves, because they’re not on shelves.
What’s odd in all of this is assuming that normal course of business *should* upend due to a storm. In other cases, business owners have to defend themselves at the point of a gun. So they should stay open, supply supplies, and not stop people from stealing their inventory.
In a hurricane.
Confusing times.
Looks like Cirby is right. Turning north. Which means it’ll be a North Carolina storm deployment, maybe, for young Christo.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/090017.shtml?cone#contents
Not only that, but where I am, we’re surrounded on three sides by Canada.
Bodies?
Also hurricane season only lasts 6 months, it doesn’t sneak up on people and most huricane supplies except for gasoline are easily stored.
I’ll just leave this here…
Boss, that is exactly what I said to my wife yesterday when I saw those incredible lines at Costco and Home Depot. Bottled water doesn’t have an expiration date. If I lived in Florida during hurricane season, I would always have four or five cases on hand, always have some cash stashed, always have four, five-gallon gas containers filled and ready, always have my windows prepared for wood shutters to be installed easily. And who needs to live in Florida to have plenty of vodka, bourbon, and tequila on hand? I hate waiting in lines.
I normally buy a 32-pack of bottled water for car trips during the year, replacing it when empties every six weeks. On June 1st I buy an extra 32-pack. On July 1st a second. That means I have 64 20-once bottles on hand, minimum, for two people during hurricane season. Then, on Sept 30, I start drawing down from that supply.
(Note, since Janet died I also keep bottled water on hand for flu season. That way, if I get the flu I can put a dozen or so bottles by my bed and suck one down every four hours or so. It allows me to stay hydrated without getting out of bed, except to stagger to the bathroom attached to the bedroom.)
For the last couple of days, the hardcore lefties have been drooling over the idea that Trump’s Mar-A-Lago would get hit by a Cat 4 storm. Now, it’s out of the cone for a direct hit.
He did it again.
Now, watch Dorian keep tracking north, until it runs right over Bernie Sanders’ beachfront home.
Even though I’ve lived here 10 years, I went to the HD hurricane preparedness class. Also got some things I hadn’t had in the past, like a crank radio.
We gassed our cars and got gas for the generator on Thursday morning. The place I went to was full, with people in line, but I saw the one empty slot and snagged it. The rest of the way home, stations were full, half-full, and empty. My husband went to the Kangaroo near our house. He said, “It was about the way it normally is. There was a little excitement when two landscapers with trailers almost got into a fist-fight over a space. But that probably happens every day.”
Agree – the anti-price “gouging” laws are counter-productive.
It’d be a shame not to highlight this nugget of wisdom tucked so neatly inside a gem of a post that one might overlook it.
It’s really funny how the words “cargo plane” leapt off the page. :-) Okay. Forget I said that.
I’m saying that companies do move things around the country in response to storms or extreme weather or even the flu. They’ve been doing that since trucks and highways were invented. :-) Retailers like Walmart move seasonal goods around quite successfully. Walmart surprised everyone during the Katrina-Rita summer. The company had its trucks filled with needed supplies in the hurricane-struck areas way ahead of the government and private charity agencies. Walmart has its own weather forecasting center, in fact.
I’m just surprised at the empty shelves in Florida. It’s true that the consumers should have been better prepared, but I am surprised the retailers weren’t better prepared too. Their lack of foresight is a lost moneymaking opportunity. They are underestimating demand considerably, which is too bad for them and their stockholders.
Well, not long-term.
Hang tough Boss Man. Mrs. Boss too.
Me too, A-man! Hey, Hillsdale hurricane meetup? You ever make it over here?
I should add, this pic is at least a couple years old. Used to be, you kept right to stay on the FL Turnpike, and left to go into Miami, which is counterintuitive, given the geography. Now, they’ve changed the traffic pattern so that you go right to go into the3 heart of the 305 and left to stay on the Turnpike, headed for Orlando. Thus all the construction you see in the background.
There were no additional billboards, signage, or announcements when they put the new traffic pattern into effect. Hilarity and hijinks ensued.