Basserdan, Do you Think Kissimmee /orlando is a safer place to be than St Petersburg???? Got to make decision in the morn quickly Your thoughts? xausted from all of this! Why US the west coast of florida AGAIN?? lol ===============================================================
Hi Beachlov, It's much too early to even hazard a guess as to what area may be safer than one's present location.
But I do think if Ivan were to hit our shoreline within 50 miles of St. Pete as a Cat 4 or 5, the expected 20' storm surge alone would be more than sufficient reason to get far away from the coast.
Then there are the killer 150 mile winds....
Even tho it can be terribly difficult to leave one's 'things' behind, the only 'real' assurance of personal safety right now would be in getting out of Florida.
Fwiw, I'm starting to see some indications that Ivan could lose some of it's Westerly influences and track North a bit sooner which theoretically could put it on the East Coast instead of in the gulf.
All kidding aside. There is no building that can withstand a category 5 hurricane unscathed.
All trees and shrubs will be flattend. All woden buildings and mobile homes will be shredded. 90% of concrete buildings will lose their roofs and have major structual damage.
There are entire neighborhoods that were flattened by Andrew.
I mean flattened. Rescuers took weeks moving debris just to get into some of the neighborhods. In some places GPS had to be used to find one's way around as all of the street signs were gone. There were no familiar landmarks such as stands of trees and buildings left to go by.
If you run, run at least 300 miles @ 90 degrees to the projected track and run early.
Chelsea, you really can't make a decision right now with Ivan on where to hide in Florida. Do a search on my posts with the word "hurricane" and you will understand why.
And the best way to understand even CAT 3 upper winds is to just consider that level of hurricane as a big tornado, cause that is how the winds feel, but they last for hours in a hurricane, not for a few seconds.
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