Posted on 10/09/2018 4:49:06 PM PDT by NautiNurse
Major Hurricane Michael is churning toward the northeastern Gulf of Mexico coast. Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency Monday for 35 counties with mandatory coastal evacuations in the FL Panhandle. 1,250 National Guard troops are aiding the process and more than 4,000 more placed on standby.
FEMA is already on the ground in Florida; other federal agencies are also preparing to assist people in the storm's path.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Monday declared a state of emergency for the entire state. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal issued a state of emergency for 92 counties ahead of Hurricane Michael landfall.
Meanwhile, Tallahassee city government (Andrew Gillum, Mayor & D'Rat FL Gubernatorial candidate) offices are "closed until further notice." Tallahassee International Airport is suspending commercial flight activity as 12:01 a.m. ET on Wednesday but expects to resume activity on Thursday.
The U.S. military moved its aircraft from the Panhandle on Monday. Roughly 50 F-22 stealth fighter jets — valued around $150 million each — have been relocated from the Tyndall Air Force Base, while the U.S. Navy said it is moving all its training aircraft from Pensacola.
Energy Production The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) on Tuesday estimated that around 726 MMcf/d (28.4%) of natural gas production and 670,831 b/d (39.5%) of oil production in the GOM had been shut in ahead of the storm.
As of midday Tuesday, 75 platforms and three rigs had been evacuated, while eight dynamically positioned rigs had been moved out of the storm’s path as a precaution, according to BSEE.
Gulf of Mexico Satellite Channels
Public Advisories
NHC Discussions
NHC Local Weather Statements/Radar Key West FL
NHC Local Weather Statements/Radar New Orleans, LA
NHC Local Weather Statements/Radar Mobile AL/Pensacola FL
NHC Local Weather Statements/Radar Panama City, FL
NHC Local Weather Statements/Radar Tallahassee, FL
NHC Local Weather Statements/Radar Tampa Bay, FL
“Anyone who is a FRper who lives in Navarre,FL,and this includes both people and animals,my older sister,nil,and cats used to live. My PRAYERS go with you. God Bless.”
Thanks! Just walked on the beach and found part of an octopus - he’s minus his arms, poor thing. It’s windy and a bit rainy. Son is out surfing.
Fortunately (?) for St George Island, the major impact of the eye wall was to its west. Mexico Beach unfortunately was ground zero and is probably decimated.
Was watching the feed from Apalachicola which is across the sound from St George. They had sustained winds in the 80mph area and a big surge, 9 feet perhaps. SGI is really nice especially the state park on the east end. Probably sustained structural damage to homes would be my guess but the island should be OK. I was afraid this storm would hit it like Charley hit Captiva in 04. It did not happen.
It’s definitely going to be a rainy night in Georgia.
WOW. Incredible this was caught on camera. Thanks goodness it fell away from the house!
Wow, I sure wouldn’t want to have been where they were taking that video! That is the worst devastation I have seen for this storm so far. If you take miles of that shown,with densely built homes, it would begin to approach what was seen when Andrew blew apart Homestead.
I would hold off on the “not so bad” stuff until we can see what actually happened. The usual strong-weak side dynamics of the eyewall were virtually cancelled out by rotational effects of smaller scale vortices, meaning that Panama City has been exposed to 1-2 hours of at least cat-3 wind gusts. Surge there won’t be too big an issue though. Mexico Beach will have sustained major damage if not totally catastrophic, with a high storm surge. I was reading accounts on a weather forum of storm chasers being forced off the road by the surge, and breaking into an abandoned home (or perhaps let in by owner, don’t know for sure), but water up to truck roof level in surge, vehicle floating away. The worst damage is usually on the forward side of the eyewall rather than where the eye makes landfall, but in this case it may turn out to be difficult to say since the eye came in over almost unpopulated terrain between Panama City and Mexico Beach. From radar it looked to me as though more active squalls had developed on the weaker northwest side of the eye, so a further cancelling out effect there.
This will bring cat-2 gusts inland well into south Georgia and the TLH area, sustained cat-1 winds also, and will probably weaken to TS levels around the GA-SC border late tonight.
I’m hoping for the best for Panama City but there may be swaths of considerable wind damage there, as for towns closer to the surge maximum, likely to be a very bad outcome and I hope most evacuated or went to higher floors of substantial buildings, if not, major search and rescue challenges as soon as conditions allow.
(won’t be as bad as Andrew because that one developed a super-tornadic wind streak on the northern eyewall headed west, more similar perhaps to Katrina’s rampage through Slidell LA and Pass Christian MS.)
Looks like it’s right over Wewahitchka, my future retirement location. Luckily, I have just the land right now.
**BREAKING** HURRICANE MICHAEL makes landfall - ZELLO EMERGENCY COMMS “LIVE”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMs5qGhG3ps
We don’t either but my GD lives in Panama City, I don’t know if they boarded up or anything.
She left Monday afternoon and it was easy to get out. Her housemates left Tuesday morning and it was bumper to bumper crawl.
GD made it to New Mexico in 45 hours.
In defuniak springs walton county. About 75 plus miles from the eye. All power out here. Gusts 50 to 60. Not good but could be a whole lot worse. Cant imagine what its like near the eye. Castatrophic likely there.
I saw a note elsewhere that 280 people did not evacuate Mexico Beach.
URL: https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap?lat=30.15999985&lon=-85.65000153&cm_ven=localwx_wumap
Meanwhile ahead of the center of the storm, Quincy Florida (slightly SE of Tallahassee) is reporting:
77 Degrees
Winds at 28 mph
Pressure 29.34 inches
Humidity: 97%
Precip: Raining
SMH.
James Spann live on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/abc3340/videos/175411960044341/
Maybe you could instead check the Twitter link in post 577 showing a destroyed house in Mexico Beach and tell us again how much of a nothingburger this storm is and how things are going to be back to normal in no time whatsoever.
BTW, 280 people in that town followed your rationale and did not evacuate. Hope that makes you proud.
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