yIKEs

Hanna update: School’s out tomorrow, we’re kicking off work early, we’re stocked up on liquor, and the outdoor furniture is safely inside.  We expect high winds and lots of rain (at high tide, of course), but barring a long power outage, everything should be okay.

Hurricane (d)Ike, on the other hand, is not looking good for someone – we just don’t know who that someone is.  It could be South Florida.  It could be us.  And, God forbid, it could be New York.  Brendan Loy has an interesting analysis over at Weather Nerd (if you don’t know Brendan, he’s the blogger who told folks that Katrina was gonna be bad way before it hit), and his Ike forecast includes the nightmare scenario of a Category 4 or 5 landfall in New York.  How do you evacuate 4 million people?  Early, and painfully. 

Go out to sea, Ike.  May you sleep with the fishes.

No Shit.

I’m starting to think the entire Myrtle Beach area is on tape delay.  Not only do news stories take days to hit our paper, but today at lunchtime, someone broke into a radio broadcast on the local country station to tell me that Jerry Reed had died.  I blogged about it yesterday.  Jesus.

I can’t wait to get my hurricane evacuation order from Governor Sanford.  “Get out, Myrtle, the eye of the storm is in your living room!”

Hanna Has My Number

There’s a hurricane coming my way, and it will be my first.  Horry County, South Carolina, where I live, is currently at OPCON 3.  Sounds ominous, and it is.  However, fellow East Tennessean Brendan Loy’s weather blog tells me that Hanna will most likely hit South Carolina as nothing stronger than a Category 1 hurricane.  As I was sheepishly standing in line at Target to buy water and batteries and a weather radio, the checkout lady explained to me that, while serious, a Category 1 hurricane is not too bad – a “good way to get your feet wet” for the uninitiated like me. 

All righty then.  Now if you will excuse me, I am going to finish photographing everything in my house and wrap up an email debate about whether to buy a generator.  I’m leaning “yes” because the thought of living in a house with 3 other adults, 3 kids, and 7 pets without power for anything more than 5 minutes makes $1250 sound like a bargain.

See y’all on the other side of Hanna!