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Hurricane Milton Thread

taxi1

taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
It's as bad as they come, a Hurricane Andrew or Katrina level of impact to the West Florida coast, it appears. Path is sagging to the South, which is good for Tampa area but sucks for Sarasota. Coming on top of the relief effort for Western NC...bad timing all around.

TAF for KSRQ (Bradenton/Sarasota) is looking sporty.

1728478398357.png
 
Interesting site to peruse. An awful lot of land is well below the expected storm surge height.

Experience

experience.arcgis.com experience.arcgis.com

Red is 9' high potential water level at that location, blue is 3' high level.

1728480628141.png
 
Two things.

One- I just talked to my brother. They staged at the Orange County Convention Center, along with just about every other unit out there. It was a good choice, the units that pushed to Tampa lost their roof and had to spend assets self rescuing.

He's spent the night since about 0200 EDT doing technical rescues and recoveries after the tornados in Fort Pierce. Apparently it's really bad there, lots of EF2 and EF3 wedge and elephant trunk tornados. He went down there to do water rescue, but that's not what the damage is from. HQ is still Orlando.


Two- the Mi ANG is deploying our CE squadron for debris clearing and search and recovery operations. We have a lot of great guardspeople who operate heavy equipment for a living that are also trained in how to search and recover people before they take the bulldozer to a structure.
 
Looks like it is not a post-nuclear wasteland like Homestead, FL was after Andrew. Good news there.

The tornadoes were a surprise to the weather guessers in terms of number and strength, it appears.
 
taxi1 said:
Looks like it is not a post-nuclear wasteland like Homestead, FL was after Andrew. Good news there.

The tornadoes were a surprise to the weather guessers in terms of number and strength, it appears.
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I think the building codes implemented since Andrew have really paid dividends. Doesn’t defeat storm surge but anything built in the last 30 years is better. Andrew was so devastating because of the older houses, see also Key West and Ian. I know my 2015 built home in FL was pretty good both construction (hurricane clips, more nails/ft, etc) plus design elements like a hip roof and cloth shutters.

Genuinely happy it wasn’t a Cat 4/5 when it hit, but also very happy I left Florida for good. Can’t imagine living there now with insurance skyrocketing and hurricanes hitting more frequently and growing quicker over a warmer Gulf.
 
Not saying FL should go full Okinawa, but those dudes regularly survive major storms better...yeah, the architecture is ugly, and it might not be right on the beach. But they seem to get along alright.

Honestly, wouldn't want to be part of an insurance pool of housing on stilts in this area...or buy a used EV from that flooded area.
 
SynixMan said:
I think the building codes implemented since Andrew have really paid dividends.
Click to expand...

JTS11 said:
Not saying FL should go full Okinawa, but those dudes regularly survive major storms better...yeah, the architecture is ugly, and it might not be right on the beach. But they seem to get along alright.
Click to expand...

I didn't realize this until my parents built a house last year in S. FL, but the codes do differ depending on where in the state you are. N. FL doesn't enforce as quite a robust construction because, generally, it's a lower threat area (in large part due to the Gulf Stream). S. FL has a much more robust code thanks to lessons learned from Andrew.

My parents' house is built like a fortress with additional construction techniques that my house doesn't have (we both did new construction, so we could see how they were built). The particular builder they went through even stopped including storm glass as an option and just made it standard.

Amazingly, their exterior still looks good (if FL stucco is what you're used to). There's subtle things you can see on the facade that are part of the reinforcement, but overall it's a pretty house.
 
JTS11 said:
Not saying FL should go full Okinawa, but those dudes regularly survive major storms better...yeah, the architecture is ugly, and it might not be right on the beach. But they seem to get along alright.

Honestly, wouldn't want to be part of an insurance pool of housing on stilts in this area...or buy a used EV from that flooded area.
Click to expand...

Any flooded out vehicle is a bad idea.

Tesla batteries are vented, which makes them really bad in any type of a water scenario.

SKI took note, and completely sealed their batteries, but they need a liquid cooling/warming jacket to stabilize their temperatures. That presents a much reduced fire risk as water intrusion will take much longer in comparison. It also means more weight.

But the rest of the car would be trash.
 
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