Expected Giant; Received Midget

The hurricane news today is generally good. If you live where I do. In Fort Myers, it’s a colossal disaster. It’s hitting the Fort Myers area right now. It will not be great for Tampa or Orlando, either. Assuming the predictions aren’t hype.

The NHC thought the storm would weaken before hitting the coast and come in at Category 2 or so, but the official measurement looks more like Category 4 or 5, so the pessimists are winning that battle. At least it’s not hitting Tampa, a large city, directly.

For me, the good news is that they are predicting maximum sustained winds of 29 mph where I live, and the winds will be from directions that are not favorable to a lot of property damage. If the predictions pan out, I probably won’t even lose my electricity. That would mean I could continue bathing. With hot water. Not pool water.

The storm is nearly as close to Tampa as it will ever get to me, give or take, and the winds in Tampa are not terrible: 44 mph. When the storm makes its closest approach to me, it will be a lot weaker, so the winds SHOULD be lower. But as the storm’s history shows, hurricanes like to change directions.

One source says 44 mph. Another says 9 with 14 mph gusts. How can that be?

It’s hard to tell what’s really happening. Cape Coral is about as close to the eye of Ian as Florida gets, and they are reporting 31 mph winds with gusts to 43. Can that be right? I would have expected something like 140 based on the maps. Cape Coral is well within the NHC’s hurricane-force band, meaning Cape Coral is inside the hurricane, so the sustained winds should be no lower than 75 mph.

I haven’t been able to find the Weather Channel’s usual hysterical, dishonest coverage. I have been trying to find videos of raincoated reporters pretending to have a hard time standing up in light winds, or reporters standing on their knees in 6 inches of water to make it look deeper, but I haven’t seen them yet. Maybe you have to have cable to get that kind of helpful informational edutainment.

It should be possible to get good, solid information instantly using the web, but it’s not.

I just checked the Weather Channel’s site, and they have privately-hosted videos. One features a guy named Mike Seidel, broadcasting live from Fort Myers. Supposedly the eye wall is coming ashore, and the storm has maximum winds of 155 mph. The little meter in the corner of the screen says 31 mph with gusts to 58. What?

When I saw his name, it rang a bell, so I Googled “‘mike seidel’ fake news.” Yes, I remembered him for a reason. He got caught lying during another hurricane, pretending to struggle to stand. I’ll embed a video.

He didn’t lie verbally. He lied with his body. As my friend Mike points out, he leaned the wrong way. He leaned to leeward. That’s not how it works.

Today Seidel, who still, incredibly, has a job, is standing and walking normally. I guess he learned something.

Here’s another classic:

I can’t stand it:

The Anderson Cooper video reminds me of Baghdad Bob. Remember him? “There are no enemy tanks in Baghdad, and our victorious army of Islamic holy warriors [boom] @*$^@(*@^$#!!! ALLAH SAVE ME!!!”

I have been praying for God to keep the storm from harming Christians and their property, and I am still okay with it leveling Walt Disney World.

Things are looking very good for me and most of the state, but now I have a giant stockpile of junk food to deal with, and I may no longer have an excuse to eat it. This morning I ate a big bowl of Sugar Smacks (now called Honey Smacks, which is no better) with milk and cream, and then I followed it up with Cape Cod potato chips and onion dip. And three Pepperidge Farm cookies. Lunch will be more like actual food. I’m planning to have a delicious half-pound cheeseburger.

I am seriously wondering if local charities take pretzels and chips.

Ordinarily, I would have had a normal breakfast, but you know how it is when you’ve been fasting.

There is really nothing to do here except wait for NHC updates and think about food. And, of course, pray.

The storm still poses a hazard for me. It will probably cause a mosquito explosion. The water it leaves behind may be here for a couple of weeks.

Time to make sure all my portable power banks are charged, just in case. I need to have cell power so I can talk to my wife.

More: 2:23 P.M.

Things still look pretty good here. The projected path of the storm has moved slightly to the north, but it’s still favorable for my county.

Here is the weird thing: the Internet says the wind speed here, right now, is 26 mph. When I look outside, I see a pleasant breeze. The trees are moving a little. Doesn’t look like 26 mph to me. I would guess it’s between 10 and 15.

Hope it continues this way. The forecast says we are looking at another 7 mph, tops.

Sitrep: 6:15 P.M.

I always tell people you can often predict hurricane behavior better than the pros if you look at the rawest data you can get. This has turned out to be true with Ian. Of course, prayer is the main reason every good thing has happened.

At around 3:25, I found a radar loop and checked it out. It showed that the eye of the storm was moving more to the east than the official reports were saying. I thought that was good news, because it was likely to move the whole cone of future misery eastward later.

Lo and behold, the cone has obliged me. The 5 p.m. cone indicated that the storm was projected to veer eastward from the previous cone. This increases the length of time it will have before it makes its closest approach to the compound, and it also makes that approach farther off. Time will weaken the storm, and distance is obviously helpful, as people in Wyoming and Australia could tell you right now.

The storm has moved so far eastward, it’s actually slightly to the east of me. The center is about 120 miles south of me, which is close by hurricane standards, the maximum sustained winds are at around 130 mph, and virtually nothing is happening here. The center is forecast to get within maybe 60 miles of me, but that will be after the storm passes over a lot of real estate very slowly, so it should be much weaker. NOAA says it will be at about 65 mph at that time, so people 60 miles away shouldn’t get much wind.

Tampa is way closer than I will ever be (twice as close as I am now), and it’s getting the best Ian has to offer. Its current wind figure is 32 mph. I talked to a potential tenant today, and he said his relatives in Tampa were saying not a lot was happening. Tampa was supposed to get a good beating.

Of course, if a storm can move east, it can move west, too, but the experts and models say that won’t happen. They have a consensus, and as we all know, when it comes to science, a consensus is always right.

What a burden off my mind.

The wife and I will keep praying for others. I hope you will, too. No prayers for Disney World, though. It ought to be obliterated. I don’t want to see homes or businesses that don’t promote evil harmed, but if Ian wiped Disney World and Universal out without harming anyone around them, I would be content.

Ten O’Clock Update: Ian Now Weak Category 2

Hurricane Ian continues to puzzle me. The Weather Channel says the wind here is moving at 38 mph, but when I go outside, I don’t see it. The trees are bouncing around a little, but it’s not unpleasant.

Tampa is in a much worse location, but the Weather Channel says its winds will top out shortly at a mere 52 mph. After that, Tampa is expected to wind down. For Tampa, Ian is at its peak right now.

I am still trying to understand what’s happening. I had to dig to find information on Irma, which made a mess here. I relearned a few things.

Irma was Category 3 when it landed in Florida. It came ashore on Marco Island. This is nearly the same place where Ian landed today. Marco supposedly had 155 mph winds when it landed, and Irma’s winds were clocked at 120, so much lower.

Irma was huge, though. People are calling Ian big storm, but Irma was about twice as wide, so being 100 miles from the center of Irma, at a given maximum sustained wind speed, would be like being 50 miles from the center of Ian. In other words, Ian has to be twice as close to give you the same wind speed. That means Ian is much less dangerous to me than a storm like Irma.

Irma moved about 1.5 times as fast as Ian, however, so it spent less time wherever it went. A fast-moving storm does less damage in any one area. So Ian’s strong winds will hit less of Florida, but they will spend more time in every location than they would were Ian traveling at Irma’s speed. On the other hand, the smaller diameter of Ian reduces the destructive impact of its lower speed. It’s not a simple picture. The destructive power of storms depends on a number of variables.

Irma traveled a long way before it dropped to tropical storm speed. When it knocked my trees over, it was close to where it crossed the threshold. And the center was close to me. Probably 30 miles away.

Ian is now dropping 5-10 mph of wind speed per hour, and it will be maybe 10 hours before it gets close to its nearest approach to the compound. I don’t know if it will keep dropping speed as fast as it is now, but it will probably be a tropical storm in 10 hours. Weather Underground thinks it will be Category 1 in less than 4.

Category 1 runs from 75 to 95 mph, and Ian is now at 100, so it should cross the line quickly.

So, weak storm. Twice as far away as Irma. Half as wide as Irma, so it will be as though it were 4 times as far away.

Irma also rained like crazy, and Ian may not match it. Rain helps trees fall over because it loosens the roots. They are predicting 4″-6″, but my feeling, based on observation, is that it will be less.

Irma didn’t do all that much damage here. The house was untouched. So was the workshop. I lost trees in the woods, but no one cares about those. I wasted a lot of time cutting them, but I should have let them rot on their own.

I believe I had two trees that landed on fences between me and the neighbors, and only one tree was large. I had one large tree land on my own fence between my house and pasture. I had another big tree land on a fence between my parcels. I would not want to go through Irma again, and Irma caused me a lot of work, but it was no Andrew.

I think very little will happen here. A much worse storm than Ian wasn’t all that bad.

Hope I don’t seem self-obsessed because I am not writing much about the problems in Southwest Florida and Cuba. I am well aware that many other people are suffering very badly. I can’t do anything to help them except pray, and I have done that, so I am studying the storm for my own benefit.