Wednesday is now Landfallday

I can’t believe Florida is about to be hit by a storm named Milton. If we’re going to go down, give me a storm named Delilah or Jezebel, or name it after a hellcat I used to date. Or how about Hillary? As a friend of mine says, Milton sounds like a storm that has a pocket protector.

Things looked pretty good for my area yesterday, and they didn’t look off-the-scale disastrous for the rest of the state. Now my area is iffy, and everyone near the coast from Tarpon Springs south should just leave.

It was not that long ago that they were telling us Milton was likely to be Category Two upon landfall. Then it went to Category Five in about 10 minutes. That’s not normal. The projected path is also changing, moving closer to my part of the state. How could it get worse? Well, they could tell us Milton has gotten wider and that it’s bringing more rain than expected.

It is still a very small storm, thank God. If it goes right where they say it will, things should not go very badly here. Wish I could say the same for Tampa.

As of a couple of hours ago, they expected it to whack the Yucatan Peninsula. Bad for Mexico, but good for everyone else. Storms lose power as they approach land, and they lose it even faster when they get there. A brush with Mexico could make Milton much less of a threat later on.

If Google Maps can be relied on, the area of Mexico that will be hit doesn’t contain a lot of people, so that’s good.

So now that the storm is a little more likely to cause trouble here, what should I prepare?

I know. I’ll buy batteries and water, and then I’ll build a giant steel dome over my farm. There isn’t much I can do that hasn’t been done.

If you want to be ready for a hurricane, and you live near a coast, you can’t rely on batteries, water, and a $400 Chinese generator. You need special doors and windows, a metal roof, concrete walls, a yard free of anything that can blow over and cause problems, a huge whole-house generator that comes on automatically, and some firearms. If your house is close to sea level, you also need stilts. If you don’t have these things, you’re not ready. You’re just playing the odds.

I guess coastals learned some bad lessons back when houses cost $75,000. Back then, it seemed nutty to spend $50,000 on a roof. Putting your home on pillars also seemed expensive. Isn’t it different when your house is worth $800,000? The cost of houses has gone up much faster than the cost of improvements.

People are saying this will kill Florida real estate. Really? I can understand why it would harm the value of houses built to fall apart? in storms, but why would it be a problem for the rest of us? Seems to me that if storms highlight the value of good construction and wise home placement, houses that stand up to storms should become more valuable, not less.

This is still Florida. Warm. Relatively free. No income tax. Full of fun stuff for old people to do. Easy on arthritic joints. They can’t build another Florida. This is the only one we’ll ever have. They can’t install a new ocean or a new gulf in an imaginary place where there are no hurricanes.

I guess Arizona provides some competition. Who wants to live in a desert? I hate deserts.

My take is that Florida is a great place to live, for people who can afford to build properly. Surely such people exist. Are there enough of them to replace the houses that need to go? I don’t know.

If I were 70, I had a place on the water, and it got wiped out, I would be looking for a stronger house or a place farther inland. I wouldn’t even think of moving back to New Jersey so I could go back to scraping my windshield with my gnarled, aching digits every morning.

In a few minutes, NOAA will update the cone. I’m on pins and needles.

I really do not want to have trees fall on my fences or my electric gate. I don’t want to lose power and have to bathe in the pool again. Other than that, I can cope with Milton. Unless it spins off a tornado, I should not have major issues.

I don’t know what to say about the coastal people south of Tampa. This is a horror for them. I wish I could do something. We are praying. DeSantis should call for a day of prayer.

Oh, great. The new cone is here. It says 175 mph. Is this real? Hurricanes don’t get much faster than that. Wikipedia says the record is 190.

It’s a tiny bit lower as it crosses Florida.

The models show it pooping out fast when it hits the coast, and they don’t show major winds where I live. NOAA predicts tropical storm force winds here, but they are always wildly pessimistic. I don’t think they’ve been right since Irma.

The storm looks to be the same size as Andrew, which was confined to parts of Dade and Monroe Counties. They got some wind 30 miles north of Miami, but nothing like the winds where I was.

They think it will be Category Three when it hits, so 129 mph, tops. But will it spread out before it arrives? If it stays small, fantastic.

I think I would have to be within 60 miles of Milton’s center to have serious problems with power and downed trees. I don’t think that will happen, but who knows?

Guess I’m off to Walmart. Candles, chlorine, and my wife’s order: grapes. I can tell she is taking this seriously.