Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts

Friday, September 8, 2017

As Hurricane Irma heads towards South Florida, Some Thoughts from Somewhere Inside the Evacuation Zone in Hollywood, FL

Reporting from Somewhere Inside the Evacuation Zone in Hollywood, FL

I was busy all Thursday afternoon helping a friend prepare their home north of Fort Lauderdale for Hurricane Irma's approach to South Florida -the least I can do since that's where I will be heading sometime Friday evening for the duration- so was not able to see much of the coverage of Hurricane Irma on The Weather Channel that ran in the 
afternoon or evening.

But after Midnight I was able to catch up and snapped some screenshots of some things that were aired that I wanted to share, along with mentioning a couple of things that might prove helpful to some of you, especially people who are new to the area -or hurricanes.


Above, that big news on Thursday that shocked so many people and is causing more panic in Miami-Dade than most people -esp. in the news media- want to publicly acknowledge. 
People who thought they were in the clear are now in the evacuation zone because of a storm surge that could be ten feet.
Which is why 650,000 to 700,000 people are supposed to be leaving -or deal with the tragic and possibly fatal consequences of guessing wrong when they had plenty of time to do the right thing.


Mike Bettes of The Weather Channel on the beach in Hallandale Beach.
I nearly fell off the couch when I saw this.


​Publix is closing all South Florida stores at 9 pm today.
Surprisingly, the Presidente supermarket on US-1 north of Pembroke Road was FULL of precisely the sorts of groceries that were nowhere to be found in Publix and Winn-Dixie stores in some chic parts of Fort Lauderdale, as a friend and I discovered when foolishly thinking that peanut butter would be available. 
Nope!


Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy being interviewed at the Home Depot in Hollywood, a place that for days has been the go-to place for area residents to share crazy stories with TWC reporters about how crazy difficult it has been to buy things that most of us take for granted all the time.
Josh also mentioned in the interview above a figure of 5-8 feet for the possible storm surge.

I can only imagine what that would do to Hallandale Beach's already much-smaller beach width!
It's for that reason that I'm going to the HB Water Tower area for sunrise in a few hours to snap some photos of that area because sadly, I strongly suspect that after that storm surge comes in Sunday, that will be one of the last times the beach area south of Hallandale Beach Blvd. is even that large/wide for quite some time, given what's involved in expanding the beach now to counter natural erosion.


Just the other day while walking thru at Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino .... I got to thinking... I suspect we will finally see if this version of Pegasus that's the second largest statue in the U.S. can really fly...



...because 140 mph is definitely take off speed.

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For Hollywood folks, keep in mind...
#HollywoodFL re #HurricaneIrma: @cohgov Parking Garages Downtown will be open 4 residents to park free on first-come, first-served basis. 🚗

Coming back from FTL Thursday night around 7:30, I was near the garage on 18th Avenue north of Whiskey Tango Bar & Grill, and saw quite a lot of activity, so don't wait until the last moment. 

I also can't stress enough how important it is that you do everything you can to place photos and important documents in waterproof containers, like large gallon-size ziplocs, whether you are leaving or staying.
And, filling your bathtub with water so that you can use that water for your toilet to create the necessary pressure in your plumbing.

Monday afternoon may well reveal a very different world than what we have all previously known in the area, so be prepared, not sorry and full of regrets that you didn't listen to your own intuition.


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Monday, October 28, 2013

LIVE online TV coverage of #StormSt.Jude #StormenSimone hitting southwest Sweden, including Halland. Reports of hurricane strength in places. Öresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö remains closed to traffic as of 8 p.m. Video of one-woman gang Nike Jacobson remaining steadfast as the winds howled


Above, my screenshot of Expressen reporter/camera operator Nike Jacobson keeping her cool and remaining steadfast while being buffeted by the high winds of Stormen Simone, as the following video shows:




More screenshots of mine from this afternoon my time, evening in Sweden.




Expressen has amazing multi-media tools to watch/read:

SVT had its usual good and comprehensive coverage at
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/sverige/livebevakning-av-stormen-fran-kl-13 but has now gone to regular news, while the other two remain LIVE.
Not sure if they will pre-empt afterwards.

Posted 2:55 p.m. Eastern U.S. - Will be updating thru the day as events warrant.
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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Battening down and bracing for a battering! Met Office warnings re UK weather has Britons buzzing amid very bad memories of the Great Storm of 1987. As most powerful storm to hit Britain in 26 years approaches, much-wider area than first expected will be pounded by gales, downpours and powerful winds of 60-80 mph, with flooding and widespread power outages expected; @metoffice

Battening down and bracing for a battering! Met Office warnings re UK weather has Britons buzzing amid very bad memories of the Great Storm of 1987. As most powerful storm to hit Britain in 26 years approaches, much-wider area than first expected will be pounded by gales, downpours and powerful winds of 60-80 mph, with flooding and widespread power outages expected; @metoffice

 Even as your faithful blogger posts from his home in South Florida, two miles west of the Atlantic, way across the North Atlantic, a huge storm riding the jetstream from east of the United States, is preparing to batter southern England & Wales on Sunday night and Monday morning, bringing gales and downpours and causing widespread disruption, with powerful winds of 60-80 mph winds expected.
Winds are expected to be even higher in coastal areas, where risk of damage to property can and should be expected.

The storm, moving SW to NE, will then continue across The North Sea and arrive in Norway, Denmark and Sweden on Monday night, with heavy snowfall expected in parts of western Sweden currently experiencing autumnal temperatures.

I've been watching SkyNews the past two nights and have seen their video of much of the advance preparation for the storm that's expected to lash parts of Great Britain for hours, with ferry and shipping cancellations already taking place, trimming of some trees to reduce damage and possibility of becoming projectiles, and removal of anything movable on piers and in dockage areas, where some destruction seems highly likely.

 Two storm-related video pieces done by veteran Sky News correspondent David Bowden that aired Saturday night:  
http://news.sky.com/story/1160250/britain-braced-for-severe-80mph-storm
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/video/warning-major-storm-way-172515226.html

 Shortly after 8:30 p.m. Eastern Saturday, I heard a number mentioned during the newscast as an estimate by some group (?) that total clean-up costs could hit 1000 £1m, i.e. a Billion Pounds.

Again, there are still memories present among many over what can happen when there is a lack of proper preparation by those in charge and they are caught up short:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987

Last I heard, there's an expectation that very windy and rainy conditions will exist in the affected areas from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m.
That means cabin fever.
I'd have those candles, junk food and coolers of ice-filled drinks and pre-prepared sandwiches ready for when the lights go out -and stay out .

 Below, a screenshot I snapped of Aftonbladet's website mid-Saturday night about the approaching storm:


 HÖSTSTORM PÅ VÄG! (Autumn storm on its way!)
Early Sunday morning, SMHI, the Swedish equivalent of NOAA here in the U.S., issued Gale Warnings for ships in and around the Baltic Sea, and they have also issued a warning to my friend Andreas and everyone else living in Gotland that there is a very great risk of powerful dust storms there, though that will obviously be before all the heavy rain gets there and soaks them as well.








The most recent public dispatch from the Met Office is this one:

 Severe storm heading for the UK
26 October 2013 - The Met Office is warning of the risk of a significant storm bringing exceptionally strong winds to parts of England and Wales on Sunday night into Monday morning

 Currently forecasts suggest a low pressure system will rapidly deepen just to the south west of the UK on later on Sunday, before moving across the country to be out over the North Sea by the afternoon on Monday.
This is expected to bring gusts of 60 - 80 mph widely across the southern half of the UK, with gusts of more than 80 mph possible in places - especially on exposed coasts.
Any major storm which occurs in early autumn has the potential to cause widespread severe disruption through falling trees, structural damage, transport disruption or power cuts and possibly flooding.
Frank Saunders, Chief Forecaster at the Met Office, said: "We are confident that a severe storm will affect Britain on Sunday night and Monday. We are now looking at refining the details about which areas will see the strongest winds and the heaviest rain.
"This is a developing situation and we'd advise people to stay up to date with our forecasts and warnings over the weekend, and be prepared to change their plans if necessary. We'll continue to work closely with authorities and emergency services to ensure they are aware of the expected conditions."
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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 - Eighty-seven years ago today, what there was of Miami and South Florida was largely destroyed by a powerful Category 4 hurricane that devastated everything in sight, ending the Florida land boom in a heartbeat, plunging South Florida into an early economic Depression and retarding this area's growth and maturity forever in very profound and fundamental ways that have never been fully explored or understood, even now; The great "IF only" question - what if IT never hit?; And THAT is why they're called the University of Miami Hurricanes


moviemagg YouTube Channel video: The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 Uploaded August 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/3cEfsp3Mn1s
Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 - Eighty-seven years ago today, in 1926, what there was of Miami and South Florida was largely destroyed by a powerful Category 4 hurricane that devastated everything in sight, ending the Florida land boom in a heartbeat, plunging South Florida into an early economic Depression and retarding this area's growth and maturity forever in very profound and fundamental ways that have never been fully explored or understood, even now; The great "IF only" question - what if it never hit?; And THAT is why they're called the University of Miami Hurricanes 





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Miami_hurricane

 "as late as the morning of September 17, less than 24 hours before the category 4 storm's effects would begin in South Florida, no warnings had been issued."
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mfl/?n=miami_hurricane

 "At the height of the storm surge, the water from the Atlantic extended all the way across Miami Beach and Biscayne Bay into the City of Miami for several city blocks."
See map: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/mfl/events/1926hurricane/inundation.jpg

 Pictorial history of the Florida hurricane: forty-seven views and five pages of information, September 18, 1926
http://www.wolfsonian.org/explore/collections/pictorial-history-florida-hurricane-september-18-1926-pictorial-history-florida-

 Photo of Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 historical marker:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/mfl/events/1926hurricane/1926_marker_1.JPG
Don Boyd - Miami's new drydock near Biscayne Blvd. as a result of the Hurricane of 1926
http://www.pbase.com/donboyd/image/77164210/original

 More photos at:
http://www.pbase.com/search?q=1926+Hurricane&b=Search+Photos&c=sp
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Saturday, June 8, 2013

More Flooding & Operation Sandbag in Hallandale Beach: HB gets drenched-to-the-bone with 8 inches of rain by powerful trailing storms of T.S. Andrea, but the city and Mayor Joy Cooper still act like ostriches when it comes to simple tasks that would serve the largest number of residents in the most-efficient manner possible when they need help. Why? Because that's the way things get done here with her as mayor; Flood relief project is 2 years late; #Hallandale, #andrea, #susierusso, @FanSusieQ

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Local10 News, Miami, WPLG-TV
Floodwaters strand drivers in South Florida
Floodwaters left by Tropical Storm Andrea turn roads into rivers
Local10 reporter Baron James is on the ground and in the water as northeast Hallandale Beach is yet again the scene of standing floodwater after the remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea pass thru northeast Miami-Dade County and southeast Broward County on Friday afternoon and evening, after many days of rain and with the ground already saturated. 
Published On: June 7, 2013 11:06:31 PM EDT, Updated On: June 8 2013 12:11:20 AM EDT
http://www.local10.com/weather/andreas-floodwaters-strand-drivers-in-so-fla/-/1717142/20479428/-/geqkcx/-/index.html

High-tech in Hallandale Beach, 2013 -Orange safety cones! May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
More Flooding & Operation Sandbag in Hallandale Beach: HB gets drenched-to-the-bone with 8 inches of rain by powerful trailing storms of T.S. Andrea, but the city and Mayor Joy Cooper still act like ostriches when it comes to simple tasks that would serve the largest number of residents in the most-efficient manner possible when they need help. Why? Because that's the way things get done here with her as mayor; Flood relief project is 2 years late; #Hallandale, #andrea, #susierusso, @FanSusieQ







The Dept. of Public Works (DPW) location that the City of Hallandale Beach is telling residents to go to in order to pick up sand bags if they need them due to flooding, 630 N.W. 2nd Street, is adjacent to one of the great exercises in make-work that any South Florida government is currently engaged in, in this case, the so-called Historic School House Restoration that is taking years longer to do than it'd have taken to build from scratch.

Almost everyone who knows me reasonably well knows how much I revere history as well as my longtime concern for historical preservation, a fact buttressed by my stack of ten years worth of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Preservation magazine in banker's boxes in my garage, back when I lived in Arlington County, VA for 15 years, something I've mentioned here previously.
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/#.UbLhwefVCSo

But as for this particular building, well, it's the proverbial exception to the rule.
It's preposterous on its face and nobody I know here has any idea if there's even an actual meaningful deadline for the rehab of this school, or where it will be located for good when it's finished, to say nothing of who'd actually come visit it, given how the city has treated other publicly-owned properties over the years, to say nothing of the deplorable condition of the beach.
(Like the North Beach Building on State Road A1A that the taxpayers of this city own but are NOT allowed to use unless they pay for it, unlike city employees in the past few years who've used it as the site for holiday parties, though most of you reading this already know all this very well.)

In short, this out-of-the-way, nothing little building that is barely thought about is already a White Elephant before it's even finished.
Lack of attention to detail, lack of accountability, lack of...

May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

 Trust me when I tell you that it looks the same now as it did six months ago and nine months ago, and that I have the photos to prove it.
I also have friends who can confirm this who also share my anger at what this place represents, since it's a place I drive by at least once every ten days to see how much time is going by without anything tangible actually getting done.
Therefore it serves as the perfect example of how things really get done here.
They don't.

 That's the mediocre neighborhood where the city's sand bag operation calls home.
That too is an eye-opening experience to behold, and a case study in how simple things have been botched and remain half-assed in Hallandale Beach for so long, that some citizens choose apathy instead of normal civic engagement because it's easier than dealing with the mind-set at City Hall.

It's long been perfectly clear that the sandbag operation is now so unsatisfactory that it no longer meets many residents's basic expectations because it's neither well-organized nor well-managed, and so is actually bypassed by many residents who prefer to buy sand bags at retail shops because it's more predictable and organized.
Yet the city persists in acting like it's actually accomplishing something.

This operation has for years been one of the five most-widely told HB anecdotes by both myself and my friends in explaining to new residents, outsiders and the news media how much this city genuinely seems to be run more for the benefit of the city's employees rather than for the benefit of residents, since nothing else explains the level of absurdity that's apparent to the naked eye.

 If you were starting such a program from scratch in your own town, there are any number of things that you would want to ensure were done and in place before a storm in order to satisfy the residents of this city -your customers!
However fascinating and original that list in your head is, though, frankly, it doesn't matter, since those are NOT now the primary considerations of the City of Hallandale Beach, nor have they been in the nine years that I have lived here.

Here in Hallandale Beach, 
a.) The sand is dumped inside a fence and on the side of a two-lane road
b.) Both the immediate area and the sand itself are uncovered, not even by a tarp
c.) The sand is deposited in an unlit area
d.) They use large orange safety cones as funnels.
Really
May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.


May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.


For many years I've asked a number of common sense questions of the city about how this particular set-up could possibly be anything but a Keystone Kops routine-in-the-rain given all the above parameters.

 I've asked why people who live in low-lying areas that are always hit hard -mostly in northeastern HB- are, from what I hear, NOT able to get sandbags in the weeks before hurricane season starts, and even more importantly, why the city adamantly refuses to fix these self-evident problems, or at least relocate the sand prior to approaching storms or once it's clear that clouds bringing downpours are static, like what we had here a week before Christmas in 2009, Dec, 18th and 19th, that left much of NE HB under water.

 The city already has the necessary resources it needs to show some common sense and relocate the sand, the bags and the shovels to a better location that is well-lit, has some cover, and that makes it easier to distribute, no matter the weather.
Even a place that can do two of the three tasks is greatly preferable to continuing to have it in a location that has none of them. 

 Despite the city patting themselves on the back afterwards, the city was judged by the people I know in that area to have responded very slowly, and actually made things much worse in some cases by needlessly driving their city trucks thru streets like NE 8th and 10th Avenue where the wakes that were created went straight into residents homes.
People were irate!!!

 (Because it's HB, once the city finally erected some small warning signs on the north side of Hallandale Beach Blvd., near NE 10th and 12th Avenue, in one case, they actually left some of the signs up for more than four months, which confused drivers, esp. out-of-town visitors coming out of Gulfstream Park's northern entrance at HBB, many of whom go north on NE 10th up to Atlantic Shores Blvd. to avoid the heavy U.S.-1 traffic to the west.)

 The whole scene is embarrassing and completely counter-intuitive to helping the largest
number of residents as quickly as possible.
But the city won't budge despite how ridiculous it is and needs a more sane and logical operation.

 Just so you know, this is one of the many dozens of problems in the city -and constructive suggestions- I spoke to Assistant HB City Manager Jennifer Frastai about four-and-a-half-years ago that she never followed-up on, and never contacted me about which flowed from our infamous one-hour meeting at City Hall in the City Manager's conference room, mentioned most recently on the blog on April 29th:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/having-long-tradition-of-white-flight.html

If some of this sounds familiar it should, as I previously wrote about this problem on the blog in my post of  August 25, 2012 titled, 
As "Isaac" approaches South Florida, key differences re-emerge between how Hollywood and Hallandale Beach cope: Hollywood Residents, Business Owners Can Fill Their Own Free Sandbags; Hallandale Beach residents can once again get sand-bagged and dumb-founded

*By the way, I noticed Friday night that the street on the west side of HB City Hall that the HB Police Dept. regularly uses was completely impassable, even while U.S.-1 in front of HB City Hall was bumper-to-bumper from HBB south to Ives Dairy Road until about 9:30 p.m., making for a very unsafe scenario for ambulances trying to reach Aventura Hospital on U.S.-1 and N.E. 209th Street.

 I know because I live near HB City Hall and ended-up walking along U.S.-1 to the Aventura Target on N.E. 213th Street to get some things because the traffic was so bad.

** Oh, and as usual, as I found out around 8:30 p.m., ALL the street lights on S.E./S.W. 3rd Street near the FEC Railroad tracks were out, AGAIN -and all the ones from Bluesten park north to 3rd Street- meaning during a downpour there, you are literally taking your life into your hands at night!
Even if your car's defrost is on overdrive!

 HB comes up at 6:57 in this Channel 7 video:






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