Hurricane? FL?

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Now it looks like Mexico Beach (moderately inhabited) and Cape San Blas (sparsely inhabited) are going to get the worst of it, depending on which model you look at. The lower end of St Joseph Bay will probably be emptied out, it's not very deep.
 
Outer bands are here. We're still 225 miles from the eye!
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I’m still hours away from even the outer bands. It’s gloomy and drizzly right now but strangely calm. Honestly, I don’t expect much by the time it’s close to me since I’m on the northern edge. That being said, I’m smart enough to not go riding around in it.
 
Maverick said:
Wonder if Doc is feeling it now? Your further north east Brent than Doc?
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Yes, I’m in the top right corner of Ga. this thing should just slide right below me. He’s a lot likelier to have higher winds. Like I said earlier, I’m actually thankful for a couple inches of rain.
 
DrPrepper said:
FEMA director, Long, tells Trump that structures along the coast built prior to 2001 are not able to withstand 145 mph. Per a news report from the Guardian.
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The only good thing with this storm is it’s moving fast. At least buildings won’t have to handle those winds for long.
 
The good thing is the hurricane shifted slightly to the east just missing the most populated areas meaning panama beach and city didn't take the worst of it, it hit in the least populated areas.

The eye is still tightly wound, right on the Georgia southwest corner, could still hit Georgia as a cat-4, they saying Georgia going to experience hurricane force winds till early morning.
 
Maverick said:
Wonder if Doc is feeling it now? Your further north east Brent than Doc?
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Yup, I just commented to my wife a few minutes ago that the wind is whipping up outside. She's off today and tomorrow from work. Not raining very hard, but you can tell it's a hurricane by the way the wind is blowing.

We're getting sustained winds of over 30 mph right now, which should build up to about 40 tonight.

The heavy rains should start in a couple of hours and last until midnight.
 
DrPrepper said:
I know these storms are bad and destructive, but I can’t help but think they are good for th economy.
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I know some people who work as many of these storms as they can,,,they make a killing, 3 or 4 months they bust their ass and the rest of the year they do nothing


and you can count on one of these every year
 
Atlanta is getting hit with pretty good bands now. Mostly they seem worried about the potential of tornadoes. I don’t ever remember any other storm that moved thru so fast in all my years in Fla. like I said though, that’s good for most places for it to leave quickly.
 
grayghost668 said:
I know some people who work as many of these storms as they can,,,they make a killing, 3 or 4 months they bust their ass and the rest of the year they do nothing


and you can count on one of these every year
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It used to be a good boon for work, but the states have been getting really bad with the licensing crap. They say it’s to keep people from getting ripped off but I believe it’s mostly to make sure they get their cut. Fla got to where they only will only let contractors licensed in fla. work now. Anyone coming from out of state has to work for those contractors. They are getting towards one large contractor where everyone has to sub through them. It slows down the recovery some, but like I said, the state gets their cut now....
 
Brent S said:
It used to be a good boon for work, but the states have been getting really bad with the licensing crap. They say it’s to keep people from getting ripped off but I believe it’s mostly to make sure they get their cut. Fla got to where they only will only let contractors licensed in fla. work now. Anyone coming from out of state has to work for those contractors. They are getting towards one large contractor where everyone has to sub through them. It slows down the recovery some, but like I said, the state gets their cut now....
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the feds can't watch everyone,,,plenty of work for everyone,,,,,I did stump grinding when I followed the storms no contracts no real big jobs give a price and get paid when finished,,,most times I was gone in less than 30 minutes
 
I was about to go get out the inverters but my wife told me to finish supper first. She thinks it's going to come back on soon :rolleyes:

Since we cut the cord, we need Internet to watch anything. To get main Internet working (I'm posting from my phone) I'll need power three places. So it's either break out all the inverters or run a bunch of extention cords to the big inverter.

I need a fan first, I'm starting to sweat. :)
 
Fan - check. Don't need the window A/C, at least for tonight. That will save battery life considerably.

Internet - check. Back to watching Hinterland on Netflix. The router is running on daisy chained UPSs, not sure how long that will last.

I decided not to use the big inverter yet. Saving that for if we need A/C tomorrow.

When we go to bed all we'll need is fans which don't draw much. Haven't decided what to do with the refrigerators and freezers yet. Probably plug them in for a while before going to bed.
 
I didn’t loose power at least. It was raining pretty hard when I went to sleep but I sleep soundly so don’t know how bad it got. Looking forwards to daylight to check out the yard. Don’t think I got anything like docs area did though.
 
Just came outside to the deck. It’s a little drizzley and some light winds, but looks like the storm is pretty much past me now. I’m greatful but feel for the people in the panhandle.
 
I haven't been outside yet, but I pretty much know what to expect. The winds didn't get really violent until right before the end, and then it was over. I did hear a couple of thumps from branches hitting the roof.

Note to self: Don't try to run a home theater projector and 200 watt stereo on an inverter. Boy did that burn through the batteries in a hurry on the 2000 watt inverter.

About 11 pm I decided to break out the genny. Mainly because I wasn't sure how long the inverter would run 2 refrigerators and 2 freezers and I didn't want to run them all night on the inverter and risk shortening the life span of the batteries and/or having the freezers thaw out.

It's actually been years since I cranked up the genny, and I've never used it at home before. I was half expecting it to not work. It took a while to get it cranked (pull starter) but once it got going it was humming along. I hooked up the four batteries to charge and the two refrigerators and two freezers and went to bed.

It wasn't starting from a full tank (just a small BBQ tank) but it must have run most of the night because this morning the freezers were still frozen solid with no signs of thawing and the batteries were fully charged and right at 13.5 volts which is the float voltage. It's supposed to go 8 hours on a tank, so that's about right. I have 5 more tanks.

Here is my philosophy on the inverters and genny. Since the genny is most efficient at full load, and the inverters are most efficient at light loads, when running intermittent things like refrigerators and freezers, it it grossly inefficient to run just those on a generator. So the idea is to run on inverters until the batteries get low, then run on the genny while recharging he batteries with the genny. And while on generator power, I can run my home theater, etc. Then once the batteries are charged up, switch back over to using the inverter. The batteries were fully charged this morning. That was one thing I was afraid might be a chink in the armor - what if the batteries take too long to charge?

I figure I may be able to get by running the genny 16 hours and the inverters 8 hours in a 24 hour period at worst. I could possibly make it longer on inverter power and thus have to use the genny less often. So at worst, that's two small propane tanks per day, and I have six, so that gets me continuous power for three full days, probably more. Obviously running a couple of window A/Cs will change the math... And if I'm expecting a longer period without power, I'll need to ration electricity, and maybe use the cars to help recharge batteries.

In the bedroom I was running a fan off of a small inverter and an old fashioned marine battery. It was still going when I woke up, battery at over 12 volts still.

So all in all, the system worked well, I just didn't count on how fast the home theater system would drain the batteries on the 2k inverter. And it won't run on the big inverter (6k) because it's a modified sine wave while the 2k inverter is a pure sine wave. Of course I could just hook up the 2k inverter to the batteries on the 6k inverter. But really I'll need the genny for running the home theater for any length of time. Not much else in the house cares whether it's modified sine wave or pure sine wave, but electronics can be picky about power.
 
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