Well, that was interesting...
For those of you who didn't know, sometime around 1 a.m. last night, Hurricane Dennis was rated at Category 4. Pensacola was dead-center in the projected track and it just seemed to be getting stronger.
Sometime in the wee hours of this morning, it dropped to a Cat3 and that's what it hit land as. Not a minor storm, certainly, but no Andrew or Ivan either - which frankly, Pensacola wouldn't have been able to handle for a second year in a row. Not when there's still blue roofs over quite a few houses and a good chunk of the population are living in FEMA-issued trailer homes while they're waiting for their new homes to be built.
Well, Mom had called yesterday to tell me she was staying put. The house survived Ivan with only minimal damage, no reason to think that Dennis was going to do worse when she made that decision. So I was a bit twitchy when I got up this morning (well, okay, it was more like noon - gotta love late-nights on the chat followed by lazy Sunday mornings in bed with a purring kitty at my feet) wondering if it had made landfall and how bad it would be.
I get up, and HOORAY! Dennis was down to a Cat3! Still headed pretty much towards P'cola, but a bit east - and east is where you want a hurricane to go, if it's got to go somewhere. West side tends to get less damage.
Watched the Weather Channel off & on all afternoon, and from the pics I've been seeing from P'cola, the damage looks minimal. They were downtown, which is one of the worst places to be during a hurricane because it's right on the bay, and the damage wasn't anywhere close to as bad as Ivan. Buildings still had roofs, not a lot of downed trees, debris wasn't too bad.
A while ago, my sis C called - she said that Mom had called, her pastor had called Mom to see if there was anyone to stay with an elderly couple during the storm and Mom had volunteered. Apparently they made a party out of it when some of the other neighbors joined them. So she's fine, the family's fine, the house is presumably fine (Mom hasn't had a chance to go check, but barring a tree coming down on the house, it should be fine) and all's well. Yay! Daijoubu desu.
So now C is calling the rest of the family, I'm emailing my uncle (he's on dialup) and checking the rest of my mail before going out to celebrate. And when I come home, I'll pop the top on the sparkling cider that I bought for reasons I didn't know, but do now. :)
Sometime in the wee hours of this morning, it dropped to a Cat3 and that's what it hit land as. Not a minor storm, certainly, but no Andrew or Ivan either - which frankly, Pensacola wouldn't have been able to handle for a second year in a row. Not when there's still blue roofs over quite a few houses and a good chunk of the population are living in FEMA-issued trailer homes while they're waiting for their new homes to be built.
Well, Mom had called yesterday to tell me she was staying put. The house survived Ivan with only minimal damage, no reason to think that Dennis was going to do worse when she made that decision. So I was a bit twitchy when I got up this morning (well, okay, it was more like noon - gotta love late-nights on the chat followed by lazy Sunday mornings in bed with a purring kitty at my feet) wondering if it had made landfall and how bad it would be.
I get up, and HOORAY! Dennis was down to a Cat3! Still headed pretty much towards P'cola, but a bit east - and east is where you want a hurricane to go, if it's got to go somewhere. West side tends to get less damage.
Watched the Weather Channel off & on all afternoon, and from the pics I've been seeing from P'cola, the damage looks minimal. They were downtown, which is one of the worst places to be during a hurricane because it's right on the bay, and the damage wasn't anywhere close to as bad as Ivan. Buildings still had roofs, not a lot of downed trees, debris wasn't too bad.
A while ago, my sis C called - she said that Mom had called, her pastor had called Mom to see if there was anyone to stay with an elderly couple during the storm and Mom had volunteered. Apparently they made a party out of it when some of the other neighbors joined them. So she's fine, the family's fine, the house is presumably fine (Mom hasn't had a chance to go check, but barring a tree coming down on the house, it should be fine) and all's well. Yay! Daijoubu desu.
So now C is calling the rest of the family, I'm emailing my uncle (he's on dialup) and checking the rest of my mail before going out to celebrate. And when I come home, I'll pop the top on the sparkling cider that I bought for reasons I didn't know, but do now. :)