In a mobile home, it’s not so much that the power goes out, but more like your roof will go. That is what happened to my parents’ seasonal home decades ago. It would be a good idea to stay with friends who have a firmer built house, just for say Wednesday night.

Do you have any actual data to support that claim? I’m guessing not. It appears all they do on that webpage is repackage data from other sources, such as the NHC and NCO. Regarding the system going south, while that is a possibility it is not a likely possibility at this time based on all available information. The latest discussion from the NHC makes reference to shifting the track a bit north based on the latest model results.

I think that a lot of the stories like that "cloud seeding" thing originate in the Russian troll farms. Disinformation is the Russian secret weapon, they are the BEST at. There are a lot of sites now for anyone interested in conspiracy theories.

Anecdote
 

Happened to visit Helen, GA when the damage from a tornado spun off from Katrina was still evident. Returned to Helen on a drive to the mountains this summer and looked for evidence of that same damage across the "valley" from the visitor center/police dept parking lot, but all looked normal.

I *think* I recall that Katrina reached 178 mph before hitting as a Cat 3. This Milton guy suddenly getting to 175 is blowing me away. Pun noticed only after the fact.

Ice
 

How about the hail inside the eye wall because pressure is dropping so rapidly?

It's a Cat 5 now but the good news is that it's expected to downgrade to a Cat 3 at landfall, due to wind shear.

If landfall is below Tampa, that's good for TV. The more north, that's bad, obviously. During hurricane Ian 2022, we did not lose power, cable TV or internet. Landfall was a Cat 4, 110 miles below Tampa (just above Fort Myers).

More anecdotes
 

Hadn't heard about that but it sent me googling. Found this. The Eyewall – Seeing you through the storm The surge warnings again reminded me of Katrina and its *30 ft* surge (IIRC). I volunteered at a mobile dental clinic in Waveland in a K-Mart parking lot about a mile inland. Was told that six bodies had been found on the *roof* of that store. The surge almost reached I-10.

We lived in Savannah when Michael passed nearby. The tornadoes it spun off played with our large pine trees on Skidaway Island, leaving a huge mess. The relative lack of trees in our neighborhood here in TV is rather comforting for this one. The tales I heard from Katrina survivors about its tornado spawn was the stuff of nightmares.

Windy.com says no !
 

Windy.com shows six 'expert' predictions.
Highest of their expected winds in our area are 40 mph !
Very different from Network TV, The Weather Channel etc
Hoping for a great day!

Windy.com is showing 66mph gusts at 8am Thursday (34 sustained)
Windy: Wind map & weather forecast

I will check in with you to see how this worked out for you.

Quite a different storm and trajectory to consider. This storm has a much more lateral movement tendency. It also has the probability making landfall barely north of Tampa (Tarpon Springs could see real trouble)I agree there can be some over hyped verbiage, but it does command the respect of its potential. If not for the very least the tornadoes that can spin off of her (him).

Note that The Weather Channel hourly forecast for The Villages is currently showing that the highest wind speed will occur on Thursday morning at 7AM, at 33 mph. That is nowhere close to being hurricane wind speed.

The latest from the NHC:

5-10% probability of sustained winds over 74 mph, 20-30% probability of sustained winds over 59 mph, and 50-60% probability of sustained winds over 39 mph.

Yes, it doesn't look good for TV, but there's still several hours to go.
A network just predicted 13.5 inches for TV. Stupid me, this is the first year I didn't get flood ins of the eight years I"ve been here. None of my neighbors, who have been here much longer than I, have ever had to use sandbags or had flooding in their garage or home. So I got that going for me.
Should be interesting.

Predicting 13.5 inches is really silly. That implies a level of accuracy (tenths of inches) that doesn’t exist. The forecast from the NHC has us in the range of 6-12 inches.

If Windy: Wind map & weather forecast is accurate it shows the eye of the hurricane had turned south several miles below Orlando from what I saw the other day. The Villages is double that distance above Orlando and near the outskirts of the path edge. Not looking like we're out of it yet, but at least we're not the center pin according to that site. :duck:

Experts are predicting that it will be the 4th strongest hurricane to ever hit the US. On its possible paths there are VERY populated areas, so it could be the most expensive hurricane ever in the US.

I was just watching Mike's youtube and he gives another voice to this. He is not downplaying it by any means and also mentioned just because you're not in the middle of the path doesn't mean there'll be minimal damage because the winds can vary. Just wanted to add that so others aren't less prepared because of the projected path. I'd still keep a watch for updates which I'm sure most of you are.

I didn't click on the link but I agree with your summary of whatever it was about.

Basically I consider a hurricane to be comparable to an old fashioned string floor mop, and a floor with a few glass goblets, a couple of toys, and a house made with Tinker Toys (remember those?) or Lincoln Logs.

If you spin the mop, it'll basically decimate whatever is directly beneath the mop handle. Anything near the handle will be moved. Glass goblets will be toppled and shatter. The house will come apart and its pieces spread all over the place.

As you get closer to the ends of the mop strings, you'll see less damage, but still plenty of movement. The glasses will still topple, but maybe not enough force to break them. The lincoln log houses might not move, but the plastic cover used for a roof might be jarred loose, and the door might get pulled off and spread away from the path of the mop. The toys will be spread everywhere - which MIGHT end up breaking those glasses even if they didn't break yet.

The mop is turning VERY fast. And it's moving in a path to the other side of the room. Whatever is in the middle of the path will be ruined (or picked up by the mop). Whatever is hit with the ends of the strings will suffer damage, or be whipped to another part of the room.

Same with a hurricane, but the houses are real, the toys and glasses are ANYTHING that isn't secured to the ground like chairs, lawn ornaments, planters, your swinging address sign, and possibly even your golf cart.

Odd that it formed in the Gulf so quickly after Helene. I don’t recall a hurricane developing in the Gulf and transforming from a Cat 3 to a Cat 5 within a day or two.

"Ever"? Have they been measuring the strength of hurricanes for 250 years?

Yes that’s what I noticed too, and also NOAA is indicating a slightly southern path than before.

There is still uncertainty in the track. The average NHC forecast track error at 36 hours is about 60 miles. Their 4 PM update moved the track a bit south of Tampa based on a bit of a wobble that may not have been incorporated into the exact location of the circulation in the 18Z model initial conditions. Regardless, the 00Z model runs this evening will be the one I pay particular attention to. The GFS results are available around midnight with other model results available before and after midnight.

Oh No! We.Are.All.Going.To.DIE !!!!

The 5 major weather trackers at windy.com have Milton landing all over the place. I'm betting on GFS for accuracy :) Maybe ICON.

Initial assumptions
 

Aren't these various models examples of that "butterfly effect" thing - how initial assumptions (if off even a tiny bit) get magnified out into the future?

The terminology is chaos theory. The models use non-linear PDEs (the Navier-Stokes equations on a rotating sphere plus considerations for radiative transfer, turbulence, and liquid phase change). It is an initial value problem and slight differences in the initial state will result in differences in the simulation. Since you can’t know the initial state perfectly, there is a limit to predictability. Ensembles take advantage of this by making multiple runs with slightly altered initial states to define the envelope of possibilities. That is the short version.

You're 81 for goodness sake. Even if climate change were miraculously true, you won't have anything to worry about. Unless you're The Highlander. Then all bets are off, of course. There can be only one!

I want to know where Jim Cantore is. If I see him around here, it’s not good news.

Local NWS wind forecast update provided by Mike Lima on FB
...

At 11:00 am the NHC updated its wind forecast for The Villages. The estimate for winds in the 39-57 mph range is 80% and in the 58-73 mph range is 7%. They removed any probability of hurricane force winds from the forecast. The NWS maximum winds for Wildwood forecast was slightly modified to 30 mph with gusts to 40.

The links are: [Hurricane Milton Wind Speed Probabilities (noaa.gov)](Hurricane Milton Wind Speed Probabilities)

[National Weather Service](National Weather Service)

National Weather Service

I hope OBB sees this.

Wildwood is where my village of the map is so I specifically check that map marker. The Villages map marker is a few miles above us. Orlando is 61 miles southeast of us. My geography teacher would be proud. :duck:

Tampa

I'm doing a load of laundry right now. Got 4 days worth of clothes, water, roll of TP, ziplock baggies, baby wipes, a first aid kit, charged old cell phone I can use to power my mini-fan, charged tablet, current phone, and laptop, and pillows sitting on top of the inserts for our dining room table on the floor of the master bedroom walk-in closet. Litter box is right outside the closet door in the sink area of the bathroom.

Why? Not because of hurricanes - I've lived through many hurricanes and Nor'easters, living in New England for most of my life. No - but because of tornadoes.

I'm confident our house will be relatively unscathed by the gusts of the hurricane. But a tornado whipping through the neighborhood could easily rip the roof off our house and send someone's golf cart through our lanai into the living room.

So that's what I'm prepping for. It'll take me all of 10 minutes to UNpack all this stuff if we don't get a tornado. It took me an hour to gather it all and make the closet floor "sleepable" for me, hubby, and cat.


---edited to add: at the moment, we have all our windows open, the lanai sliders open, and there's a glorious breeze blowing throughout the house. It's raining, but we have those slatted shutter awnings that keep the rain from blowing into the house (mostly). We'll shut everything down soon but this is the first time in three months it's been cool enough to open a window. I want to take advantage of it while I can.

Vector calculus
 

Just for some masochistic fun, I scrolled through the Wikipedia page on Navier-Stokes. That there are humans walking among us that "get" that stuff boggles my mind. How do you find anybody to talk to?? :-)