Matthew

[PopeyesPappy]

Just heard from my brother in Melbourne. He doesn't have power, but it looks like Melbourne missed the worst of hurricane Matthew. Hopefully AITM fared as well a few miles south of him. Fingers crossed for Jacksonville and areas north...

[SGOS]

As hurricanes go, it's one of the bad ones, and we certainly could do without it. The evacuations and safety precautions are unprecedented in size and represent a change in how we respond to such catastrophic threats.  I hope the general public approves.  The reaction to Katrina was slammed for lack of preparedness.  I hope the public doesn't slam the reaction to Matthew as being unnecessarily overly cautious.  Weather prediction is not a perfect science, although the experts seem to be getting better.  But the public can often be critical of a lack of perfection, even when it's not possible:  "What??? You made me leave my home and take days off from work when only 200 people in Miami ended up dead?"  You can't please everyone, but there is ample reason to err on the side of caution when dealing with things like this.

[Hydra009]

And even if you order evacuations, a certain percentage of the populace is going to try to tough it out.  Then, if the storm is more than they can handle, you have a rescue situation or worse.  The storm itself is the second most frustrating thing to deal with.

[aitm]

Pretty mild for us. One of my pool enclosure supports came loose but it was a small one in the corner. I had strapped the enclosure crossways anyway as a added preventative. Power is out but back feeding with the generator so we are good. No internet other than my hot-spot. So hey, jump in the pool, have a couple cold ones, take a nap,,,lounge around. Gotta love a salary job too.

[drunkenshoe]

Hang in there guys. It looks like a bad one.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Rain, rain, rain and more rain with some pretty good gusts of wind hitting us here and there in Columbia.. I'm kind of glad we didn't move to Charleston after all.. if push comes to shove I could go out in the shit weather and hook up the RV auxiliary battery.. I probably should have done that yesterday anyway, but....
The biggest problem in Columbia by far is usually flooding. We're up out of the flood plains so no worries about that other than life being inconvenient when half the bridges in town get washed out like last year. 
Damned big government!  It takes too long to rebuild the roads! They should privatize everything.. Oh wait...

[The Skeletal Atheist]

Rain, rain, rain and more rain with some pretty good gusts of wind hitting us here and there in Columbia.. I'm kind of glad we didn't move to Charleston after all.. if push comes to shove I could go out in the shit weather and hook up the RV auxiliary battery.. I probably should have done that yesterday anyway, but....
The biggest problem in Columbia by far is usually flooding. We're up out of the flood plains so no worries about that other than life being inconvenient when half the bridges in town get washed out like last year. 
Damned big government!  It takes too long to rebuild the roads! They should privatize everything.. Oh wait...

Dude you should've come to Atlanta. We're having pride this weekend and the hurricane, obviously caused by gays, is completely missing us.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Hell, I'm fearless.. I'm not worried about a few gayz stiring up a little wind and rain, but you really need to stop washing out the bridges around town here.. Te gayz are inconvenient!    I can't really think of a hell of a lot of reasons for wanting to move to Atlanta, not even that great baseball team..oh wait..they finished in last place just like my favorite team,  THE REDS! ....IT'S THE GAYS FAULT!

[Munch]

Dude you should've come to Atlanta. We're having pride this weekend and the hurricane, obviously caused by gays, is completely missing us.

I knew X-Men's lesbian Storm had something to do with this!

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Fucking storm has my arthritis really ramped up.. My hands, wrists, knees, ankles, hip ,etc. all ache..  I feel like I got shot at and missed then shit at and hit.. ..We lost power for about 5 minutes then it came right back on.. I really expected that it would stay out awhile.. Gots plenty of kerosene and lamps just in case..

[AllPurposeAtheist]

And....there went the power probably for the duration.. oh joy..
I'm off now to save battery for my phone.. I'm at 43%.. That won't last long.

[PickelledEggs]

Sandy was pretty horrible up north by us,

I knew X-Men's lesbian Storm had something to do with this!

Don't ever fuck with Storm. Seriously overpowered as a character...

[drunkenshoe]

Does anyone know whay this is called 'Matthew'?

[PickelledEggs]

They go down the alphabet with names and alternate between girl and boy names

Sent from your mom.

[drunkenshoe]

I found this.

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/storm-names.html

Until the early 1950s, tropical storms and hurricanes were tracked by year and the order in which they occurred during that year. Over time, it was learned that the use of short, easily remembered names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and reduces confusion when two or more tropical storms occur at the same time. In the past, confusion and false rumors resulted when storm advisories broadcast from radio stations were mistaken for warnings concerning an entirely different storm located hundreds of miles away.

In 1953, the United States began using female names for storms and, by 1978, both male and female names were used to identify Northern Pacific storms. This was then adopted in 1979 for storms in the Atlantic basin.

NOAA’s National Hurricane Center does not control the naming of tropical storms. Instead, there is a strict procedure established by the World Meteorological Organization. For Atlantic hurricanes, there is a list of male and female names which are used on a six-year rotation. The only time that there is a change is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate. In the event that more than twenty-one named tropical cyclones occur in a season, any additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet.