Well, it's a category five. That escalated quickly.

Hurricane Milton is officially listed as a category five hurricane and he hasn't even made landfall yet. He's sitting pretty in the Gulf, slowly making his way to Florida from Mexico. From reports made, he has a "pinhole eye" which makes him rapidly progress into a strong storm. 

He literally went from a 2 to a 5 in a matter of hours today. 

Evacuation orders are all over the map, as he could touch down as a three for the west coast of Florida, but also hit majorly bad in the Tampa area. Tampa is expected to get the brunt of it, while the rest of this side of the state sees powerful storm surges and lots of wind. The next area to get most of the damage would be the Sarasota / Bradenton area, and that's 90 minutes north of me. But for water, we are talking the possibility of 6 feet or more of a surge. There's not a lot of high shelves we can put our stuff on to save it in case we get water in our unit, so we hope we don't get any. 

As 75 (the main highway) has been a parking lot all day today, there's no way we are going to get out of the state by nightfall, should we get the hell out of here. The three hour drive it would take to get to Tampa, under normal circumstances, is going to take more than 10 hours right now. Good luck trying to get gas if you need it, as no station has any. If they do, it's getting down to fumes. So getting out of here means US 41 and other back roads. It'll be stop and go traffic, but you might make it north of Tampa in 8 hours. 

When the news starts talking about evacuating and grabbing stuff, you don't realize all the stuff you have and what is a priority until you have to grab stuff. Bug out bags are supposed to be light and tight. Not "take 4 trips to the car and load it up with everything". Basic. Necessities. But when you stupidly revolve your life around tech and you save everything on external hard drives, it's hard. When you've got cameras and gear and don't want to lose them, what do you do? This is all stuff you have to decide to leave in a heartbeat should you have orders to go. Take change of clothes, toiletries, things you can fit in pockets and a backpack (jewelry? Cash?) and go. 

My neighbor upstairs said that she plans on staying, but she thinks about this a lot. If she could afford it, she'd just lock her doors and walk away from this place. Go back north to her kids. Forget about these storms. She will deal with the snow. I get it. It is very tempting, for sure. But then once you get north, you're apt to start all over again with collecting stuff. Making new memories. You're no better there with everything than you are here. But you're out of the path of freak hurricanes. 

I spoke with someone at work today who said that it's either these storms or it's horrible blizzards in the north. The west has the earthquakes and fires. The middle has the tornados. Everything lately is becoming too intense and bigger. Somehow all these monsters are being fed worse and worse things, making them worse as the seasons progress. It's true; I see her point. We had bad storms in the past, but lately, it's just one after the other and each one is worse than the other. Look how many years running, that it's been 80 degrees or higher by the end of February here. It used to be 70-80 for a very long time. That's why people moved to Florida. They love the warmth and sun, but it never got hot and humid until after they packed it in for winter and went home in the spring. We've had summer like temperatures way too early for half the time I've lived here. 

Now we're getting a lot more category 2, 3 and 4 hurricanes season after season. And it's not like it's one or two a season. It feels like a handful of storms per season. They may be spread out, but we get through most of the alphabet. I think there's been at least half a dozen category 5 hurricanes in the last 8 years that have hit the United States, but I could be wrong. 

I just don't know what to say right now. We are under a hurricane warning and watch, so I'm back up my computer and the intent is to stay in our unit. It will hopefully pass by with no major issues. All we want is minimal damage - tree branches breaking and a little water. No flooding, no loss of power (maybe the power loss is expected for an hour, but no more), no storm surge. Keep the water in the streets and away from the house if we have to have anything. Let's try to keep this at bay and hope it lessens itself within the next 24 to 48 hours.

Be safe.

Cheers