Keepin’ on and keepin’ up with Florence

Another day of being sure we’re ready for Florence. As far as major items go, we were in pretty good shape beforehand and now we’re as good as we’re likely to get. Kudos to Amazon, UPS and the USPS for getting the order for extra batteries and a couple of battery-powered fans here on schedule. If the power goes out for a while, at least we have some means of relief.

Where forecasts are concerned, there seems to be some difference of opinion between our local TV weather droids and the National Hurricane Center. I’m going by the information from the NWC. Right now we’re still in the 4+ days out category in terms of the storm’s arrival at our location, which means the forecast could change significantly, so I’m checking at most update times to see what’s changed.

Given the size of the storm, we’ll see winds and rain well before the center of circulation gets here. At the moment, we’ll see winds of tropical storm force or better (over 39 MPH) and rain of 6-15″. We’re near a break point for the forecast, so the rainfall range is large just yet.

I have gotten the WeatherFlow weather station up, although I need to guy it. This is the wind and rain sensors, mounted on an aluminum push up pole. At this height, it’s around 5′ over the peak of the roof and about 21′ off the ground. There is another section I can take it up, and I’ll probably do that once I have the guys in tomorrow. This is a temporary setup. The good thing about it is that I can drop the who thing down to about 6′ tall in 60 seconds. If things start getting particularly dicey, down it comes.

As there isn’t going to be anything of real interest until the storm gets here, I’ll stop this series of posts here. I doubt that anyone wants the details of charging batteries, getting things up off the basement and garage floors and making sure all the outdoor stuff is tied down or stored.