Milton
 

Thoughts going out to friends and relatives in Venice, Cape Coral, Lake Wales, New Smyrna Beach, the Keys . . . and for all hoping that this won't be the total disaster that it's being touted as.

This should automatically update as new forecasts come in:

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graph...e_and_wind.png

Bad news is , this one is much stronger with larger storm surge.
Good news is, it is much smaller. 4 mile eye, vs 40 mile eye of Helena.

Predicting weaker as it approaches land, hooped that pans out.

It's showing some signs of weakening -- wind shear and some dry air entering from the west -- but isn't weakening fast enough and still is forecast to have max sustained winds of 125 at landfall tonight. Why do they all seem to make landfall at night? (I know, they all don't...)

Looks really bad for my cousin in Venice.

Venice is definitely in harms way,hope he makes out ok. Should be a lot more sharks teeth exposed after this

Hey Phat - for an ignorant west coast guy who’s following this, what are sharks teeth?

Venice beach is know for finding fossilized sharks teeth in the sand. When I lived in Tampa, we would go down on the weekend, walk the beach and pick them up. Not unusual to fill a Pringle can in an afternoon. Most were small, .25-.75 inch long. Read some where they think there was an ancient riverbed there once.

The gulf is very shallow down there, 25 ft deep 20 miles out, so I figured the surge and swell will disturb a lot of previously undesturbed sand.

Thanks for the lesson. Things are sure different in different parts of the country.

I’d really like to visit down there sometime when it’s not too hot and humid.

That will certainly limit your window of opportunity to visit, but come on down. I m in north Florida, so we actually have four seasons. Nice, Hot, Nice, Cold

I hope we have an opportunity to do some extended travel at some point before I’m so old that I’m drooling down my shirt. If we do, I’ll be seeking advice from trusted sources like you. Thanks

Finally heard from my cousin in Venice who just got cell service restored. No electricity but no damage to her home. Amazing. And what's more, of all my personal friends and relatives (10 households in all and 4 of them on the west coast) in Florida, only 1 had serious damage and that was to a modular home in Lake Wales that had the roof partially pulled back. I know that's not typical and that a lot of folks lost a lot and had a great deal of damage. My heart goes out to them.