The sky cleared a bit after about an hour, and even had the sun popping out to warm the place back up to its normal stickiness. We're back to looking at a Cat-3 storm once again, with a little more strengthening expected. The Wal-Mart in front of my house is virtually deserted, which makes it all the more eerie.

A bit too breezy for flying. Rats...

Craig

HEY! You know the rules. No biological payloads.

__________________
Bill Eichelberger
NAR 79563

http://wallyum.blogspot.com/

I miss being SAM 0058

Build floor: Centuri Design Contest F-150 Hurricane Estes - Low Boom SST Semroc - Marauder, Shrike, SST Shuttle

In paint: Canaroc Starfighter Scorpion Estes F-22 Air Superiority Fighter, Multi-Roc, Solar Sailer II Semroc Cyber III

Ready to fly: Estes - Solar Sailer II Semroc - Earmark, Groonie Der V 1/2

Tell that to the rats. They keep delivering more payloads than I can cope with...

Dennis is back up to 125 now. I keep seeing the movie Twister in my head, you know, the "Debris!" scene...

Craig

Category 4, 145 mph winds...

It's 8 AM CDT, and we're getting a little rain. Little is, of course, a relative term, but it's more like a steady drizzle right now. That will change between now and 1 PM, which is the general beginning of the landfall time.

The storm has taken a very slight shift to the north, which might prove significant when the eye wall crosses the coast. This storm is tightly compact, with the Cat-4 winds only reaching out about 40 miles from the center. A couple of degrees now could reduce the maximum wind speed where I am. Bad news is, someone is going to feel the full brunt of this one.

The evacuation seems to have gone much better than I thought it might. Gov. Riley ordered I-65 from Mobile to Montgomery be one-way northbound, and the report was that 6500 cars per hour got out of the path. Normal traffic for this stretch of interstate is about 2200 cars per hour. Don't look for a hotel room in Alabama right now -- there are none available.

Here's what we're facing:
http://www.weather.com/maps/news/at...trad_large.html

I'll keep trying to post something as long as the power and phone hold out...

Craig McGraw

The storm has taken a definite turn to the due north. It puts Pensacola again in the crosshairs, and Mobile is going to be brushed on the downwind (western) side of the storm.

We are having steady straight-line winds of about 20 MPH here in Mobile, with a light drizzle.

Big Bertha, the fat lady, ain't singing yet; but she's tuning up and getting her girdle on...

Craig...

The winds here are gusting to about 45, with steady-state winds in the high 20's to mid 30's. The temperature is down to about 72. We're getting the rain in buckets now.

Dennis has dropped to a Cat-3 storm, 135 MPH winds, and the hurricane-force winds are condensed to a very small area only 8-10 miles out from the center. Lots of rain is expected, maybe from 12-15 inches over the next 24 hours, and the storm is expected to remain a hurricane as far inland as 100 miles. Local Doppler radar scans are showing the eye moving now almost directly toward Milton, Florida. This is east of Pensacola, which may save those poor folks from the worst of the winds. They're going to get bruised and scratched up, but it may not be as bad as Ivan was.

Estimates are some 6000+ residents in Mobile County who didn't evacuate completely are in shelters. None of these are rated for Cat-3 storms, but they were opened up anyway because many of these folks couldn't go anywhere else. This is something that our local officials and school board are going to be grilled and criticized for in the aftermath -- none of our schools, which generally serve as the emergency shelters for the county, are designed for Cat-3 storms. Here we are, in a prime hurricane zone, and none of our schools are designed to survive a Cat-3 storm. The Red Cross didn't even want to open these shelters at all! They didn't want to put their own people in them!

Our satellite dish is still receiving signals, but it's beginning to get chopped up from the rain in the clouds. Our receiver dish remained pointed at the satellites all through Ivan, and it seems to be holding steady during Dennis. It's on the south-side of the house, and the winds right now are out of the north, so it's sheltered a bit.

Phone lines are still intact for the moment, and power is still solid. For now. Landfall is still a couple of hours away, so a lot can change between now and then.

More later...

Craig

Landfall occurred at 2:25 PM CDT over Santa Rosa Island, with wind speeds of 115-120 MPH. This makes it a Cat-3 hurricane. The hurricane winds were even more tightly packed, only about 10-15 miles across, beyond which the winds dropped off to tropical storm force of 74 MPH or less.

Some of the warnings are now being removed in Mississippi, but there are reports of tornado activity around the core. No confirmed tornado touchdown or damage to this point, however.

The winds are now 105 MPH, Cat-2, with a forward speed of 21 MPH to the north. It's heading for Atmore and Brewton, in Escambia County, Alabama. Pensacola and Milton took the eye wall, but apparently the concentrated nature of this eye has prevented the outlying areas from receiving the same damage as Ivan brought. Won't know until WKRG (CBS) can get their chopper in the air to take pictures. Probably not before tomorrow.

Mobile has recorded a wind gust of 47 MPH, with a rainfall of 2.5" at the WKRG station in Midtown Mobile (around the Malls, Airport Blvd. at I-65). Our official weather station is farther to the west at the airport, and they recorded about the same.

So far, although many areas of Mobile are without power, and the cable TV provider is off-line in my immediate area, my power never blipped once (no promises that it'll stay that way -- the power company ain't called "Alabama Flicker & Flash" for nuthin'...). Give 'em credit where credit is due, though. For me, the power stayed good through what I would call the worst of the storm. Our satellite also stayed locked on the birds; the signal dropped out during the heaviest of the rain bands, but quickly came back up.

As the storm passes farther north of us, we should start seeing the winds shift direction from the north to the west. There are still some strong gusts through my area, but they seem to be slacking off. Good sign the storm is weakening.

Later...

Craig McGraw