Ivan The Terrible

OK - I know everyong is getting tired of hearing me talk about hurricanes and I'm getting tired of talking about them. This is getting really old. The latest info from the National Hurricane Center shows Hurricane Ivan taking a more westerly track away from the Florida pennnisula and into the panhandle near us. We've been through alot of hurricanes in 15 years of living down here and have only evacuated once. That was in 1995 for Hurricane Opal. If this storm continues as is, I believe we will need to or be ordered to evacuate. This is a major hurricance cable of doing major damage. They rate hurricanes on a scale of 1 to 5 and 5 is the worst. This storm is rated a 5. I was talking to a officer in charge of one of the flying squadrons at Tyndall Air Force Base today at Katlin's soccer game. He said that they were going to make a decision this afternoon/evening about moving the jets from Tyndall to somewhere in Texas to get them away from the storm. He also said they were going to make a decision about closing the base and have the base personnel leave.

I went and bought plywood today to board up the house if we have to leave. We are keeping the gas tanks in cars topped off and have plenty of cash on hand. I'm unsure where we will evacuate to, obviously somewhere out of the storms path. As you can see by the picture about it is expected to make landfall somtime Wednesday afternoon/evening. There is plenty of time between now and then and alot can change. So we are watching it very closely and will be able to react on a moments notice. We're just getting prepared. At this time, the storm is also projected to make landfall about 1 1/2 hours east of us near Appalachicola. Which is very close.

Like I said, we are going to watch it very close and keep you posted as to what we intend to do.