[at-l] Hurricane Charley

[GoVolsKelly at aol.com (GoVolsKelly@aol.com)]

Update.  The National Hurricane Center just issued advisories for  Hurricane 
Charley.  It is now a strong category 4.  This thing has  turned into a 
monster.  
 
Images can be seen Here: 
 
_Sun-Sentinel:  South Florida weather_ 
(http://weather.sun-sentinel.com/radar/station.asp?ID=BYX19)  
 
Charley swells to 145 mph, zeroes in on  landfall

By Ken Kaye & Linda Kleindienst 
Sun-Sentinel 
Posted  August 13 2004, 1:00 PM EDT 

Hurricane Charley strengthened to a  Category 4 status with 145 mph winds 
shortly after 1 p.m. on Friday and  began turning in the Gulf of Mexico for a 5 
p.m. landfall -- probably in  the Port Charlotte area -- and get a storm surge 
of up to 20 feet, state  officials were told.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his aides were told  the path of Charley had 
shifted and a landfall south of Tampa -- in the  area between Charlotte Harbor and 
Sarasota -- was probable. That does not  mean the heavily populated Tampa-St. 
Petersburg will go  unaffected.

If a Port Charlotte landfall does happen,  it does mean residents in Orlando 
and neighboring Lake County can expect  to feel winds of up to 100 mph by 
midnight from the surly storm before it  heads north to the Jacksonville area. 
Earlier in the day, Walt Disney  World, Universal Orlando and the SeaWorld 
Orlando theme parks decided to  close their parks in the early afternoon and let 
their employees go  home.

"We should experience five to seven inches of rain and  hurricane-force winds 
in Lake County and North Orange," Orange County  Sheriff Kevin Beary said at 
an 11:15 a.m. news briefing.

The  storm's shift and a Port Charlotte landfall could also affect Lake  
Okeechobee in the south center of the state. Residents living on the north  and 
west shores of the gian lake can expect wind-driven water levels to  rise as 
much as 3 feet today.

No matter where the storm hits, it  has the potential for a devastating 
physical and economic impact, said  Gov. Jeb Bush, who has declared a state of 
emergency.

The last  storm as strong as Charley to hit Florida was Hurricane Andrew in 
1992,  which devastated parts of South Florida with 165 mph winds, causing $30  
billion in damage, killing dozens and leaving thousands  homeless.

"This is a scary, scary thing," the governor  said.

Over the past day, forecasters have been anticipating a  landfall in the 
low-lying and heavily populated Tampa-St. Petersburg  area.

Gov. Bush said he spoke with his brother, President Bush, who  is campaigning 
out West, earlier in the day about a presidential disaster  declaration for 
the state because of anticipated storm damage. The  president promised to act 
quickly.

Without the declaration, FEMA  can't come into the state and help with any 
cleanup.

"(President  Bush) pledged to provide the support necessary. I told him this 
was (going  to be ) a devastatiing storm," the governor said.

The governor said  he expects Charley will be out of the state by Saturday 
morning. By  Saturday afternoon, he said, the cleanup will begin. Around 6,000 
Florida  National Guard soldiers will be available to help.

At 1 p.m.  Friday, the system was 70 miles south southwest of Fort Myers, 
aiming  north northeast and running at almost 20 mph. It had sustained winds of  
almost 125 mph. Hurricane force winds extended outward 30 miles from the  eye; 
tropical storm force winds went out 125 miles.

By noon,  Charley's outer bands were already dropping rain on southwestern 
Florida,  a few hours after bringing occasionally heavy wind and rain to the 
lower  Keys as the storm's center passed to the west. All the Florida's West  
Coast was under a hurricane warning, as was the lower Florida Keys.  Tropical 
storm watches and warnings extended from the middle Keys to  Oregon Inlet, N.C.

South Florida, meanwhile, had been expecting to  feel some of Charley's punch 
barely received a love tap. The area still  could see some rain this 
afternoon but mostly should feel some strong  breezes, the National Weather Service in 
Miami said.

"It looks like  we've missed the brunt of it," meteorologist Christopher 
Juckins said of  South Florida. "There might be some storms this afternoon. But 
the  heaviest precipitation will remain to the west of our  area."

Charley's outer bands could generate 25-30 mph winds through  early afternoon 
and then possibly up to 35-40 mph later in the day,  Juckins said.

"It might be more like a gusty thing rather than a  continuous windy day," he 
said.

Charley's center passed west of Key  West on Friday morning, bringing 
occasionally heavy winds and rain to the  lower Keys, but officials had only reports 
of minor damage. Gusts were  measured at 58 mph.

Meanwhile, a new tropical depression formed  Friday morning 275 miles 
southwest of the Cape Verde Island and was  initially forecast to grow into Tropical 
Storm Danielle possibly by  tonight. The system was moving west at almost 14 
mph and aiming toward the  north end of the Lesser Antilles.

"This hurricane season is not  starting out very well," Ben Nelson, the state 
meteorologist, said of the  new storm. "I'm spinning right now myself."

With Charley moving  north off the Gulf Coast, state officials urged all 
residents west of U.S.  41, or the Tamiami Trail, to move inland, from Marco 
Island to north of  Tampa Bay.

In all, about 1.9 million people, including the Florida  Keys, have been 
advised to evacuate, although many will stay in their  homes, said Kristy 
Campbell, spokeswoman at the state emergency management  center. It was estimated that 
1.1 to 1.5 million will be leaving their  homes ahead of the storm, she said.

Craig Fugate, the state's  emergency management director, said the massive 
evacuation could break the  previous record of 1.3 million state residents, who 
were requested to  evacuate for Hurricane Floyd in September 1999.

On Friday morning,  many streets in Tampa and St. Petersburg were deserted as 
workers were  told to stay home.

Evacuation shelters were filling to capacity, as  residents and tourists 
looked for somewhere safe to ride out the  storm.

All residents of MacDill Air Force Base, on another  peninsula in Tampa Bay, 
were ordered out with only essential personnel  remaining. MacDill is home to 
U.S. Central Command, the nerve center of  the war in Iraq.

"MacDill Air Force Base will probably be mostly  underwater and parts of 
downtown Tampa could be underwater if we have a  Category 3," State meteorologist 
Ben Nelson said. "In a Category 3, you  can almost get to the point where 
Pinellas County becomes an  island."

Power companies said they were mobilizing thousands of  workers to prepare 
for widespread electrical outages, and out-of-state  crews were being readied to 
rush to Florida.

In northwest Tampa, an  evacuation shelter at Sickles High School had reached 
its capacity of 500  by 8 a.m. Windows had been reinforced with screens and 
tarps to prepare  for the storm.

Assistant Principal Nelson Duarte, who was helping  coordinate the shelter, 
said those arriving at the school "were very  nervous and very scared, begging 
us not to turn them away."

Amanda  Kellogg, 20, and four of her classmates from the International 
Academy of  Design and Technology came to the shelter from an apartment complex 
that's  in the projected storm surge area.

"I'm scared that we're going to  go home and nothing is going to be there," 
said Kellogg, 20.

In  addition to powerful winds, up to 8 inches of rain and the storm surge,  
Charley also threatened to spawn sporadic tornadoes in the Tampa Bay area,  
said Hugh Cobb, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in  Miami-Dade 
County.

After hitting the state's West Coast, Charley  was projected to aim northeast 
toward Savannah, Ga., the Atlantic and  South Carolina.

About 6.5 million of Florida's 17 million residents  were in Charley's 
projected path, the U.S. Census Bureau  reported.

About 700,000 elderly people are in the projected path of  the storm, state 
officials said. About 1,000 Florida National Guard  members have already 
reported to duty and 1,000 more were being called up,  officials said.

Bush urged people in evacuation areas to leave if  they've been told to do 
so, and reminded people inland who may not be  directly in the path of Charley 
that they still could see hurricane force  winds.

"This is going to be inconvenient. That's the way life is  when you're hit 
with one of God's most powerful forces," Bush  said.

Tampa International Airport was expected to stop flights  Friday at noon, 
while the other major airport in the area, St.  Petersburg/Clearwater 
International Airport, already was closed to the  public.

Gary Vickers, Pinellas' emergency management chief, told  people in 
evacuation zones there would be "a period of time where if you  stay behind and you 
change your mind and you want to be rescued, no one  can help you.

"We aren't going to go out on a suicide mission," he  said.

Heavy traffic flowed Thursday afternoon away from the coast  near Tampa in 
Florida's biggest evacuation request since 1999, when  Hurricane Floyd prompted 
an order for a record 1.3 million people to  evacuate the state's east coast.

In the Florida Keys, visitors and  mobile home residents followed orders to 
leave the entire 100-mile-long  island chain or report to shelters. By 9 a.m. 
Friday, the lower Keys had  experienced tropical storm force winds and rain 
from Charley's outer  bands.

About 60 people slept at one Key West elementary school  overnight, stretched 
out on blankets and mattresses in a hallway as a  circular fan buzzed. Peter 
Berg, 45, from Vancouver, British Columbia, had  been vacationing in Key West 
for a week when he and his wife were forced  to leave their hostel.

"I keep telling myself it could be worse,"  he said.