Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Hurricane Milton has made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Central Florida, bringing strong winds and rain expected to cause potentially record-setting damage. Many people fled the area ahead of the storm... but far from everyone. Was that wise? If you listen to some of the dire warnings offered earlier this week you might think it's ridiculous to stay.

Here's the Tampa Bay mayor Jane Castor offering a warning two nights ago that quickly went viral:



"I can say without any dramatization, if you choose to stay in one of the evacuation areas, you're going to die."

So there you have it. You stay = you die!!

Except while that's what some people heard, it's not what the mayor said. Or meant.

"Evacuation area" is not the whole city of Tampa Bay, pop. 400,000. And it's not the whole metro area, pop. 3,000,000. Evacuation zones are actually very carefully delineated by local governments in Florida. Here's a map I found for Hillsborough County, FL, which includes Tampa and many of the suburbs:



The evacuation order current covers hurricane evacuation zones A and B, only. Those are the red and orange areas on the map. Zones C, D, and E are not under evacuation order. And as you can see from the map, significant parts of the region are not even zoned— meaning they're not at enough risk of hurricane damage even to consider for mandatory evacuation.

BTW, I made this chart from the page Find Evacuation Information | Hillsborough County, FL. A similar page for Pinellas County, FL is Know Your Zone.

So yes, a lot of people in and around Tampa are choosing to "ride it out", to "shelter in place". If they're in zone A or B, they're legitimately risking their lives. But if they're anywhere else— zones C-D-E or un-zoned areas— their choice is reasonable.

Besides, evacuating is hard.

Imagine you scramble to load up your car with everything that's important. Family, clothes, medicines, electronics, spare batteries,  pets. You load up the car and hit the road and... it's a parking lot. So many people are trying to leave that there's a traffic jam. You're parked on the highway, moving maybe 10 miles in an hour.

And there's no gas. You're burning fuel idling on the highway not going anywhere, and the gas stations are already sold out. Or closed. Or both. You were frankly safer in your house than sitting in a car parked on a highway when the storm comes.

There's also no food. The stores are all sold out and closed. How much food did you pack in your car along with everything else? Almost certainly you had more food in your pantry at home. Water, too.

How far will you have to drive to find a place to stay? In a hotel? Ha! The hotels are all sold out for 200 miles. You might be driving for 20 hours just to make it that far, anyway.

And when you do find a hotel with vacancy, if you haven't run out of gas by then, how much is it going to cost? Not just for 1 night but for however many nights you need until you think it's safe— or even possible— to go back home? You could be stuck hundreds of miles from home for a week or more. You could easily be spending thousands.

You've got to weigh the cost of all that against the risk of staying. Yeah, you might lose power, for a few hours or a few days. You might have to boil water. Your home may take some damage, and roads around you may flood limiting transportation.

So if you're in an area where evacuation isn't mandatory, it's a legit decision whether leaving home is a good idea. So don't automatically scoff at the people choosing to ride this one out.

Hurricane Helene struck the United States last week, causing widespread damage across multiple states in the Southeast. Recent reports have the death toll at 162 with hundreds of people still unaccounted for. Helene is now the second deadliest hurricane to hit the US in the past 50 years.

When we think of deaths and property damage caused by hurricanes we traditionally picture images of gale-force winds pounding homes on the coast in Florida, where hurricanes most frequently make landfall, or approach nearest to it, in the continental US. Once a hurricane crosses over land its winds lose strength. Typically this is thought of as the end of the worst; that the danger has passed. But what Helene has showed us, along with the path of devastation wrought by other hurricanes in the past few years, is that some of the worst damage is now caused by huge amounts of rain, and the impact of this can extend 100s of miles in from the coast.

Consider the breakdown by state of the figure of 162 storm-related deaths given by this CBS News article updated a few hours ago (1 Oct 2024, 8:42pm EDT): 77 in North Carolina, 36 in South Carolina, 25 in Georgia, 14 in Florida, 8 in Tennessee, and 2 in Virginia. The deadliest place was North Carolina. And BTW those deaths are not in coastal North Carolina, where hurricanes sometimes do make landfall, but in far western NC, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in towns like Asheville and Boone. These towns are not only hundreds of miles from the coast but also at elevations from 2,000' to 3,500'.

Part of this is the changing profile of hurricanes driven by climate change. As average temperatures warm, especially as average sea water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea warm, hurricanes forming in the region absorb more water into the air. This means when they lash rains out across the land, there's heavier rainfall. Western North Carolina, for example, got more than 12 inches of rain in one day. Rain at that level far from the coast is disastrous, and the infrastructure and the land itself cannot handle it. Rivers flood, overtopping their banks flooding entire towns. Bridges and roads are destroyed. Lakes flood and destroy nearby homes. Reservoirs become dangerously overfull and dam breaks become a real risk.

It's not just parts of the country hundreds of miles from the coast facing new risks from torrential hurricane-fueled rains. Houston in the last several years has experienced multiple hurricanes that caused widespread flooding. From 2017 record-breaking Hurricane Harvey to Hurricane Beryl just a week ago, the biggest source of damage has not been gale force winds; in fact, these hurricanes have been relatively mild in the wind department. What's caused so much devastation has been how much rain they've dropped. Harvey dropped 50 inches of rain on Houston over the course of several days.

This is the new face of hurricane damage nowadays. It's no longer the classic image of a ramshackle cottage next to the coast being blown down by strong winds but a city, possibly hundreds of miles inland, seeing its streets and neighborhoods flood from rain waters, highways and bridges collapsed from underneath, and public services such as electricity and phone lines cut off. All due to simply to overwhelming amounts of rain.

Grand Cayman Travelog #19
Out for dinner - Thu, 18 May 2023, 8pm

Something I've noticed on a number of tropical islands is wild chickens. On some islands it's just a few, on others it's overwhelming. For example, chickens are seemingly everywhere on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Grand Cayman has... sort of a medium?... number of wild chickens running around. We can hear at least one rooster from our room. Occasionally we see a few in the grass near the parking lot. Chickens are more prevalent elsewhere around the island. For example, when we visited Hell today we saw a cluster outside the post office:


Link: view video on YouTube

Yesterday one of our tour guides explained to us that the wild chickens problem on Grand Cayman traces back to Hurricane Ivan, in 2004. While people reinforced their houses as best they could for the storm, things like chicken coops were not protected. The hurricane blew them all over. The freed chickens quickly went wild. Nobody claimed them, and now they're just pests.

The guide says the government considered a bounty on wild chickens. It wasn't without precedent; they did have a bounty on green iguanas, which were preying on the island's native blue iguanas. But the iguana bounty wound up being costly as locals quickly turned in way more iguanas than the government figured.

I'm thinking about the wild chicken problem again tonight because we have one dining with us. We're sitting outside a restaurant, and one's here waddling around our table, waiting like a dog for us to drop some food. She's even cooing softly to ingratiate herself to us. Shooing her away with our feet does nothing more than elicit a few squawks of protest before she's back to begging for scraps from us.

Oh, the guide also said that locals can be fined for feeding wild chickens. Tourists are exempt, she said. But we're not going to feed this damn pest. I hope she hangs out here at the restaurant until someone orders chicken nuggets. 🐓🪓🍗

When Hurricane Ian was barreling toward Florida last week, some of my colleagues who traveled to Orlando for the trade show decided to ride out the hurricane at the hotel. A variety of our customers did the same. I read this morning that they were all able to leave over the weekend. Most got flights out on Saturday, a few had to wait until Sunday.

This makes me more glad I scrambled to leave when I did. Recall I decided on Monday to drive 3 hours to Jacksonville to fly home on Tuesday when the soonest my original airline could get me out of Orlando was Wednesday. That Wednesday flight was subsequently canceled and the whole airport shut down for a few days.

Last Monday I decided, "If I don't get out of Florida by Tuesday I'm likely stuck 'til Sunday." That's why I scrambled with booking to another airline, renting a car— which cost about $150 including gas— and driving 3 hours. The news from my colleagues validates my choices. My estimate was accurate. And they also validated my expectation that being in a hotel, even a nice hotel, even a very nice hotel, for 4 extra days while a hurricane rages outside sucks.

Florida Trip Travelog #18
Back Home - Tue, 27 Sep 2022, 2pm

Whew. What a half fun, half crazy trip the past 10 days have been. But now I'm home. My flights from Jacksonville, Florida this morning were uneventful. We left on time, we landed on time, I watched a movie on each flight. It was all borderline boring... which is how flying should be!

BTW, it was worth the effort to drive to Jacksonville to leave Florida a day earlier. I saw this alert today after I got home:



The earliest flights available to rebook on Southwest as of Monday morning leaving Orlando were Wednesday morning. I picked a 9:30am departure because it had not-crazy connections. With the airport shutting down entirely at 10:30 I'd say there's a strong chance the 9:30 departure willl be canceled. If I didn't do what I did, I'd likely be stuck in Orlando another 5+ days.

Update: In fact it has already been canceled. I checked Southwest Tuesday afternoon, and the Wednesday 9:30 flight has already been canceled. If I'd waited in Orlando instead of driving to JAX I'd be stuck now.

Update 2: And now the hurricane is headed toward Orlando! 😱

I checked out of my hotel in Orlando, Florida late this morning, getting out ahead of Hurricane Ian after my company canceled our big annual conference this week. As I described previously, I was unable to find a reasonably priced flight out of Orlando until Wednesday but I was able to find a good one out of Jacksonville Tuesday morning. So... after taking a Lyft to MCO airport I rented a car and drove to JAX airport.

As drives go it was a fairly easy one. 170 miles, pretty much all highway. The driving time was about 2:40. I added a lunch stop making it about 3:30 door-to-door.

Some of my colleagues who heard about the planes-trains-and-automobiles thing I was doing expressed sympathy for the craziness I had to endure. Enh. I know for some people such a drive is not easy, though for me it's close to trivial. And the planning and re-planning with reservations is kind of "All in a day's work". I've been a road warrior for a lot of years. This isn't my first rodeo. (How's that for mixed metaphor?)

Well, the hotel I'm at this evening is nowhere near as nice as the one I left. I'm at the airport Doubletree. It's pretty meh. Instead of a balcony overlooking a massive pool deck I have a small window— that doesn't open— overlooking a dull pool. The resort in Orlando was unusual for a business trip. This is par for the course.

Tomorrow morning my flight out of JAX leaves at 8:36am. If it's on time. I was watching local news over dinner downstairs in the hotel restaurant. Hurricane Ian is strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm definitely glad I'm further north now. Still, even if the center is a few hundred miles away tomorrow morning, the hurricane could produce enough winds and rains that flights are delayed or canceled.

Keep reading: Jacksonville was far enough north that I got out safely Tuesday morning.

 Florida Trip Travelog #14
Breakfast at the hotel - Mon, 26 Sep 2022, 8am

I've decided to take it easy this morning. Yes, today's a work day, but I can at least eat breakfast in peace. That means I'm not opening my work computer 'til I get back to my room around 8:30am.



It's a pretty nice room, here at the Marriott Orlando World Center. The photo above I made yesterday evening when I arrived. The room's on the 10th floor overlooking the pool area. Here's a view of that pool area:



...Wow, that's more than I expected! Notice toward the left there's a huge water slide— much taller than the slides at the Hyatt Coconut Point I enjoyed so much the past few days! I doubt I'll have time to enjoy them as I really am here for work. ...Okay, maaybe after 5pm today? 😅

BTW this is a resort hotel because it's right next to Disney World. Most people here are here for the theme parks. But boring old me, I'm here for work. Except that water slide I'm going to try when I'm done for the day.

Breakfast at the hotel this morning has been amazing. And no, it's not just because I left my work computer in the room— though that helps! The buffet is huge. In addition to the usual bread, cereal, and yogurt choices there is a charcuterie board with actually-good salami, mortadella, and prosciutto. Oh, and there's chimichurri steak on the buffet. Those basics are free to me because of my Marriott elite status. And for an extra $7 I could upgrade to the "full" buffet with omelets and french toast. I didn't know there was chimichurri steak on the basic buffet when I chose to upgrade. Well, I enjoyed my french toast. It was freshly made in front of me. It has been... years... since I've had actual made-from-scratch (as in, dip bread in an egg/milk batter then fry on the griddle) french toast. Damn, it was good! And so was the chimichurri I made sure to save room for. 😂😋😌

Keep reading: ...AND THEN I CHECKED MY EMAIL! 😱