24 hours. By this time tomorrow things should be on the downward swing and starting to calm down, but it should be adventerous between now and then. The expectation is that we will end up with stronger winds than we had with Charley in this neck of the woods. As things start to deteriorate later today, I’ll probably pick up the blogging activity a bit until the power or cable fails. At the moment, we’ve only had the first couple of distant outlying bands pass through and the wind is picking up to about 15 mph, gusting to about 30. Driving home after going to work this morning and then helping my mom board up her house again (during which I found out Plylocks aren’t so easy to use the second time ‘round.) I got hit headon by a 30 mph wind gust that actually caused my truck to slow damn near instantly from 50 mph to about 40. That was pretty impressive. I’ve hit gusts like that before, but that is the first time that has ever happened.
Should the power go out here, remember, the sidebar on this site has constantly updated live METAR data showing the current conditions nearby (it runs on a script that executes every time you reload the page so you’ll probably know more about what I’m going through than I do (besides knowing that it’s pretty nasty!). Also Kathy Kinsley is maintaining a roundup of those of us in the path of the storm.