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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #8: The silence woke me up

No picture with this post, because there’s no light.

After getting used to the sound of howling winds, pummeling rain, and the occasional “thunk” of debris hitting the roof, it was the utter silence that woke me up at 5:45 a.m.. With the power out, the constant hum of the air conditioning — a necessity in Florida — isn’t there. We’re on a residential street, but a block away from a major thoroughfare that leads straight downtown. Even on a normal day, there’s the occasional car or early morning dog walker — not today. No bird songs, either.

The air in the house is still cool. Hardly surprising; we ran the air conditioner a little colder and didn’t open any doors in anticipation that the power would go out. The sun hasn’t come up yet, and even if it had, it’d be hard to see through the hurricane fabric covering the windows.

It’s just darkness and silence. It’s rather nice.

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #7: Embracing the darkness

I have to say: my home office octopus looks great when lit from below by flashlight!

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #6: “It’s giving outages!”

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Please pardon the title. I thought I’d experiment with a little Gen Z vernacular. No cap.

Pictured above is the outage map for TECO (Tampa Electric COmpany) as of 10:50 pm. EDT (UTC-4) on Wednesday, August 9. As you can see, we’re approaching 250,000 households without power, and we’re one of them. We still have internet because our router and wifi base station are connected to an uninterruptable power supply with a battery I replaced in the spring.

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #5: The view from here

Here’s some footage from our house’s security cameras — one looking out from the front door, and one from the side:

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Florida Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #1: What everyone in Tampa Bay is asking right now

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Florida Florida of the Day

Meanwhile, in Florida…

Tropical Storm Helene is now Hurricane Helene, and its closest approach to Tampa Bay happens tomorrow, which means the grocery stores today look somewhat like this (perhaps with fewer mangled AI faces).

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Florida Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Tropical Storm Helene

Once again, I’m hoping that the vibes from the clown cemetery that’s been protecting Tampa from the worst effects of hurricanes for the past few decades will work their magic as tropical storm Helene (pronounced “Huh-LEEN”) passes through on Thursday.

(And yes, I’m also doing some hurricane prep. But do not underestimate the power of a clown cemetery!)