Buttoning down before evacuating

I've never been through a hurricane watch like this before. Somehow, from the west coast, it always seems that hurricanes come, ravage through an area and then are gone - and I had no idea that these nasty storms begin and are traced often all the way from the African shores. The direction they will be taking is judged and then predictions are calculated based on winds, currents, land (especially mountainous) over which they may travel, and warm water (that can intensify them).

Naturally all of it can be wrong, because a hurricane can change direction unpredictably. It depends on who you talk to here in the Keys as to how disturbed they are about the emminent arrival of Georges. At this moment, Georges is reeking its havoc over Cuba through some reasonably high mountains that are predicted to slow it to the category of a tropical storm. However, between Cuba and the Keys lies warm water which can stir it back up to hurricane status. Key West and all the southern area was forcably evacuated this morning. The middle Keys were encouraged to follow suit this afternoon, but no forced evacuation has been ordered to this point.

The problem here is that this long group of keys are all connected by Highway 1 that is, for a good deal of its length, a single lane roadway in each direction making the evacuation of the area very slow. This afternoon at 5:00 pm Highway 1 South was closed, so that now both lanes may go north speeding up the process of evacuation. I am at this moment sharing the accomodations that Krisstina and Karen have because my hotel is south of the MRDF. I would be unable to go back down there at this point. This hotel has already warned us that we will probably be forced to evacuate this evening or tomorrow morning. Stay tuned, but don't give up - we don't intend to go too far, and our current plan is to be back on Saturday!

Below I share some of the pictures of the preparations for the storm:

The MRD is secured: windows boarded up, computers backed up and then covered in plastic, and everything that could fly was either stored or sunk into the lagoon.

The Hideout, the local restaurant taped their windows with plumbing tape instead of boarding them shut. They say they plan to be back opened on Saturday. I hope so - I've become a regular.