Two parrots seeking shelter from Irma

Prepared

Dave Barry writes in the Miami Herald,

Here’s how I know a hurricane is coming: We have lentils.

We NEVER eat lentils. I am not 100 percent sure what a lentil is. I do know for a fact that not once has anybody in our household ever said, “You know what would be great for dinner tonight? Lentils!”

But at the moment we have roughly a 45-year supply of lentils on hand. This is because we are in Hurricane Preparedness Freakout Mode, and one of the things we Floridians do in this mode is go to Publix and get in long lines to buy mass quantities of things we will never eat. Publix could put out a big display of cans labeled “Toad Intestines Packed In Snail Vomit” and we Floridians would snap them all up in minutes. That’s how prepared we are.

My family did manage to secure a large supply of jerky, which we actually like. We chew it thoughtfully while we watch the Weather Channel people tell us, over and over and over, how screwed we are. All our jerky will be gone before Irma gets here.

...So we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. I hope my fellow South Floridians are also prepared; I hope — seriously — that we all come out of this OK. But whatever happens, I am confident that when it’s over, we will come together, as a united, caring community, and get into fistfights in gas lines.

Read more here.

Dave is definitely buying a bazooka.

Two category 4 hurricanes in one season

Arian Campo-Flores and Joseph De Avila report in the Wall Street Journal about Hurricane Irma, which has left the Florida Keys and is moving to the southwest coast of Florida. Governor Scott talked with NBC about the danger of storm surges: “What is really scary is the storm surge,” Mr. Scott said. “It flushes in and flushes out. That’s going to be difficult to survive.” Potential storm-surge flooding in the image below is shown in four shades of blue. Greater than:
1 foot
3 feet
6 feet
9 feet

Just the nine southern counties of Florida that are expected to be hit first—roughly from Palm Beach on the Atlantic coast to Port Charlotte on the Gulf Coast—count 7.2 million residents.

They include 1.3 million who are over 65, of whom 320,000 live alone, according to Census estimates. Among them are more than 400,000 with physical or mental disabilities that limit daily activities. Overall, more than three-quarters of a million disabled people live in the area.

Read more here.

Here is the latest photo of Hurricane Irma with its 185 mph winds.

Will Irma hit us, too?

Daily Mail reports,

Hurricane Irma grew into a powerful Category 4 storm on Monday forcing Florida to be declared a state of emergency. Some forecasts showed the powerful storm posed a 'serious threat' to the US with it potentially heading for South Florida and the East Coast.

Read more here.