Goth kitteh sez...

30 inches of water?

Welcome to "sunny" Florida...

I'm all right, and so's the family and all material possessions, but Sweet Buttery Eris that was a lot of rain. 30 inches is two and half feet, peoples. This morning I got to play the very fun game of "Dig a trench in the back yard so the porch doesn't flood."

Fucking wheeeee.

All told, though, I got off lucky. I pity Brevard county to the south, though; the NOAA radio (pronounced "Noah" -- funny, that) has been going off about flash floods down there for the past two days.

And this wasn't even a hurricane. This was just a Tropical Storm. Nothing like a little bit of nature to humble and make me feel insignificant.

Perhaps another visual aid. This picture was taken last year, so it's not from this storm, but it's still indicative of the kind of beach erosion a storm like this can inflict:


That's.... significant.


(Thanks to Maud and Joe Flood, whose pictures I ganked. All rights reserved by the individual artists, etc.)

Good news and bad news

Good news: Tropical Storm Fay is no longer predicted to become a Hurricane once she hits the Atlantic.

Bad news: SHE'S COMING RIGHT AT ME AAAIIIIIEEEEE


Nah, I'm not really worried. It's just fun to play the drama queen.

But I gotta tell you, all this rain is making me feel soggy. I'm gonna break out my copy of Blue Planet and start making a cephalopod-only adventure, because sadly there isn't one already. Which is really odd, because BP is the only game I know of where dolphins and orcas are player character races, so you'd think someone would have written one by now.

But nooooooo.

By the time you read this, I will already be dead

... okay, no, not really. But I've always wanted to write a sentence like that, and given the "We don't quite know where the fuck she's going" status of Hurricane Fay, it seemed like as good a time as any.

No, seriously, Fay is wacky. I have never, ever, heard of a Hurricane/ Tropical Storm that actually gained speed over land, and current predictions have her going out into the Atlantic, gaining speed, and making nearly a 90-degree turn to have yet another go at Florida.


As it stands right now, though, things are copacetic at Chez Palette. All we've gotten is some rain, which is nothing compared to the reports of flash-flooding in counties further south. Which is ironic, because around this time last year we were contending with wildfires from the dry season.

Welcome to Florida: If you aren't burnt to a crisp, you're drowned.

At any rate, I spent all of Monday afternoon putting up storm shutters which, for those of you who live in less meteorologically exciting states, are overlapping sheets of corrugated metal (sometimes steel, usually aluminum) that protect the windows of a house. This also gives a home that zesty quonset hut look.

By the time the last of the shutters was up, it had started to rain. Excellent timing on our part. Of course, now that the shutters are up, we've sandbagged the porch, bought a crapload of supplies and distilled several gallons of water, the storm is sure to miss us entirely.

It's rather like getting all dressed up for a party, only to stay at home and watch bad reality television while eating leftovers.

Ah well. I comfort myself with the knowledge that this house is now conveniently zombie-proof as well. I figure we're rated for anything up to the Boyle threat level; making this house rated for Romero-scale operations would require barricades, a deep well, and lots more guns.

Erin Palette: 70% chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse, and rising fast.