I've tried to explain it to some of younger neighbor's here in CT, who have never experienced a hurricane that it is something like a very warm blizzard and the water is liquid...not sitting there on the ground afterward looking all sparkly...but they just don't seem to 'get it'...I am seriously worried for some of them.
I'm expecting to have a majorly flooded basement (think a couple of feet of water) and maybe no electricity for a while for pumping it out. I'm especially hoping that the wind will not take out any of my very old mature and not very healthy maple trees...one of them is a snagger that is right by the houses (mine and the neighbors) and I have been taking bids this week for its removal in the late fall or winter when the sap is down and the leaves are off...hope that it does not get taken out naturally...but if any of them do come down, I just hope the damage is minor.
This storm is the stuff that all the preparedness blogs and threads are telling us to plan for - so get your fresh water NOW and make sure you have enough canned food and dry wood for the fireplace etc...a wind-up radio for when the net/power goes down in your area and a car cell phone charger (though the towers may fail in some areas) and stuff like that...oh and a non-portable land line...do your laundry today and take a nice HOT shower before it hits - if the systems go down, you'll remember it fondly. Have something to do for the time it is coming down...do not drink alcohol during the height of the storm (hurricane parties can impair your smarts if something really bad happens- like a tree through the roof or your stupid neighbor's lawnchair crashing through a window)...
And for heaven's sake (unless you want to get there fast) evacuate as soon as you're told to go...for inspiration look at the before and after pix of Katrina or Galveston's beaches from their last big one
...
Yes, sleeping in some ratty high school gym miles from home, while the dog shelters in your car in the nearby parking lot sucks; but it's not so bad when you learn your home is nothing but pilings on a new beachfront. If you return home to nothing but missing roof tiles, you can think of the miserable sleepless night as a character building adventure in communal living.
I've been through too many of these things to not take them seriously.
Never really though it would happen when I moved here to CT...hurricanes was one of my big reasons for not going to Florida for retirement..ha! looks like we blew that one
Take care and yep, right now those prediction lines are right through here...but with a storm this massive and all the water the whole place is going to suffer ...I keep hoping it will turn further out to sea
nana