Hurricane Dorian--Fl residents, be safe!!!!!!!!

We have one son in Tampa and one in Orlando. The Orlando one thinks he's going to get it so he's ready to hunker down.

Don’t freak out, and please do listen to authorities as to whether or not you should evacuate. Roads around population centers need to be left open for those who absolutely must go.

Do buy bottled water and non-perishable food. Make sure you are stocked up on batteries and that your flashlights are working. Have candles, too. We like to have portable charging banks for our phones all charged up and ready to go. Fill your car’s tank with gas and withdraw cash from the ATM. If you can afford it and live in a hurricane prone state, a portable generator and a couple of full gas cans are not a bad idea. We also keep box fans to plug into the generator if we are without power. Have a cooler ready for perishables from the fridge/freezer. Put a bag or two of ice in the freezer as well. If you have a propane grill, make sure you have propane.

Take in or secure any loose items in the yard or on the patio. Put your important documents and most valuable items in a box for easy removal if you have to leave quickly (also scan these items and save to the cloud in case you have to leave without them). Put your cars in the garage before the storm hits. Figure out where you will go in case of tornadoes.

Buy lots of wine and beer.

Stay as calm as you can. ☺️

I went yesterday to try and get some water, and both Costco and Publix were sold out. We are in a mandatory evacuation zone, so we will leave if it comes close. I was hoping to get a couple of years under my belt as a Floridian before I had to deal with a major hurricane. 

Great advice!

I've just been reading about this. It sounds a a pretty rough one, stay safe everyone.

My mom is in west palm beach. Latest models that I see show it hitting them. She says they are being told they don't know if they will get hit full on or as part of the end but currently it looks to hit them dead on. *sigh* And to think she wanted me to move to florida

My DS is in Norfolk. When one of the hurricanes came near last summer, they took all the ships out to sea. Away from the storm. He said they barely felt the rolls. I am sure it will be the same down there.

My dd goes to college at Flagler in St. Augustine. I wish I knew what this hurricane was doing. So far no evacuation plans are going on but I'm almost 4 hours away and would like to know if I've gotta make that trek or not....lol. I just don't want to wait until last minute & not be able to find gas to get there and back. Hopefully, everything will be fine & everyone stays safe!

This is dd’s college orientation weekend. Her school is a half hour from Tampa. I was scheduled to fly out of Orlando Monday morning but the school is encouraging parents to leave Saturday morning. i want to fly out of Tampa Saturday or Sunday morning. ]
I tried calling spirit yesterday and they said they couldn’t help bc thy didn’t have a weather advisory yet. Now they do. I’m currently on the auto train waiting to leave the station. We are just hanging out for another hour before we take off. It’s so quiet in here - our car is almost empty, which means we can stretch out across two seats later when we want to rest - but it’s so quiet I’m afraid to get on the phone and disturb the other passengers.

C’mon Dorian, PIVOT! Stay safe out there everyone.

Also, go to the ATM and get cash. CC readers will be down in a power outage, but you may be able to purchase supplies with cash.

We haven't been in our house quite 6 months, and we're already facing our first hurricane! Doesn't look like there's any need to evacuate.

We're outside of Tampa, inland and elevated 60+ feet, so we should be fine. We have most of our supplies already. We still need cash and to check our prescriptions status. We need to bring in the stuff on our patio. We don't have any trees on our lot, but our back neighbor does, so we'll have to be aware of that. We've ordered an alternative to sandbags from Amazon; they should be here tomorrow. We're only allowed 10 sandbags from the county, and we have 3 sliding glass doors onto our patio plus the garage and the front door, so ten sandbags wouldn't do much. We're currently draining some water out of the pool. Our neighbors have lived here for 20+ years and they all say they've never had any major damage from hurricanes. Right now I'm glad we chose Tampa and not the east coast!

Thankfully I was able to get a flight from Tampa to Atlantic City for Saturday morning.

PIVOT!!!!!!!!!