Hurricane Otis

[JohnAndSancho]

Good Lord - from a tropical storm to a category 5 in a matter of hours? That's crazy scary. Good vibes for Acapulco and all of the impacted areas. There's no way to be prepared or evacuate anything intensifying THAT rapidly. Scary scary stuff. 

[flplantguy]

I was shocked last night when I saw it about to make landfall. I barely noticed it before that and it could easily be here. there have been a lot of those recently, I hope they build for storms there but I fear it will be really bad.

[Funkthulhu]

The scary thing is that it didn't quite meet the record for 24 hr windspeed increase!  That stays with hurricane Patricia in 2015.  (for now)  

Still when you consider that there has never been a hurricane of this magnitude hit that area, so people aren't used to that size of storm, and that they had less than 24 hr warning to board up and hunker down. . .   I'll be surprised if a lot of people aren't dead.  And I bet the damage numbers will be mind boggling.

[RFun]

Looks like the landscape there has definitely been rearranged.  The population in the Acapulco area is really crammed in there as well.  It doesn't look the greatest in the pics I've seen.

Edited October 26, 2023 by RFun

[JohnAndSancho]

I can't imagine what those people experienced. When Katrina hit, I was here in East Mississippi approx 120 miles inland. We didn't think we were going to get as hard as we did - LOTS of tornados here, 200 year old oak trees were literally ripped out of the ground... And it was dark, and we only had satellite TV and dial up internet so we were caught off guard. The wind lifted up all 4 corners of the roof on our trailer and...the best way I can describe it is, it was kind of like how you lift and shake and pull the blankets when you make your bed. We couldn't go anywhere due to all the massive trees blocking all the roads, and we are so far out it took a few days for the people with chainsaws to make it out this way. I'm grateful for FEMA and the Red Cross, but after a few days of eating bologna on white bread, I can't eat bologna or white bread anymore.... And I'll never forget the smell of the refrigerator and freezer after 2 weeks of no electricity. But we were fortunate enough to have a great insurance company, and even more fortunate to find a hotel in Meridian to crash for a couple weeks.

 

A friend of mine owned a beauty salon, and she had a washer and dryer there - we made a deal, my family could use her laundry facilities and her family could use our hotel shower. My heart hurts for everyone down there. Hot take, but my mind hurts that we still have climate change deniers - sadly this is the new normal. 

[RFun]

1 minute ago, JohnAndSancho said:

I can't imagine what those people experienced. When Katrina hit, I was here in East Mississippi approx 120 miles inland. We didn't think we were going to get as hard as we did - LOTS of tornados here, 200 year old oak trees were literally ripped out of the ground... And it was dark, and we only had satellite TV and dial up internet so we were caught off guard. The wind lifted up all 4 corners of the roof on our trailer and...the best way I can describe it is, it was kind of like how you lift and shake and pull the blankets when you make your bed. We couldn't go anywhere due to all the massive trees blocking all the roads, and we are so far out it took a few days for the people with chainsaws to make it out this way. I'm grateful for FEMA and the Red Cross, but after a few days of eating bologna on white bread, I can't eat bologna or white bread anymore.... And I'll never forget the smell of the refrigerator and freezer after 2 weeks of no electricity. But we were fortunate enough to have a great insurance company, and even more fortunate to find a hotel in Meridian to crash for a couple weeks.

 

A friend of mine owned a beauty salon, and she had a washer and dryer there - we made a deal, my family could use her laundry facilities and her family could use our hotel shower. My heart hurts for everyone down there. Hot take, but my mind hurts that we still have climate change deniers - sadly this is the new normal. 

It's amazing how far inland some of the hurricanes can go.  I know a few years back that one hurricane was still a hurricane clear to Middle Georgia (the Perry, GA area).  Pretty insane really.

[JohnAndSancho]

I still can't sleep worth a damn when it storms at night. The only hurricanes I ever evacuated from were Opal and Ivan. Opal wasn't bad. I'm glad I dipped before Ivan - a pine tree came through my roof and landed right in the middle of my bed. But.... Lol that wasn't inland at all, I was a few miles from the beach.