2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season Running Thread

We have a road that connects the valley to the coast. Semis are banned from going on it. Inevitably once or twice a year some idiot thinks the ban is a suggestion. Then he flips his trailer. Then normal traffic is rerouted around an extra 10 miles.

It’s got to be so frustrating on top of everything you all are dealing with, you have to deal with these incidents.

 

There and Dover are the two most memorable. The haulers have to enter and exit at an angle because of the steep banking. Otherwise they'd either tear up the racing surface or not have enough ground clearance because they ride extremely low. Martinsville's not that bad because there's hardly any banking, even though the parking area is smaller than any other track.

Daytona now has a Turn 1/2 tunnel big enough for 18-wheelers while they still open the backstretch gates at Talladega. I can't imagine trying to get through the old tunnel at IMS on Georgetown. I think they used to bring the trucks across the frontstretch before they built bigger ones on 16th Street and under the north stands as well. (Lafayette to 30th was my favorite sneak around route on Race Day.)

And I learned not to call an IndyCar transporter a "hauler." I got scolded pretty good on Twitter one time. Tight/loose. Understeer/oversteer. Shut up and write!

 

Well, fuck. This would become Milton, right? He’s gonna want his red Swingline back.

TROPICAL DEPRESSION FOURTEEN

 

don't jump to conclusions

 

Lovely. Gonna wash all that sand back into the streets again. Not sure about the storm surge but a rainmaker isn't exactly what the beach communities need right now.

 

There is also another area of interest coming off Africa behind Leslie. If Milton crosses Florida, it's going to to hit the Atlantic about the time swells start rolling in from Kirk. I don't have numbers, but I can verify that Atlantic surface temps have dropped considerably.

 

Officially TS Milton now.

 

I had a GPS that botched the easiest directions you could imagine -- Tahoe to L.A., the 80 to the 5. I don't remember where she was sending me, but it wasn't transition from the 80 to the 5. I think if I followed her directions I might have ended up on Mt. Tamalpais.

 

Over the years there have been a few stories from out west where somebody followed GPS to their doom. It routed them down some logging road, they got stuck in the middle of nowhere when it got squirrelly, and since there was no cell service out there they had to hike it out. Some make it, some don't.

 

It’s not as difficult as you’d think. The longer the wheelbase, the easier it is. I can put a cattle trailer in tight spaces like that. But in my Jeep TJ with a 6-foot-utility trailer, I look like a total fraud trying to back it up straight to the co-op’s loading dock.

 

Boy, oh boy. Tampa hasn't taken a direct hit from a major hurricane since 1921. I think Milton might end that streak. Right now, NHC calling for a possible 110 mph landfall somewhere directly on the west coast. It's still quite a ways out but all the current tracking shows it heading directly at an area between Sarasota and Clearwater, with the target somewhere within 100 feet of my fifth wheel (about a mile from the last exit on the south side of the Skyway bridge).

Places like Bradenton Beach and Anna Maria Island are barely habitable right now after Helene. A direct hit might scour the barrier islands and much of the inland coastal cities.

There's nothing we can do. I'm not going to go down and get in the middle of it. Plus, the rule when we head back home in April is if we can't afford to lose it, we don't need to leave it. The most expensive thing in the trailer might be the bingo daubers.

So we'll just have to hope that big ass live oak tree that's survived 100 years of storms makes it through another one. And that's what insurance is for.

 

I feel you. I can back a farm trailer with a tractor and put it on a dime. We used to have a 6-foot lawnmower trailer with a 3-foot tongue and small tires hat I'd drive a mile around a block just to keep from backing it with my truck.