I survived my first hurricane....Hurricane Frances. Being in hurricane force winds is not fun but at the same time it's almost surreal. I lost power on Sunday about 12:50pm. At the time it really wasnt that windy when the transformer blew, but it didnt bother me, as there was an approaching hurricane. I spent most of the day sitting around. I tried to catch up on some reading assignments but just couldnt stay focused. I was totally exhaused but I couldnt sleep, so I listened to the radio. One call I just cant forget is a guy who didn't have power. He calls the radio station, states his area and he had no power for (at the time) about 4 hours or so. He also stated he drove around his neighborhood (bad idea), he saw no "major damage" and it was only raining. Then he goes into his rant and says "it's not fair". WTF??? Apparently his argument was that why wasnt the electric company out on a pole giving him his electricity in the 40mph+ sustained winds?? I had to LOL when the DJ quickly hung up on him, and spent about 10 minutes calling him different kinds of idiots.

Fast forward to about 8pm. With what was forcasted for the weather, it was already planned for me to be to work. At that time it was only raining with some gusts, but nothing we wouldnt see in an afternoon thunderstorm. My manager was running late, so I decided to drive around to avoid getting sleepy to see how things were. I was amazed that some gas stations were open. Those foreigners know when to cash in on opportunity, and each open station i passed was packed. Sporadic outages, I didnt see anything drastic, such as big trees down, but this is only about a 5 mile area i was in. We basically had a skeleton crew at work, two managers and five associates. Wasn't much to do, but I was able to maintain my weekly hours (these days I can't afford to miss any hours for ANYTHING).

About 11pm is when things got real ugly. Most of the day the worst thing I saw from my living room window was wind gusts, alot of foilage. Now things were looking like what you'd see on TV, horizontal rain. The front doors of the building was buckling under the pressure of the wind. I'm no meteorologist, but I could take a guess and say those were strong tropical storm winds, 50 or 60 miles per hour. It was wicked!!! At this point I feel like an idiot for being so dedicated to my job, but I didn't have power so I felt better to be at work anyway. In any case, we are getting the back end of the storm now, and it was totally different from what went on in the beginning. The rain was coming down in sheets, very very heavy and VERY VERY WINDY. You can hear it pounding the roof almost all nite. When I came home I made a beeline, and being it was still dark I was limited to what I can see. The pond across the street from work has started flowing in the street. Vulnerable flood areas are underwater by many feet.

I have to try and get rest, but I hope to get pictures if it isnt still too dangerous outside.