Okay so I know I went MIA but its been a wild month.
We are alive (yay!!!). We are YET AGAIN displaced (Boooooo!). Do not start with the whole "you live in hurricane ally what did you expect" bull$hit. Yes I know we live where hurricanes happen. I hate it but there are natural disasters everywhere and we usually can at least, prepare.
But there was no time this time. Ida went from a "oh look a 'storm'" to "Holy $hit RUN!"
No lie. I've said it many times. I get gut feelings. I know most people do but I am not one to overreact. Anyways, I was only ever fearful of one storm. There was only ONE that scared the beejesus out of me and I cried to get my grandfather to leave his house, and that was Katrina. All the others in between I was like "meh".
But this one was different. The path, the concern of the meteorologists, the WARM gulf. And it was quick. There was no TIME. We heard about her on a Monday as a "little" something headed to the gulf and by Friday you could see the fear everytime the weather came on.
I did what I always do. I prepped my house, prepped my customers, and got ready to hunker down. But as the days went on I started getting scared. Like legit terrified. By the time Friday came around my nerves were shot. Work had me frazzled and well so did the path and strength. Every advisory it ticked more towards us and got way stronger. The hubs and I kept saying we were staying but as the day went on we both became even more concerned. We said we will make the decision tomorrow to leave.
Saturday morning was grim. They weren't saying get out but they were. It was strong. It was coming for us. We were on the "bad side". Words like total devastation and loss of life were said but we were still a little further east of the biggest concern. But every advisory was more and more concerning. Around 9AM, I booked a last minute hotel in Florida just in case.
We waited until 10PM advisory Saturday night. We had already prepped the house and packed up some bags. At 10PM they said "your window to leave is almost closed. This storm is showing no mercy." They were now predicting a strong Cat 4, 140 MPH winds and she moved more East. They were saying she could very well be stronger than that. I got scared...like started shaking scared. My gut said we have to leave.
So we packed the car, loaded the animals, secured the house as best we could, and went to leave.
*tick tick tick tick* no no no no *tick tick tick tick*. I am at my wits end. The car wont start. I don't generally panic but I was on the verge. We need to leave. Every fiber of my being said we have to leave NOW! But it wont turn over!!! I was about to lose it.
Thank God, my tiny old car was able to jump our bigger vehicle so we could GTFO. We left her behind and started our journey. We barely spoke because we were so scared. What if we break down on I10 and become a statistic?!?!!? We had to stop to pee and let the pups out but were scared to turn off the car. He ran from 11:30PM until 7:30AM!!!
No it didn't take us that long to get there but we couldn't check in at first. So we drove up and down beach hwy until the front office opened. Check in wasn't until 4PM but when I walked in and the lady about crumbled. She told me to come back at 7:30 and she'd have a room for me. I must have looked a fright! At that point I had been awake for over 24 hours and it's not like I slept well Friday night...
We tried to nap after checking in but our nerves were shot and we were passed the point of exhaustion. We watched helplessly as Ida approached the coastline. We had been up for 36 hours before we finally crashed.
Sleep wasn't long because my phone started blowing up. We had friends and family still in the area that didn't leave. We eventually lost contact. It was the most harrowing 24 hours until we found everyone safe and mostly unscathed.
She battered SE Louisiana for something like 15 hours. My area had 155 MPH sustained winds for I don't know how long. I'm not on the coast...she STAYED strong WAAAAAAY far inland. I watched my camera until the power went out. Before it did I watched something slam into my car. Ida had just made landfall....I wasn't sure what I was going home to.
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