If you live in Southern Alabama...

[misanthrope]

...you should go ahead and start making preparations for hurricane season right now.

This "winter" has been "anything but" down here. The seasonal averages are running way above normal meaning that not only is the water not cooling off as much as it normally does, but that the spring and summer could very well be warmer than normal, too. Combine that with La Nina still being in effect in the Pacific and I'm starting to believe the 2006 storm season will be about like 2005.

Now would be a good time to start thinking about emergency plans and evacuation procedures. What do you want to take with you? What can you afford to leave behind and lose forever? What routes will you take depending on where the storms come from? How much stuff will your vehicle hold? What will your insurance pay for and what will not be covered? Does your policy need updating? Do you have a legally binding last will and testament? Will you need to stock up on medications before leaving? Do you need electricity for medical reasons? What happens if you can't get it? What will you do without income for a while?

Better safe than sorry. Remember we started getting our first storms in July last year.

[MnFats]

1. we are having an awfully weird winter up here too...

colder now but we are headed, on balance, for the WARMEST january on record.
winter used to be an ass-kicker in Mn. but has been pretty tame the last few years...
of course, none of this has anything to do with the falacious concept of global warming...

[LiberalEsto]

3. Mild in Wash. DC too, but not especially abnormal

Every few years we get a winter with almost no snow, so it's not that unusual. Besides, we still have to get through February, and that's usually when the white stuff comes down.

What strikes me as out of the ordinary in the past few years is the intensity of wind. Especially in the past year. It seems like it blows harder, howls more, and causes more damage than in years past.

[misanthrope]

5. Well, our daily highs and lows...

...are running roughly comparable to last year except with even less cold snaps this time around. Our daily lows have been close to twenty degrees above the average and the sole reason the highs have been only about ten to twelve degrees above average is because the cloud cover has kept the solar warming down somewhat.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. We live 20 miles from the Gulf coast and it has been up and down

but probably more up than down. Not our mildest winter, but close.

Our hurricane kit is a big garbage can with diapers, water, food, meds, flashlights, cash, phone cards, and copies of all important papers. I have backed up all my family pix on the computer so I am set there.

I use a cpap so we have a battery thing to run that. It stays plugged in.

But it is very doubtful we would ever leave the house because we have seen that you can't trust the people who are supposed to care for you.

[misanthrope]

4. I don't understand...

...what good backing up the photos on the computer will do. If you get enough water damage to ruin the original snapshots, won't the computer be damaged as well?

Maybe you should burn the photos to CD and mail them to someone who can keep them in a safe spot away from the Gulf Coast.

As far as not leaving the Coast, good luck and Godspeed with that. I think the next couple of decades are likely to be the worst in recorded meteorological history for the Gulf Coast of the United States.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

6. My images are on a laptop

which will have to be pried out of my cold, dead hands. It stays with me. Plus I have them all backed up on DVD's and they are in a few locations...I send them to family, etc.

Now, we are not right on the coast. We are 20 miles inland from Apalachicola Bay.

We are starting to build a new house on our farm and as we can't put in basements in FL because of the high water table, I'd really like to build a "safe room." Not like the one in the movie with electronic do-dads..just in the center of the house with extra strengthening against winds. We don't have any big trees near the site, so we don't have to worry about taking a tree. Hurricane Kate in 1985 took most of them out.

[FerdinandandIsabella]

7. My Mother and sister live down there....

Sis lost her apartment in Orange Beach from Ivan, and mom was extremely lucky after Katrina not to have had any major damage. That house is built like a tank...survived Frederic in '79, the one I've forgotten in the mid-90s and then Katrina.

[BoppaLuba]

8. Not hurricane season you should be concerned with.

I travel from near the Mobile area to and from New Orleans and
Atlanta a couple of times a month and have noticed some
suspicious road barriers being installed along miles and miles
of Alabama's highways.

For example exactly 33 miles [33 degrees in Scottish Rite
Freemasonry] North of Mobile there is a new 100 foot pole at
an exit that is in the middle of nowhere really. However, on
this pole are mounted three (3) survellience cameras. One is
directed Northward and focused on I-65, one is directed
Southward and focused on I-65 South, and the third camera is
housed in a round smoked glass bubble that is capable of being
directed in any direction in a 360 degree pattern. The
symbology isn't lost on me either.

There doesn't appear to be anything [overtly obvious] in this
area so I failed to see the need for such devices and secondly
the traffic along this part of I-65 is light generally and not
known for being a high accident area in need of such
survellience.

The second thing I've noticed is that the Alabama DOT is
installing miles upon miles of that triple cable fencing in
the median areas of I-65 and I-10 where there is no clear need
for such fencing. Ostinsably this is said to prevent
automobiles or trucks from traveling from either South or
Northbound lanes and entering the opposite direction lanes by
crossing the median. The only problem is that the distance
between the North and South bound lanes in the majority of
these areas itself would prohibit such traffic from accidently
crossing over into the lanes of opposing traffic due to the
distance and size of the medians.

It appears that these barriers are for preventing people from
being able to turn around in the event that for some reason
the so-called authorities decide to direct people to some as
of yet unknown facility, possibly for nefarious reasons, at a
point in the near future.

I'm a professional photographer and will take my camera and
camcorder gear with me on my next trips documenting these
devices being installed. They strike me as some sort of
traffic funnel wherein people might be forced onto routes
where there might be detention camps for 'disidents?'

Tony

[misanthrope]

9. That is all for hurricane evacuations...

...if you had seen what happened during Ivan and Dennis, it would seem a lot less nefarious.

[OwnedByFerrets]

10. Welcome to DU

I'm from Mobile and also a Pro Photog. Would love to talk to ya sometime.