Last weekend, The Wife and I trekked up to Tampa to take in a program at the Straz. One of the local weathermen, Denis Phillips was giving a presentation on his time as a meteorologist and things to keep in mind as we go into the upcoming season. He’s a local celebrity for a bunch of reasons, but the two biggest reasons was he was the first to predict Charlie’s swing to Punta Gorda in 2004, and his Rule #7:

Stop freaking out… until I tell you to freak out. We’re fine

It’s that kind of levelheadedness that makes him trusted by wide swathes of the Tampa Bay viewing area for storms. This includes The Wife – which was why we went to the presentation. It was very entertaining with many hilarious anecdotes.

For myself and my own preparations, there were three major takeaways:

  1. The warming of the Gulf is going to make storms intensify quicker. As in storms going from Cat 1 to Cat 4 in 36 hours.
  2. If a storm looks like it is possibly aiming for the panhandle or the west coast of Florida, the five day forecasts are worthless. For those kinds of storms, landfall won’t be determined until 36 hours out.
  3. Which leads to the third point – that if there’s a storm that looks like it may go to the west coast of Florida, then the entire west coast should consider themselves as a likely target and take appropriate action. If it looks like we need to evac, we need to evac ASAP. Waiting until those 36 hours out, we may not be able to evac due to the sheer number of people that has moved to the area.

I am taking this into account as I make my plans.

Here’s a good checklist that was shared during the meeting.