I wish, hope, and pray Irma dies down some and doesn't result in so much destruction. Two bad ones in one season is going to hurt U.S.. And it is still early in hurricane season.
It looks like Irma is going to hammer Florida. Lots of traffic trying to evacuate. Let's hope the people who couldn't get out have adequate shelter to take refuge in. Especially the Southern half of Florida, looks like it could be a CAT 5 when it hits. One strong, BIG storm.
I have one uncle who lives on the east coast of Florida who will ride it out, I'm not sure on my second uncle who lives in Florida. We have another person in the family who lives a bit east of Tampa, I'm not sure when they left but they're heading to Atlanta.
The track that I looked at today for Jose has it coming up the east coast near Nantucket up to Yarmouth, I'm sure the track will change a few times. I'm following the ECMWF on Intellicast.
I'm hosting a good friend and his family from South Florida. They left at 0400 hrs yesterday morning and arrived in Atlanta at 0250 this morning. Almost 23 hours...they said it was miserable and slow, but pretty orderly. Everybody was driving okay, but the sheer volume of people on I-75 kept speeds under 35 mph. They stopped at a couple of the state-run travel centers in FL for fuel, and said that there were no issues. The lines were being directed by FL state troopers, and everybody moved orderly through the pumps and headed back on the interstate.
I drove up I65 from Mobile to Nashville today. Lots of FL vehicles heading north and lots of power and tree crews heading south. I'm scheduled to fly to Orlando Tuesday. We'll see how that goes.