Wilma Slams Cozumel

Wilma crashed into the shores of Cozumel this morning and is now headed for the Yucatán peninsula and Cancún. Story...

I don't know where our friends are at this point. Our attempts to reach them have failed. When we saw images of the shelters set up in Cancún, all we saw were tourists - no brown faces in the crowd. I hope their government is taking better care of them than ours did the poor citizens of New Orleans. Not surprisingly, Novedades, México's online newspaper seems to be offline. I guess we wait.

Meanwhile, the uncertainty grows as to where and when Wilma will strike Florida's Gulf Coast. Workers are outside my window boarding up the top floor of our building. We are all taking precautions to safeguard our data in the event we take a direct hit. The map at left from Weather Underground's Steve Gregory shows that most of the models are still converging on South Florida while one stubbornly tracks north, predicting a Tampa Bay landfall. The NHC discussion indicates that the wide spread in the models so "both the location and the timing of the impacts on Florida remain very uncertain."

For this reason, I believe we will hang our hurricane shutters tomorrow - at least if I have anything to say about it, which I certainly do. Haha. The storm is just too unpredictable and I'd rather be shuttered in the calm than unprotected in the storm. So, the hunker bunker won't be open this weekend, but it will be open on Monday, if necessary.

To friends and family around the country and the world: try not to worry. We are smart, strong and prepared. We will do whatever it takes to weather the storm.