those four counties i'm betting are where the real story is. there is a large hispanic migrant worker community down there.. lots of low-income manufactured housing. towns like wauchula, zolfo springs, arcadia, up near bowling green and fort meade in polk.. just inland still received a hell of a lick. i don't know how well EMS disseminated information to the large hispanic community in the area as the storm shifted track and rapidly intensified during the day friday. also lots of snowbirds down there who probably took a look at the tampa forecast friday morning, the cat2 status, and didn't take it seriously. there are talks of refrigerator mortuary trucks heading into the area today, and numbers of unaccounted-for persons. the degree of the situation is still unknown, but these are not comforting signs.
charley is near myrtle beach now, moving northeast along the convex coastline of long bay. center should be fully ashore around north myrtle beach within the hour. pressure dropped to 988 at last recon fix, at the system's tightness still probably a high 85-90mph sustained. may keep a good bit of punch up the coast as it appears to be undergoing extratropical transition.
danielle far out to sea, forecast to track into the big empty of the eastern atlantic. t.d. 5 not gaining a great deal of latitude but looking better.. may be t.s. earl at 11am. if it can intensify, should gain enough latitude to clear south america. of course it is racing and the usual problems of racing systems may dog it.. but we just a had a substantial system that dealt with fast westward movement quite well. earl should be the story of the coming week.
as clark alluded to last night, over the small eyewall region charley had, there is andrew-like damage. for the first time in a while heavy wind damage extends well inland along a narrow swath up US 17.
HF 1434z14august