Long time poster here - going on at least 5 or 6 years (old age?). Heh. Welcome to everyone who's jumping on and registering. Because this is >your< year (your = Florida), I can't even keep up with all the threads. But it's always good to have new blood in on the action. There are 3 really good fan sites - CFHC, Storm2K and Hurricane City (haven't been there much this year because of all the action on the other two). CFHC was always the best for "up close and personal" stuff when the action got rolling. Storm 2k is pretty good to follow because of the topic headers. And one day, I'm going to save Bobbi/LoisCane's hurricane blog spot (whatever the address is) to my favorites so I can get over there too.

For Palm Coaster -

No idea. Though everyone assumes it will, there are no guarantees that Jeanne will hit Florida. My guess is about 85% chance it will. The other question is how far south it comes in and and how far west it goes once it makes landfall. For a 'coast skirter' storm, you'd probably see gales and maybe some gusts to hurricane strength. For something going in down in Vero or farther south, it would depend on when it made the curve. Should it go into the NE Gulf and come back out, you'd probably see some bands (watch for tornaodes with those) crusing by.

But bottom line on Jeanne - I (and that's me the amateur speaking) do not believe that Jeanne will be in the class of Frances, Charley or Ivan at landfall. It's gonna be bad, but a Cat 1 or 2 (or even a low end Cat 3) are almost a blessing at this point. Yeah, it sucks because the state has been hit so many times this year (my count has it at 5), but it could be worse. We're not talking 'extreme' or 'catastrophic' damage - more on the order of severe or strong. So things could get potentially bad, but they're not going to to be viciously bad if you know what I mean.

As for the chips and cookies comment, that's what I did for Ivan Part 1. Oh yeah, and BEER (lots of it).

In any event, good luck to everyone in the path. May your misery be lessened by any means possible.

Steve