Here is a local story about conditions at the moment.

Some pertinent excerpts:

Hurricane Frances lost some steam and hesitated off the Florida coast Friday, prolonging the anxiety among the millions evacuated and raising fears of a slow, ruinous drenching over the Labor Day weekend.

The storm, which was downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane, is expected to come ashore with up to 20 inches of rain as early as Saturday afternoon, nearly a day later than earlier predictions.

Frances' sustained winds have dropped to 105 mph with higher gusts and continues to lumber through the Bahamas in a west-northwest direction at 4 mph.

At 4:30 p.m. about 90,000 people had lost power in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. A total of about 170,000 homes had been powerless during the day, but FPL was able to restore electricity to many. By 9:47 p.m., 16,000 Broward residents remained without power.

"We go out and get them fixed between feeder bands, but the bands are getting closer and closer together, so we're not able to do as much,'' FPL spokesman Bill Swank said. "At some point, we won't be able to keep going out. We'll have to wait until the storm passes.''

The powerlines usually are often disrupted when debris, such as tree branches or metal sheeting, knocks them down and cuases them to short out.

``We can expect widespread, extensive power outages. There will likely be millions of people without power. And with a slow moving storm, crews won't even be able to start restoration for a while,'' said Craig Fugate, state emergency operations chief.

``Power is going to go out, and for a lot of people, and for more than just a few days.''

Posted by Michael at September 3, 2004 10:27 PM