721 Hurricane Milton: Live Report with Rayanne Buchianico

[Uncle Marv]
Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with a very special report on this Tuesday, basically day two of the Hurricane Milton Watch, and we'll be doing a quick little update again and letting you all know what has transpired in the last 24 hours. I have to say, quite busy.

I did not realize many of you would pay that much attention to the broadcast and reach out to me afterwards, answered a lot of questions, and helped a lot of people understand things. Of course, I've also been dealing with some travel stuff, and I'll tell you that in just a minute. And some of you are like, Marv, why are you available and hanging out for stuff like this?

Well, two reasons. One, when we go into storm watch mode here, basically we don't do appointments, and we don't do anything unless it's an emergency. So my time in the office today is just communicating with clients, the ones that are still open, making sure we're all prepped, making sure that the remote options are available, and that we've got plans in place should they lose power or access to their building.

So that was a lot of today. The other thing that happened is today I originally was going to come on the air and do a very special Amazon live show. Today and tomorrow are Amazon Prime days, and I was going to use that in the hopes of getting some of you to support the show by purchasing through Amazon using the link on the podcast page.

So we're not going to really talk about that, but if you are somebody that's not affected by the storm and you're shopping on Amazon, head over to the page, click on the Amazon store link, save that as one of your favorites, and whenever you make a purchase, that will go to support the show. Nothing else that you have to do. Amazon takes care of it on the back end.

So just to give you a quick update on the storm itself. So of course I know that many of you have access to the news. I've given you a list of apps to follow, but as of 3.30 p.m., before I got on here, Hurricane Milton had been downgraded to a category four hurricane. It was previously a five. The sustained winds are still 155 miles per hour. The storm has sped up, slowed down, sped up.

It is currently moving east at 12 miles per hour towards the Gulf Coast. And the forecast shows Milton making landfall near Tampa Bay. And the models have it kind of right at Tampa Bay.

Some of them have it below Tampa Bay. I'm sure that a lot of the people in the Tampa area are hoping it goes below so that they don't have to deal with the storm surge coming up the bay, but that can all change. So if you're in those areas riding out the storm, please pay attention.

The projected landfall is around 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday morning. It originally was supposed to hit on Wednesday, but now it has been pushed back because the storm has slowed. And of course, the range can still be anywhere from, you know, Fort Myers all the way up to north of Tampa.

And there is a chance that it could return to a category five or it could stay where it is. Right now it is projected to hit Florida as a category three. So either a high-end category three, low-end category four.

Storm surge warnings are in effect for the coast, and we're talking in the range of 10 to 15 feet of what they call inundation. Basically, that is the storm surge that is projected. A lot of that depends on high tide versus low tide.

Rainfall is predicted to be anywhere in the area of six to eight inches of rain, with localized totals up to 15 inches. And I've told you how the last few days it has already been raining ahead of the storm. And to be honest, a lot of that rain, not part of Milton.

So we already have tons of rain. Even as I was driving around yesterday out and about in Fort Lauderdale, south of where the projected path is, we were flooded in a lot of areas because of the rain here. So I know that if we're flooded, there's a chance for a lot of stuff to happen north of us.

And then of course we've got the windfall, I'm sorry, the wind damage potential that is out there. In terms of evacuation orders, it has now been extended to a state of emergency to 51 counties. And most of the west coast of Florida has been ordered to evacuate away from the coast and to move inland.

Notable closures include the Tampa International Airport, which actually shut down this morning. Orlando International Airport will be ceasing operations tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. Melbourne International Airport will close at 2 p.m. tomorrow. And the reason I mention that is because that is the airport that my mom will be flying into.

Some of you know that I mentioned my family was in Louisiana. One of my mom's sisters is in the hospital not doing well with cancer. My mom, who also has cancer, was allowed to fly, but she had to be back for her dialysis and work there.

She actually was supposed to fly tomorrow. They were actually able to get a flight that just took off from Louisiana. They have to fly to Atlanta and they'll be flying into Melbourne tonight.

So she will not be stuck. So she will be home safe and sound with some good luck tonight. So that'll be taken care of.

Just in terms of people that I've spoken with, I've spoken to Mike Smith, who is in Orlando and hunkering out the storm there. One of my consultant friends, Sherry Borg, was in Texas and was at the Clio conference trying to fly back here to Fort Lauderdale. Was also able to get flights moved up to today.

My sister, the vice president of something, some of you may know, was able to get back last night with her son, Esam. So they are back in Fort Lauderdale. I've told you about my mom and all of that.

Also, hunkering down in Clearwater, Florida, is our good friend, Rayanne. So I am going to bring her in and we're going to talk about the state of Milton over there. Rayanne, how are you?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
I'm doing fine, Marv. How are you? And I'm sorry to hear about your aunt and your mother.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, thank you very much. And I'm going to put a little banner up here for those watching, reporting live from Clearwater, Florida. Too bad you're not able to stand outside.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Right. And so you can see the waving palm trees and everything in the background.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Maybe another time. I'll send you the footage from my security cameras.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So let me start with this because, you know, people have been asking me the last few days, you know, why are so many people staying in Florida? And, you know, whenever I go through a hurricane, people ask me, you know, are you ever going to evacuate?

And I've got, you know, my markers as to when I will leave. Yes, there is a point in time where if a certain size storm comes in as a direct hit, I'm out. But for the most part, anything up to a Category 3, I feel pretty safe and confident.

Category 4, depending on where it is, will stay through. You're staying in that area, which you have a bay. So there's a lot of potential for storm surge, flooding, and it's a possible 3 slash 4 storm.

So let me first ask, why are you staying?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Well, first of all, we are, if there is a high point in Clearwater, we're on it, right? Like, so we're right in the center of the peninsula. We've got plenty of space between us and the Gulf and plenty of space between us and the bay.

So we're far enough inland. We're not in a flood zone. We're hurricane, you know, hurricane grade windows.

But actually, we're not even going to be staying here. We're going to move over to the office building that we purchased a couple of years ago. We have a full building generator there, metal roof.

It's a solid, you know, bunker of a building. And we've got a full, you know, full kitchen upstairs, you know, two full baths. So we're going to be fine.

I would rather stay than participate in the mass panic that happened yesterday and the day before, people trying to get out of the state, you know, clogging up the roads. I mean, it was really bad. I think, you know, one of my coworkers, his daughter and her mother went from Largo to Atlanta, they started at 1.30pm in the afternoon yesterday, they got there at 5.30am this morning, driving straight through like, what should have been an eight to 10 hour drive was a 17 hour drive like crazy. So there was a lot of anyway, just I feel safe here. And like you, I feel like I can ride out a category three storm pretty easily. The fours and fives start to make me really, really nervous.

And if I were on the water, if I was in an evacuation zone, I'd be out. I saw what happened a couple of weeks ago with Helene. And I don't know if you've seen the pictures of what happened to the barrier islands and all along the bay.

Yeah, I, I run out of fingers when I start counting about the number of people I know that lost everything, their homes, their boats, their cars, you know, everything in that storm. So I would not do it if I was on.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, I did have some people in that area that I reached out to. I've heard from a couple of them, not everyone. One of my clients that has a house in Asheville, I heard this morning from them, they lost power for a few days, got that restored.

And what's funny, they're actually flying into Fort Lauderdale where their business is today to go through another hurricane. And luckily, it's not a direct path for us. But I just thought, why would you leave one place where there's disaster and go to the potential of another?

So anyway, let me ask this. You, you talked about the chaos and the mayhem. And we as Floridians understand it, you know, the run on plywood and water and stuff like that.

Explain for people who may not know and that, yeah, they'll ask us a question. They have listened to our answers. But if you had to describe to someone what life is like riding up to a hurricane, what has it been?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Well, you want to stay away from the grocery stores. And that's probably my number one thing. If I didn't get what I needed last week or over the weekend, I'm not going.

I'm going to live without it until the end because it's real. The gas lines are down the street, you know, waiting in line to get gasoline. People just trying to, you know, trying to gather as quickly as possible the, you know, the important and valuable things in their life so that they can go to wherever they will feel safe to ride out the storm.

Some people are going to local shelters. Some are going inland to like Orlando, which I think is where the storm's going to hit as soon as it leaves us. And then, you know, others are heading north, others are heading south.

So, you know, everybody has their own plan B. My plan B is to, you know, sit quietly in my space, ride it out. I can go a couple of days without power.

You know, I can survive with pretty minimal, you know, things.

[Uncle Marv]
Is there a point in time where if it really gets bad that you end up leaving?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
By that point, it's going to be too late to go in.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I'm not talking about like in the middle of the storm and stuff, but I mean, after the storm has passed and you, you know, come out of the rubble and stuff, I mean, is there, you know, do you, is there a point in time where afterwards you say, you know what, I can't stay here?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
If that happens, like my parents are up in Spring Hill, I would, I'd grab my cat, my family, and head up to Spring Hill. It's just an hour up the road, you know, and stay with them. I don't, I probably still wouldn’t go too far because, you know, I have to pick up the pieces eventually.

You know, if I leave, you know, I still have to come back and clean up the glass and the trees and the debris and all of that. The longer I push that off, the harder it's going to be.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Now you've been in Florida a while. How many times do you think you've been through something like this before?

And has it ever been this much of an emphasis with an impact being direct in your area?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Irma was probably the one that, when was that, 2017, I think. Irma was the one that got, that probably got us the closest. We were out of power for a week.

We actually left at the very last minute. And fun fact, if you wait until everybody else evacuates, and you wait, you know, until the morning that the storm's expected to hit, all of the roads are empty. You know, there's no tolls.

You can hop on the interstate and be across, you know, across the other coast in like two hours. And, you know, nobody's in your way. At least that was my experience.

So yeah, Irma made me go. But I was here in 2004 when every other hurricane hit Florida. We had Charlie, we had Francis, we had Daniel, Earl.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, all of those.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
We had, yeah, we had all of them, but Katrina, I think, but Katrina was the following year. But yeah, so we've been through it quite a bit. And they really don't scare me generally.

But sometimes, you know, you start looking at the size and the punch that it packs, and you're like, man, maybe I shouldn't go.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Well, Irma was 2017, and that was a Category 4 storm, and mainly impacted the Keys and southwest Florida, and it did get up to your area. The damage was an estimated 50 billion by Irma.

And I've heard reports that people were trying to say this could be the most damaging storm to hit Florida ever. And I was like, I don't know. Andrew was a pretty big storm.

But, you know, the damage is, Andrew's one of those storms where we didn't keep good enough records of stuff. And the estimates was just under 30 billion, but it was a Category 5. It went through fast.

The biggest storm, let's see, Ian was a Category 4, estimated at about 50 billion. Wilma, 2005, was 21 billion. And Michael, but there were some others that were just, and to be honest with you, I've been through all these.

My first storm after moving back to Florida, I had been through David in 79 in the central Florida area, but when I moved to Fort Lauderdale, Andrew hit the fall that I moved down. So I've been through all of those. I was here 12 days without power when Wilma came through, and that was just horrible.

So.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Ian was just last year, right?

[Uncle Marv]
Ian, yes. No, 2022. 2022 was Ian.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Okay. There was another one that came last year.

[Uncle Marv]
I don't think that I only listed the top five that hit Florida directly with the most damage.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
I don't think we had any damage. We lost our fence in Helene. We were actually planning to have the fence replaced.

So good thing they didn't start this week. I think they're starting next week.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So are there neighbors that are also staying? What's the vibe like around you?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
It's pretty much, it's a ghost town. Our next door neighbors, they left the ones across the street. They were visiting family in Utah and they were supposed to come back yesterday.

We told them to stay. So they're still out of town. Down the street, there's a flood zone at the top of a hill.

We don't have very many hills in Clearwater, but we're at the top of one. But at the bottom of the street, there's a tiny little lake and that flooded really badly during Helene. So everybody down there has already been evacuated because they're in flood zone A.

So the roads are empty. It looks a little eerie, but I think the grocery stores and the gas line, the gas stations were still pretty busy this morning. So that'll die down too.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Any advice you would give to somebody if they were thinking of staying and riding out a storm?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Don't stay in a flood zone. If you've been evacuated, go. If you're in a mobile home or something or anything that's less than a solid block house, get out, especially in a Category 3 or better.

You could probably survive in a Category 2. In Florida, they changed the building codes. I don't know if you know this, back around 2003, and they require certain hurricane-ready construction.

So if you're in a pretty new house, chances are your building is going to stay right where it is, like there. But if you're in a mobile home park and your mobile home was built in 1979, you should probably go.

[Uncle Marv]
Yep. We live in Fort Lauderdale.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
One of the things that I learned from Irma was that we have all of our documents.

[Uncle Marv]
You have all your documents?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Are you still there?

[Uncle Marv]
Are you there?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Everything is electronic. So all of our documents are, yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me?

[Uncle Marv]
Yep, I can hear you.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Am I back?

[Uncle Marv]
Yep, you're back.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Okay, good. So like I was saying, one of the things we learned from Irma was everything's in the cloud. Everything, everything is in the cloud.

And in our business this week, we had to prioritize all of the things that we absolutely had to get done and get them done as early as possible. Our clients' employees still needed to be paid. We had to make sure payroll was done.

Their bills had to be paid. We had to make sure accounts payable was done. And we just kind of went through the entire list of all of our clients and who absolutely needs something done this week.

Let's get it done before Wednesday so that if we do lose power, they don't suffer. It's probably very similar to an MSP, like making sure that they have their failovers set and they have their backup plans and anything that they need should they lose power or access to their data.

[Uncle Marv]
Fun times for us to make sure our clients are ready, sometimes at the expense of keeping ourselves ready. So not fun times, but glad you were able to plan ahead.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
There's a couple of emotional things that I think that everybody goes through. First of all, everybody's on edge. Try to keep that in check because it's real easy to just, you're stressed out, you're wound up tighter than a rubber band.

Often it's easy to just forget that and snap at somebody when it's really not that person that you're angry at or even upset with. You're just, you've had it. So the stress level is pretty high and people often don't think about that.

You're just so busy doing and moving and getting things up off the floor and putting things away and packing up a bag to go and you're running around and you don't even notice the stress until it sneaks up on you.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, just like any situation. If you had a disaster in a network, same thing, stay calm. Hopefully you've prepared for this as best you can, control what you can and just keep moving forward.

So, Rheanne, thank you very much. Before we leave, I want to, for people that are watching the video, I do want to go ahead and bring up the map so people can see what we're looking at. And we've got Hurricane Milton that is coming off the coast there of...

[Rayanne Buchianico]
It's the Yucatan.

[Uncle Marv]
The Yucatan Peninsula. And it's starting to make that northeastern turn and head up. And again, the cone of concern, they call it.

Everybody focuses on the middle, which looks like it's coming in just below Tampa Bay. But anywhere inside the cone from north of Spring Hill down to Cape Coral is where the storm could hit. And the lower it hits, the more that there will be a chance that we get affected down here in South Florida.

The more north it goes, obviously the worse for Tampa, Orlando and that area up the I-4 corridor. But head over to any of your local authorities, any of your local weathermen, weather ladies, and get your information from them. And we wish everybody the best.

I should probably say that some crazy people that we know here, the Millers, are getting ready to take a cruise. And if I remember correctly, they're flying down to Miami. I don't remember when, unless they're already on the cruise.

But we don't get back until Friday. So hopefully we won't miss it. They may already be gone.

The Millers are all over the place. So that's it. Well, Rayanne, thank you very much.

And good luck. Stay safe. We'll see you after the storm.

Check in and make sure things are okay. And if all is well, are we going to see you at the ASCII Edge, the cup, at the end of the month?

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Yes, I will be at ASCII Edge because it's right here in St. Petersburg. And I'll also be at DattoCon later at the end of the month. So hopefully, I will see you at one or both of those places.

[Uncle Marv]
You'll see me at both.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
And I'll check in with you, Mark, just to let you know how we do.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Sounds great.

[Rayanne Buchianico]
Thank you for your concern. And see you on the other side.

[Uncle Marv]
See you on the other side. That's it, folks. Thank you very much for hanging out.

We might be back with an update tomorrow. I don't know yet. We'll see how things go.

But we will be back with the Wednesday live show at 8pm tomorrow night. And we'll check you out later. Until then, holla!