Paula, as you know the bridges close after the wind increases to over 45 mph gusts and that means everything south of Highway 20 is cut off from the rest of the County. Your best bet for an airport is probably Panama City (fewer bridges to navigate than from Ft. Walton Beach or Pensacola). But that is no guarantee that they will let you in if there is significant damage. I should give you my brother's cell phone number. He is a Walton County elected official and can always get past evacuation barriers. I will PM you. He is also a very good source of information during and immediately following storms, because he's part of the emergency volunteer effort and so part of the Countywide communications network.
Right before Hurricane Dennis and after the evacuation was in place, an emergency Chelco worker was on the beach at Grayton and noticed the housekeeper/storm prep crew ( :roll: ) had left an unprotected upper window wide open. He knew the house was ours, so called my brother, who thankfully drove down and closed the window and took care of a few other problems (BBQ grill left right in front of a plate glass window). In fact, we have retained a local able-bodied man to do storm prep for us this year. I just don't think that housekeeping is a good choice for this task. My goodness...they have to drive in from somewhere in or near Alabama and why would someone do this when a storm is on the way? Feeble efforts, at best.
I am dismayed that we are already thinking about hurricanes that are probably six months away. The best we can do is to be prepared and hope that our luck holds. I recall very few instances where hurricanes made a direct hit in South Walton throughout my FL childhood. In fact, Opal and Ivan are the only two really problematic ones that I can recall. Most of them tend to move consistent with their counterclockwise movement towards the AL/MS/LA coast, unless there is a strong high moving in from the NW that guides them due north from the Gulf. There is no way of knowing. Just stay prepared to the extent that you can from a distance, and remember the season of 2005, which was a record-setting year but also a year that we had little or no property damage. The beaches will renourish themselves, if we can just leave Mother Nature alone. The sea walls and plastic tubes are a very ill-advised effort at mitigating storm surge damage.
We have resolved for 2006 to be prepared and to hang in there, both from the standpoint of storms in the Gulf and in the market!
Right before Hurricane Dennis and after the evacuation was in place, an emergency Chelco worker was on the beach at Grayton and noticed the housekeeper/storm prep crew ( :roll: ) had left an unprotected upper window wide open. He knew the house was ours, so called my brother, who thankfully drove down and closed the window and took care of a few other problems (BBQ grill left right in front of a plate glass window). In fact, we have retained a local able-bodied man to do storm prep for us this year. I just don't think that housekeeping is a good choice for this task. My goodness...they have to drive in from somewhere in or near Alabama and why would someone do this when a storm is on the way? Feeble efforts, at best.
I am dismayed that we are already thinking about hurricanes that are probably six months away. The best we can do is to be prepared and hope that our luck holds. I recall very few instances where hurricanes made a direct hit in South Walton throughout my FL childhood. In fact, Opal and Ivan are the only two really problematic ones that I can recall. Most of them tend to move consistent with their counterclockwise movement towards the AL/MS/LA coast, unless there is a strong high moving in from the NW that guides them due north from the Gulf. There is no way of knowing. Just stay prepared to the extent that you can from a distance, and remember the season of 2005, which was a record-setting year but also a year that we had little or no property damage. The beaches will renourish themselves, if we can just leave Mother Nature alone. The sea walls and plastic tubes are a very ill-advised effort at mitigating storm surge damage.
We have resolved for 2006 to be prepared and to hang in there, both from the standpoint of storms in the Gulf and in the market!
