About this time 2 years ago...

[Opal storm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI_mE85dWM4

Cindy was making landfall along SE LA/MS and there was a little devil brewing in the Caribbean. I actually remember waking up that morning and looking at that track for Dennis and was like...are you serious? lol

Little did we know that Cindy and Dennis were only making way for much bigger things to come later in the season.

[Dionne]

Summer of 2005.....lets see......daughter was in her final semester at USM......big wedding plans going on.......hmmmmm, what else?......oh yeah, I remember now.....the wind blew really hard on August 29.....thats the day all our trees went bye-bye. I remember that I didn't sleep for several days. And some how or another I ended up in a place that looked more like a war zone.......except we had chain saws instead of M-16's.

I'm still having trouble dealing with the mistakes we made those first few days. Your basic "no plans equals poor results".....

It won't happen again......I'll be running like my hair is on fire.

[wzrgirl1]

Yeah you tend to learn your lesson after you have been through it one time, after that you almost get obsessed....at least I did after Wilma. I have quite a few tubs filled with supplies and every year I gather more. This year it was the battery operated fans.

[Dionne]

Ya know what I really want? My own low voltage system......wind and sun into the same batteries. Big Caterpillar storage batteries. Imagine being able to run a small tv, radio and communications on a 12 volt system.....immediately after a disaster? There are even 12 volt submersible pumps available. The options are endless.

[chadtm80]

Formed July 3, 2005
Dissipated July 7, 2005
Highest
winds 75 mph (120 km/h) (1-minute sustained)

Lowest pressure 991 mbar (hPa; 29.28 inHg)
Fatalities 1 direct, 2 indirect
Damage $320 million (2005 USD)
$330.67 million (2006 USD)
Areas
affected Yucatán Peninsula, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana

[CrazyC83]

Hard to believe that was just a prelude to what lied ahead...

[BigO]

I enjoyed riding Cindy out in NOLA. It wasn't a particularly dangerous situation (it was considered a strong TS and later deemed Cat 1) and the storm was fun to watch. Lost power for about 8 hours, didn't have to go to work the next day. Stayed up all night and watched her blow through.

[cajungal]

Cindy fell on my mom's birthday, so she was not able to do anything that year. I had to work that night until closing time which is 9 p.m. Had my little 2-door Honda Civic at the time. I had to really grip on the steering wheel and had big tree branches flying all round it. Finally got home and went to take a shower, lights kept flickering. But, they never went out. It never got bad at all here in Terrebonne Parish. The worse was just to my east in Lafouche Parish. Dad was working offshore near Venice at the mouth of the MS River. 90 mph wind gusts rocked him and he had to hold on to a pipe for dear life.

Dennis hit only 3 weeks before my scheduled vacation to Destin, Florida. Just had a feeling months before I scheduled my vacation that a hurricane was going to hit near Destin. Still went on my vacation as scheduled for the week of August 4-11th. We stayed at Pelican Beach Resort which is the downtown Destin area. It was not much damage at all. except for the tanning deck and the hot tub. which was not a big deal at all since they also own the condos next door and we got to use their hot tub. The beach was still gorgeous! Even the beachfront tiki bar escaped with no damage!

[baygirl_1]

I remember Cindy. We went to bed thinking it wouldn't be so bad as she was "just" a tropical storm. We were awakened about 2 hours later and thought our roof was going to come down around us! The rain was falling so hard and the wind was howling! We turned on the TV to find the TV meteorologist telling us about radar-indicated tornadoes all over the place. Our oldest was 5 and the youngest was just a baby. I had them with me in the closet for a time. DH was too cool to come into the closet until it appeared like a tornado was imminent! It certainly wasn't on the scale of a major hurricane, but that was a scary night.
I should add that my ultra-stubborn mother refused to even get out of bed! The woman is something else sometimes.

[AnnularCane]

Cindy hit pretty suddenly, as I recall. I remember being up late (well, before midnight...not that late for me) the night she hit, on the computer before going to bed, as usual. It had been raining that evening, but nothing overly unusual, but suddenly, right out of the blue, I started hearing all these gusts of wind, and the gate even slammed open (at least it sounded like it). It was weird how fast it came up. The power went out shortly afterwards, and then I just decided to go to bed. I spent the night sleeping from time to time, and then the rest of the night lying awake and listening to her howling outside. At one point, maybe around 4 a.m., I turned the radio on, but oddly there wasn't anything on the storm until maybe an hour later. At least I couldn't find anything.

[beachbum_al]

I remember all too well. Governor Riley order mandatory evacuations for us in South Alabama.

[CrazyC83]

2 years ago today: Dennis made final landfall AND Emily was born as TD5.

[baygirl_1]

I remember all too well. Governor Riley order mandatory evacuations for us in South Alabama.

Beachbum - Wasn't that Dennis that Riley ordered the mandatory evacuation for? One came pretty quickly after the other: Cindy was shortly after 4th of July and then Dennis was less than a week later.

[Opal storm]

I believe this footage was taken in Pensacola during landfall.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIqftfAa960