this entry was last updated on 09.05.2004 @ 3:50 PM EDT

After getting the munchkin safely tucked away for the evening, I've been frantically working to launch a design (and Todd's been frantically gaming) into the wee hours. Who knows when we'll be afforded this luxury again if the Florida west coast sees power outages tomorrow like the east coast has today.

Now that Hurricane Frances has finally come ashore and her path has pretty much been set once and for all, we have no choice but to sit back 'n' brace for what's to come.

In the event of dogs and cats actually living together, Sporty has been given the power to enact the Emergency Blogcast System over here at Shutterblog. Hopefully that won't be necessary, but just in case, we're good prepared l'il Scouts. Take care everyone. And please remember when rotating — do so in an orderly, counter-clockwise direction. We'll see ya' on the flip-side!

-Robyn and Todd

Other Frances-related entries here, here, here and here.

UPDATE (7:45 a.m. EDT): Well it's now Sunday morning and we still have power and are doing fine. However, a big feeder band is on the way — and the now-sloppy eye should be here sometime early this afternoon, so who knows how long this will last. Thanks to everyone who's written to check in on us! We'll do our best to update here as we can!

UPDATE 2 (11:50 a.m. EDT): We still have power, but with over 60,000 people in our county without right now, not sure how long that will last... We just had about 1,000 emergency sirens fly by. Don't know what that's all about. They say we're getting windgusts up to 50mph, although at the moment things are pretty still here. Just wet (and that won't change any time soon). The center of Frances should pass pretty much directly over our neighborhood later this afternoon. I'm starting to worry about Seki and family since it seems they're in the thick of it now. More updates as / if I can...

UPDATE 3 (1:10 p.m. EDT): Just shot a couple of quick videos at 1 p.m. EDT in case you're bored and want to share in the Frances-fun (video 1, video 2). Our trees are beginning to rock and sway on a steady basis. Todd went to Subway (one of the few places still open) for lunch so we can save our non-perishables for when / if we lose power later. The main road in front of our neighborhood already had two big trees down to the side of it, and there was a lot of small debris strewn about. A small glimpse of bigger things to come, I'd imagine...

UPDATE 4 (1:45 p.m. EDT): Our Channel 8 weather guy just measured Frances at 364 miles across horizontally, and 478 miles across vertically. THAT is a big hurricane / tropical storm!

UPDATE 5 (3:35 p.m. EDT): We've had a few minor power-flickers, but no outages yet. Of course this thing is moving a bit slower than they expected and the center is not on top of us yet. The winds and rains have picked up more since the video I posted a couple of hours ago. If it gets much worse, I'll shoot more footage... But we're still here and still doing fine. For now!

UPDATE 6 (3:50 p.m. EDT): Governor Bush said it best in a press conference that just aired. Anyone caught mentioning [Ivan] by name in Tallahassee automatically has to cough up $5 for the disaster relief collection jar.