SIDE SALAD - Everything crunchy is good.

TAKING A DEEP BREATH

Hurricane Frances continues to rumble toward the Florida peninsula. People are hearing words like, "140 mph" and "mandatory evacuation" and "worse than Charley" and not really taking it well.

I went to buy a generator last night, just to have one. Sold out. And we're not even along the east coast. A worker at Costco told me that they got 15 in yesterday and they were gone in a blink. "One family bought three at one time for them and their family.''

My mom calls me yesterday morning to tell me about a new Web site someone at her work, Hurricane Alley. I look at it and get chills seeing these possible models of forecast paths:



This wind model also does not soothe me.

On Wednesday, the usual pre-storm e-mail pattern began, with me e-mailing friends in the path and friends around the country e-mailing me. They send well-wishes. I assure them we'll all be fine. I am not so sure.

I sent a note to my friend Eliot Kleinberg, author of "Black Cloud: The Great Hurricane of 1928," a book about the Okeechobee that devastated Florida.

Eliot is a reporter for The Palm Beach Post. I asked him how things were around the newsroom. He writes:

We're all pretty tense.

Most likely landfall is now looking like the Vero Beach area. If that happens Boca Raton, about 90 miles south, would get minimal hurricane force winds. Miami, about 150 miles south, would get almost almost nothing. But this damn storm has been all over the place on the forecasts so things could change quickly. The "cone of probability" is still anywhere from Miami to South Carolina.

I'm juggling hurricane coverage (I'm the lead reporter on hurricanes) and starting to prepare at home. Will probably starting bringing stuff in tonite and plan on putting up the shutters Thursday morning.

Even if it completely misses us, it just means the misery would be transferred to someone else. I have buddies all up the coast so I will not come out of this unscathed no matter what happens.

Please grab your editors by the shoulders and tell them that if the storm comes in as a Cat. 5 it could come straight across, level Brandon and slam downtown. You wouldn't get the surge you would have from a Charley, coming from the south, but could be a messy wind situation. Don't make the same mistake Orlando did. They were standing around the Orlando Sentinel newsroom watching Charley on TV when someone finally said, "Gee, it could come here!" By then winds were already 80 mph on International drive.