Well as many of you may know from watching the news, a big bad hurricane has passed over my new hometown of Orange Beach, Alabama.  There were many people that ran scared fom this hurricane, just because of some silly "mandatory evacuation" that was in effect from the governor.  Ha!  "Mandatory Evacuation."

Many people did leave southern Alabama because they were all scared that Ivan would hurt them.  But not me.  Though I wasn't literally there when Ivan HIT, per se.  I mean, I did forget some hurricane supplies in Ludington, Michigan, so I did kinda had to leave a couple days before the hurricane hit to get my favorite hurricane flashlight and hurricane blanket which just happened to be left at my parents house 1100 miles away to the north.  And of course, I did pack all of my earthly belongings in my car just in case I needed to use any of them on the trip to Ludington.

Once in Ludington, there really was no time to lose by driving all the way back to Alabama.  Ivan is a FIERCE storm and I knew I would just have to bunker down right then and there and tough out the storm from Ludington. 

Waves of nearly 25 to 30 centimeters were reported on Lake Michigan, no doubt part of the storm surge from Ivan the Terrible.  There were also torrential rains reported in Ludington Wednesday night, which was due to the deadly outer ring of Ivan which brought us several tenths of an inch of rain by the end of the night.  Winds reached near-hurricane force as thousands of pieces of loose debris which consisted mostly of grains of sand whipped over the local state park dunes.

Overall, we hurricane victims in Ludington were pretty lucky.  The damage could have been a LOT worse.  As it is now well into Thursday morning, experts are still surveying the damage.  If the experts are not too lazy, we will bring you some photos of the extensive damage that this hurricane caused to the residents of Ludington, Michigan.