I can’t believe UCF is taking SO long to make a decision on classes and other activities for this week! USF (just 100 miles away in Tampa) announced class cancellations and campus closing yesterday, and their students are making their ways home safely.
I’ve lived in Florida most of my life, have worked in emergency management, and I fully understand the process of evaluating hurricane probabilities and making decisions. But I also understand that those decisions must be made in a timely manner, because airlines stop flying, trains and buses stop running, and it’s not safe to be on the road once tropical storm force winds arrive. In addition, large sections of Florida are already in flash flood warning status because of rains expected far in advance of the arrival of the worst part of the storm.
UCF needs to wake up and make their decision. This delay is putting our kids at risk.
I’m in Lakeland, closer to the storm than UCF, and our school district (Polk) still hasn’t made a decision. Parents are getting frustrated! Colleges in Lakeland:
Florida Southern College is closed for the entire week.
Southeastern University is closed Wednesday - Friday.
Florida Poly hasn’t made a decision.
Edited:
Our schools are now closed Tuesday and Wednesday and will reassess for later in the week.
Florida Poly cancelled classes Tues - Fri.
The other thing with UCF is that this weekend is Parents Weekend, so a lot of people and a lot of activities. The Knights are scheduled to play SMU in the Bounce House Saturday afternoon.
All of that complicates the decision – but it’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you don’t want to cancel big events unnecessarily. On the other however, SMU may not be able to fly in, and parents run the risk of coming in and getting stuck in Orlando.
But just this morning, the storm track has inched a little more to the east, which slightly increases the risk to UCF (and Lakeland).
And…Ian is currently expected to reach Category Four strength and decrease slightly to Cat 3 just before approaching the Tampa area. And…Ian is going to slow down dramatically about that same time. If you shuffle through the possibilities of all that, there are several scenarios and none of them are good.
UPDATE: Classes are canceled Wed-Fri of this week at UCF. They sent a UCF Alert a little while ago.
Additional info: No classes Friday, but many campus operations will resume on Friday.
This weekend is Family Weekend. Most Family Weekend event scheduled for Friday are canceled, but those scheduled for Saturday and Sunday will be held.
The football game between the Knights and SMU will be played as scheduled at 3:30 PM on Saturday at the Bounce House. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 and ESPNU.
in the midwest; scheduled to fly to PNS on tues - fri for a conference. thoughts? pensacola looks like it is right on the edge of the hurricane zone - does the edge experience bad weather? thanks for any thoughts ~
As far as the storm itself is concerned, I think you’ll be fine. Pensacola is outside the “Cone of Uncertainty” and what’s left of the storm will be in Ga/SC by Saturday.
You could run into some issues with airlines repositioning aircraft and crews, but that should also be over where you are going by Saturday.
Just FYI, all of the models have been moving East (away from Pensacola) for the last couple of days, and that’s the direction storms normally recurve.
They start out going west, curve NW, N, NE and away…normally. As if there is such a thing as a “normal” hurricane.
UCF escaped significant damage, but at least one off-campus apartment complex (Arden Villas) was badly flooded. Flooded like to the extent of ruining some residents’ cars in the parking lot.
All Family Weekend events were canceled, classes were canceled Wednesday through Friday at first. Then later, Saturday classes were also canceled. The whole campus was closed on Wednesday and nobody but on-campus residents could enter.
UCF is reassessing and will probably open campus on Saturday if everything is safe.
The UCF-SMU football game was rescheduled from Saturday to Sunday.
There has been a good bit of criticism of the UCF administration on social media over the decision-making process.
Their delays did, in fact, force many out of town students to choose between remaining in the path of the storm at UCF or driving home in very hazardous conditions. That was not a good look for UCF at all.
Grateful to hear UCF didn’t suffer significant damage and hope everyone is safe! I am curious to know what, if any, plan or assistance was offered to on-campus students this week. What did students, especially OOS students, do to keep safe? My son is considering UCF from OOS (and would be living on campus without a car…and now that I think about it, he’d be too young to be able to rent a car). We don’t have friends or family in Florida. It makes me wonder what his options would have been if he had been a freshman in a dorm this week. Once they canceled classes, was it even possible to get last minute flights?
When my daughter as at school on the space coast, I think there were 4 hurricanes. For the first one (two?) she evacuated to NJ with her boyfriend. For one they (including his brother and with advice from his parents) went to Orlando. Orlando took the direct hit rather than the space coast. My nephew happened to be in Orlando for a convention and had to stay. There was a lot of damage to Orlando and its hotels and my daughter’s house in Melbourne didn’t even lose electricity. ALL the big weather people were in Melbourne (Al Roker, Ginger Zee), literally standing on the corner of her street, but no hit at all.
Sometimes it is better to stay put and other times to evacuate. The colleges just didn’t know.
@JP2023 UCF cancelled classes Monday morning. I don’t know how much earlier they could have given notice. As of Monday, there was still a lot of wiggle room in the track that Ian would follow. Up until Monday, the predictions showed that Ian could have landed hundreds of miles from where it did. I live not too far from Orlando and we were told NOT to get on the highway. Orlando is where a lot of people from the west coast evacuated to. MCO announced Tuesday afternoon that they were closing at 10:30 am on Wednesday, so I suppose it’s possible that one could have booked a flight out before then.
Thanks @twoinanddone and @bouders! I didn’t mean UCF should have known and/or canceled classes any earlier than they did…I was just questioning if it’s even an option on short notice to evacuate by air. I imagine there were few flights and am guessing students without cars had to stay in the dorms. Does anyone know if there were many students who did this?
@JimDadinmia Sorry, I left out a word. UCF announced classes would be cancelled later in the week on Monday morning. No one is forced to attend classes at any institution I’ve every been associated with, and there have been quite a few.
Here’s the official UCF announcement – at 4:21 PM Monday. Prior to that, they only sent out info that they were monitoring the storm and were in contact with the US Weather Service.
They later announced class cancellations for Saturday.
@JP2023 – hurricanes are a total non-issue in considering attending UCF.
First, remember that Hurricane Ian has correctly been described as a “500-year event.” It was an incredibly strong storm, a vastly large storm in geographic scope, and it was very slow-moving. For the uninitiated, all of those are bad things.
Second, remember that UCF is well inland, not on the coast. Hurricane Ian made landfall more than 140 miles from UCF. Ian hit the Ft. Myers area with 155 mph winds, gusting higher. The strongest winds in the UCF area were <60 mph.
The closest point of the Gulf of Mexico is more than 100 miles from UCF, and the Atlantic is 40+ miles. So anything that hits UCF is going to be greatly weakened.
Ian caused inland flooding in the Orlando area because it was so slow-moving. For comparison, Hurricane Andrew was moving 18 mph when it hit South Dade county in 1992; Ian was moving 7-8 mph. That makes a huge difference in interior flooding.
Also remember that your son will not be alone at UCF. By the end of his first week, he will have new best friends – some of whom will probably live in Florida and will have cars. So he’s not going to be dependent on flights out of the area (which would be next to impossible).
And if he stays at UCF, he will be safe. All of the UCF buildings are relatively new, very solidly constructed, and will easily withstand hurricanes.
The other many, many wonderful things about UCF hugely outweigh any worries about occasional tropical weather systems. Truth be told, for the students, storms are really more excuses for parties than legitimate threats.
@JP2023 , one other thing about living on campus without a car. It is SUPER-DOABLE.
The campus is very walkable and the layout is great no matter where a student lives.
Plus UCF has an amazing FREE bus system:
Main campus buses – a whole herd of buses which constantly circle the campus providing quick access to every part of the campus.
Buses to other campuses – very frequent buses to Lake Nona medical campus, the Rosen hospitality campus, and the downtown Orlando campus.
Grocery buses – every Tuesday, there is a continuous bus which circles the campus and goes to a nearby Publix supermarket for grocery shoppers.
Off Campus Apartment buses – there are continuous buses to most of the nearby off-campus apartment complexes. These provide great service for off-campus apartment dwellers.
Also, at least for the last 3 years the UCF Student Government has provided two free Lyft rides for all students each month, provided the rides start on campus or in a pretty broad nearby range. Before we got her a car, my D used that service pretty frequently.
