Well, apparentyly I made it through TWO major (high dollar) hurricanes in the last three weeks. Must not have made the National news as I did not hear from any of my friends. Not to worry, all is well. I do sort of feel like that third little pig though, you know, the one in the brick house. When Charlie came through, it was quite windy with very little rain, not unlike a very rought thunderstorm (Florida style). I had about zero damage, and did not even lose power (or Dish Network). The same can't be said for people just 22 miles east. Major damage in some of the older but still ritzy places in Orlando. Cow-town (Kissimmee) pretty close to Disney was just about destroyed. A good many of the 70 or 80 year old oaks just could not take the 105 mile an hour sustained wind. It seems when they fell, they either took out the power lines, or part of a house, or both. Many of the older streets in Orlando, and Winter Park (suburb) are lined with these old oaks that had been protected during various construction and development projects. Oak trees in sandy soil don't have a very good root support. At smaller sizes this is not a problem, but when the trees get large...... the roots just can't support this tree when it gets wet and blown around by the wind.
Frances came in looking like a really bad, bad storm. It was quite large in physical size also. It looked like this would be the storm that central Florida has anticipated/feared for so long. It has been our destiny, so to speak, to finally get clobbered. To make matters worse, this storm was very, very slow. When Charlie came by, it literally traversed the state in just a few hours. This storm, due to its size and speed (lack thereof) would take in excess of 30 hours to totally pass..... that is until it just plain stopped moving. It sat off of Palm Beach (roughly) for hours and hours, stationary. It was just spinning and spinning. Tossing out feeder band after feeder band. Each one bringing some rain, and really stout gusts of wind. We were on the bad side of the storm. We were going to be NE of the eye when it finally passed. The only good thing so far is that this storm died before it hit land. It dropped from 145 mph to just over 105 mph. At 105 mph, my house should take a little damage, but be ok. Winds of 145 mph, well, I might not be here to write this letter. Well, this side of the storm did not bring the rain that was anticipated. That was good. We seemed to have faired well. Then as the storm passed, we began to feel very high winds. Much higher than before. And much more rain. The rain was sideways, and the wind was nearly steady at 60 mph. This lasted for about 10 hours. This was truly the worst of the storm (for me). I checked out the house today, and all is well.
Now it seems another Hurricane is headed my way, and while still early... it is heading directly to the state of Florida. Current models show it hitting Florida on Sunday, or Monday. Currently it is a catagory 3 storm. We had three named hurricanes in August that went on to hit the state of Florida. Now, we have another in September that appears to be earmarked for Florida. In the last 3 weeks I have had the eye of two hurricanes within 30 miles of my house. I am beginning to think this is personal! (grin)
Anyways, all is well here, and I hope the same is with you and yours.
Bob and Kay