Friday, October 11, 2024

Good afternoon! Well, Hurricane Milton was something we’ve never seen the likes of in Florida!. Although we didn’t have any here, this hurricane spawned long track tornadoes on the east coast of Florida. That’s the opposite side of the State the as hurricane made landfall on Siesta Key.  Some of those hurricanes were EF2 … not anything we were familiar with here. Palm Beach Gardens had extensive damage to homes and property from tornadoes. 

In our area, we had sustained winds of 35 to 40 mph with gusts to 69. I took a video and posted it on Facebook showing the wind driving the rainwater down our street. It looked as if waves were in the middle of the road. We heard the loud screeching of the wind and a few crash bang booms during the evening and knew tree branches had come down.  

Wednesday at 1 o’clock in the morning, our power went out. Mark was looking out the window and saw a blue flash from the powerlines outside our house. Although we have a generator, that was no time to go out to get it started. Ha ha.  So, we had a night of eerie noises from the wind and the rain as we tried to get some sleep. 

The next morning, we couldn’t believe the tree debris that was on our street. The wind from the north had taken several huge branches from our sweetgum tree and strewn them along the road. Our backyard looked like a bomb had gone off. Branches, Spanish moss, and  Leaf debris were all over. 

However, our fence remained intact, the boat was tied up, and no significant damage that we could spot early on. At this point, we still have not been on the roof of the boathouse nor the house to see if there’s any damage. 

Since the rain had quit, we took the dogs for a nice walk and checked out the mayhem. We noticed on the way back down our street that one of our tree branches was hanging on the powerlines in front of our neighbors house. From a distance, it looks like a Christmas tree sitting on top of the  power pole. 😂

That branch was 18 feet long and had come from our 75 to 80 foot tall sweet gum tree. That would be what had shut off our power and caused the blue flash that Mark saw from the house. 

So for the past two days, our house has been a maze of extension cords running to the kitchen and sunroom refrigerators and a portable air conditioner. So we have been camping inside the house. Mark had bought us headlamps and we look like a couple of miners walking around. 

This morning, we went over to repair a panel on Nancy‘s shed. One of the roof panels had blown off. After getting the panel screwed back on, It we discovered her entire ridge vent was gone from the shed. Fortunately, there is no rain forecast this week so we can pick up a vent for her and get it installed. So we spent a few hours helping her clean up the backyard. Some of the branches from her cypress trees were pretty huge and had to be cut up. We used the golf cart with a piece of plywood cinched down on top of the dogs cage to haul debris to the front yard. That saved a lot of steps and made the job somewhat easier. We will go back tomorrow and finish up the backyard for her. 

When we got back home for lunch our power had been restored! Yay!! 

Turning the news on we were shocked to see the extreme damage to our beautiful Sunshine State. It’ll be years before rebuilding is complete. Construction codes will be changed just as they were after 1992 Andrew wiped out Homestead. 

We’re thankful we have little damage in our spot.