I've been through four or five hurricanes. Never one like this. It is dead still here. Not a leaf blowing, nor has there been all day long. I just took some insurance pictures of the house...

We have plenty of DVD's, beer (yeah, this week's shot, so a beer or two won't kill) and we have lots of food stocked up. I thought I'd share this "excitement" with all you cool cats. I'll take pictures from the front and back windows of the house as the day progresses since I'm about to be a prisoner here from the storm.

I tucked my car on the side of the house (east side) to keep the trees on the driveway from dropping heavy branches on it. I'm going to park the wife's truck there, too, as soon as she's home, which should be any minute now. We're buckled in... now it's time for the ride!

Without further adieu...

good luck to you and your wife down there. Your commentary should be interesting and fun to watch.

It just got upgraded to a category 4 hurricane... 125 mph winds, sheesh! Good luck guys!

Holy cow. They've already got some serious storms coming this way. The computers are now on battery backups just in case. Here's the first serious storm cell, coming up from the south, attached below. The sky is very, very dark. The lightning is extremely severe as it heads this way.

It's starting to get scary. Charley really is coming right through here, and this is shaping up to be the worst one I've ever lived through. Right up Interstate 4. I have contingency plans in place... we have emergency bags packed, just in case... well, just in case the roof flies off. And as I say this, they're saying a tornado was already spotted on the south side of town near Disney World.

I remember hurricanes were just an adventure when I was a child... the first few hurricanes that came through where I grew up (near Kennedy Space Center) were nothing more than bad storms.

The winds are approaching Hurricane Andrew type winds. If you believe in a god, ask him to help us out tonight.

-R

Stay safe John and Bluestreak. I just saw that it's grown to 145 mph winds, that's 10 mph away from a category 5 (the most destructive category, for those outside of hurrican territory). They also reported that the storm surge (the level that the ocean rises around the eye) could be up to 20 feet, which would put a lot of Tampa Bay underwater.

Were you guys in FL during Andrew?

http://www.wral.com/hurricanes/3637019/detail.html

John and I should be fine, lest a tornado make our lives hell. Yes, it has 145-mph gusts, but by the time it gets to where we live, it will have had to travel over roughly 150 miles worth of land, and will lose a great deal of its punch by the time it gets to Orlando. We will likely see winds topping out around 100~110 mph, sustained around 50~60 mph.

I was living in Merritt Island/Cocoa Beach at the time of Andrew, in 1992. That's directly east of Orlando by about 45 miles. My family still lives there, and I'm very worried about them since Merritt Island is considered a "barrier island" and was issued an evacuation request about an hour ago. But I don't want them on the road, trying to get to Orlando either. Rock and a hard place, you know? My family is the quintessential Italian family; they look to that one "silverback" male to take care of them and make critical decisions. Since my father's passing, that responsibility has fallen on my shoulders. They look to me. I'm as scared as they are, and I can't let them know that...

But Merritt Island should be relatively safe. If we're going to see 50~60 mph winds sustained, they'll see much less than that being 50 miles away. I've lived through three hurricanes in that house; I grew up there. It has stood the storms to date... and this one will be easier on their house than the last hurricane, almost ten years ago.

These pics were taken just after the first feeder band crossed Orlando. Once again, it's strangely quiet outside but we all know the worst is yet to come. The rain band that came through produced one tornado somewhere near downtown (about a 15 minute drive, west of my house). The rain was incredible. I'd have snapped a picture of it, but I didn't want to be anywhere near the windows.

I'm going to take a nap now, while it's quiet outside so I have my energy for later.

-R

Infrared sattelite image of storm updated every 30 mins. (http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/FLOAT2/IR4/20.jpg)


Awesome sattelite picture of the 2 hurricanes (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/63581main_image_feature_205_sathi.jpg)

Good luck.

The first feeder band that hit us was a joke. Some hard rain and wind for about 4 minutes, but not even close to some of the thunderstorms we've had this past summer.

The second feeder band is about to hit. Lisa and I are just chilling and having some drinks. My biggest fear is that the electricity will go out before our pizzas are done cooking! :spaz:

*YAWN*.

Good nap.

Second feeder band is descending. The lightning is seriously popping and I'm wondering if I'll have power to keep you guys updated. It's nothing horrible on the rain side of things. My brother in law claims to have seen a tornado in Titusville (about 40 miles east). Other than that, I'm not even bothering looking out the window. It's just... raining a bit hard.

-R

Here in Satellite Beach (about 1 hour and 15 minutes South East of Orlando) it just started raining really hard. We are getting gusts of about 20-30 mph, which is nothing really, since we have had tons of storms this past summer that were worse. Like Bluestreak said, I'm only worried about tornados too.

This picture was worth sharing. If you look at the top of the white car, you can see where the pavement looks darker... that's because it's no longer a road, it's a canal. The culdesac was filling with water some, too.

But not a single, solid gust of wind yet. Lots 'n lots of lightning. According to my weather station, we've had 0.73" of rain in the current feeder band, 1.62" for the storm since 3pm. Nothin'. Like John said, we frequently get afternoon thundershowers that are worse than this here.

-R

Well, we had an eight foot fence panel come down. I think that is our only storm damage.
My parents on the other hand, have quite a bit more. They are going to have to get a new roof, one of their large trees is partially uprooted and leaning on the neighbors house. There is debris all over their yard and street.
That was all my dad could see last night. I hope it isn't any worse.

Charley was a tropical storm by the time it hit here in NC but here's a pic of the flooding it caused. He is 5'-4" tall and the water in the road is up to his knees.

I'm in wilmington, so charley didn't do too much, maybe 2 trees near my house fell, bunch of branches and pinecones all around, though. That hurricane moved very quick! It was just leaving florida when I went to bed, I wake up and it was on us. I went back to bed, woke up and it was sunny outside, wow. Backyard was flooded a little bit. Nothing like andrew tho long ago. I was 6 and in miami, so we got the eyeball.

Some "aftermath" pictures of my house.

My house is the grey one with the truck and the car on the side of it. You can see, if you look closely, through what's left of my trees, the roof damage. The entire vent cap was gone, as well as all the shingles and tar paper near the vent cap. I figure it was somewhere in the next county. The nose of my car, with the piece of the garage roof that was soaked from the lack of shingles, which came down on the car... there's a panoramic shot of my house with half of my tree on the FAR side of my yard, and my neighbor's 16" tree leaning on his house. And a picture of the beautiful silver maple that I often enjoy listening to sway in the breeze when I'm sitting in my hot tub many an evening... snapped like a toothpick. The tree will likely die, but I trimmed it and I can hope it'll survive.

I have other pictures at the house of what the place looks like now. I'll have to chime in with it later.

-R

That uprooted tree in the third pic is amazing.

That uprooted tree in the third pic is amazing.

We think we may have been skimmed by a tornado at one point that night. During the worst of the storm, there was a major change in atmospheric pressure nearby - so strong that both my wife and I felt our ears pop painfully. At that same moment, the wind picked up significantly (this is also when the moment when the garage roof collapsed). We could hear the roof creaking (I was truly afraid it was going to come off) and we grabbed our emergency bags and went into the interior bathroom for protection, as it's the only room in my house without windows. It was truly scary. Here's a better pic of the uprooted tree, and the piece of my tree that was dragged back and forth across my yard a half dozen times during the worst of the storm. It was thrashing about so much, I was worried it would come through that front window into my kitchen.

When I repaint the house this fall, I'm going to put lag-bolt anchors next to each window and custom cut some plywood to be stored in my shed. Next time we go through this, I'm boarding up.

Thanks for the pics and info. Glad to see you make it through ok.

We were lucky here (Palm Beach) No rain and some gusts here and there. I was expecting alot worse even though we were not in the direct path. I heard that there were lots of trees uprooted - I think it might have to do with the soil here and tornados - what do you think?

Thanks for the pics and info. Glad to see you make it through ok.

We were lucky here (Palm Beach) No rain and some gusts here and there. I was expecting alot worse even though we were not in the direct path. I heard that there were lots of trees uprooted - I think it might have to do with the soil here and tornados - what do you think?

I know we were hit by something - tornado, microburst, etc. My house was one of the few in my neighborhood spared a tree leaning on it. Problem, at least here, was that my neighborhood is less than 15 years old, so most of the trees are 12" or smaller and had relatively shallow root systems. To compound that, the 6.5" of rain we received in that 24 hours saturated the very sandy soil conditions we have. They just toppled once the soil couldn't support the torque the 20~25-ft tall trees were putting on it.

Some folks on the south side of Kissimmee/Orlando still don't have power and due to the rural nature of the area (we jokingly call it "Cow-ssimmee" down that way) they could be without up to another week. I thought we had it bad, four day w/o power. Imagine two weeks.

I have a couple of project sites down your way that I visited late last week. Other than a little loose debris, we didn't even miss a day of construction. They did send a few crews to assist with cleanup Mon/Tues, but that's just being a good neighbor.

Glad you and yours are safe 'n sound.

-R