Here’s wishing everyone on the Gulf Coast (or any coast, for that matter) has a very QUIET season for the next several months.
Any Dopers from Florida have any good stories from the 2004 season?
Not from Florida, but in 2004, Tropical Storm Cindy (I think they later determined that it made landfall as a Hurricane…it was borderline) was pretty much a direct hit here. It was weak, so it didn’t cause any flooding, just a little wind damage.
My ex-wife and I were in bed watching TV late that night and the wind was really kicking. At some point, the power went out. My wife looked out the window and said “The tree’s on fire!” There was a big Chinese Tallow tree at the back of the back yard and the wind had blown the branches across the high voltage lines behind the house causing a lot of sparks. As I spread the blinds open and stuck my nose up against the window to see out, the branch broke and bridged the hot and neutral lines. There was a loud “WOOOOMP” sound and a flash so bright I couldn’t see anything for a few minutes. Scared the living hell out of me.
Since the power was out, I ended up standing in my back doorway and watching the storm blow through. Another Tallow tree was right next to the house on the edge of the patio and most of it was over the back of the house. The tree was swaying back and forth in such a way that I was sure it was going to fall and take out the back two bedrooms.
For such a weak storm, this was the worst I’ve ever seen. Of course, I wasn’t here for Katrina, which did put some trees through the roof (I removed about 8 trees after Cindy, but I guess I should’ve removed all of them.)
Oh yeah, the 2004 season. Otherwise known (in the Gulf Coast regions) as “Why the fuck do all these hurricanes have to hit on the weekends?”
Nothing too eventful in my neck of the woods, since the storms didn’t hit my area directly- Charley went slightly south of here, and Francis and what was the other one? hit the east coast first, so they were only tropical storms here. Did see a lot of uprooted trees from the intense saturation of the ground, I took to walking and driving around during the storms from sheer boredom and watched a lot of trees fall over.
My brother, however, who did suffer a direct hit from Charley, got to sit through the second hurricane in his life- he was in Miami for Hurricane Andrew. Although he had hurricane shutters on all his windows, including a retractable steel wall covering the back porch’s sliding glass and French doors, he suffered a considerable amount of damage. Skyight in the living room ripped out, debris broke through the shutter/wall on the back porch, and the plywood from a neighbor’s window ripped through the roof in their bedroom. The whole family (bro, wife, 2 kids, and in-laws) waited out the storm under a matress in the master bathroom. Said it sounded like a non-stop freight train for 8 hours.
The worst part was Charley was predicted to hit my town, so while we were boarding up windows and getting ready, it suddenly turned at the last possible minute and hit 90 miles south of here. A lot of Punta Gorda’s/Port Charlotte’s power had been knocked out in the storm’s approach, so most of them didn’t even know it was coming.
And you know what happened here? It drizzled for an hour and got a little windy. :rolleyes:
That said, I love hurricane season. I know this makes me a freak, and I don’t want to wish death, injury, or property damage on anyone, but the awesome power of nature displayed during tropical storms makes me all giddy. Like, I totally wish my family hadn’t evacuated during Andrew, that would have been a sight to behold.
Yes, I’d be one of the idiot meteorologists struggling to stand in 100+ mph if I had the chance.
Go ahead and evacuate. You don’t wanna be like these folks.
Things I learned after Charley:
-
Stock up on red wine; warm vodka is not good. Several days without electricity and ice being a rare find, I discovered there was a better way to spend my evenings without television, air conditioning or internet - cocktails.
-
Do not go out driving around with friends right after a hurricane. There are fallen live wires everywhere.
-
A 110 lb. woman can indeed cut a fallen tree down to manageable pieces to be moved to the roadside for pickup with just a hand saw.
After Frances, and then Ivan, I learned that I hate my neighbors that have generators. :eek:
I can’t say any of them are good stories…but we now have a generator, and I keep several gallon jugs of water in the big standup freezer at all times… Let’s see, one of them came while I was on vacation, the others just came at bad times in general. All of them caused MAJOR disruption at work, and caused me major work from HOME, since with the power out in half of Lakeland and Bartow, and the rest of Polk county, I had to work from home, doing what my staff would normally be doing if they were able to go into the office…yeah. Good times…:rolleyes:
Also, I’m grateful for the fact that I’m down to one dog, because having three of them to tend to, with the privacy fence blown down, and my husband at work 24x7 was…challenging.
Jeanne, wasn’t it?
One of the hurricanes that year hit the weekend we got married… in Rhode Island. Fortunately, we flew up a few days early, but friends of our didn’t make the wedding because their flight was canceled.
There was a woman that worked for me. She left our area (TB area) for Orlando since they were safe and we were going to get hit. Hurricane made landfall way south, the spawned a bunch of tornadoes that tore up the area she went to - we were fine back in Tampa.
Hurricanes hate to do what we tell them.
Jeanne knocked our power out for 10 days and no water for about 4. We have a generator, but I ran out to the local super hardware store and got one of those window rattler air conditioner units. Sleeping without it was nearly impossible.
I uploaded this diagram to my flickr album yesterday–I saved it back in 2004. The red X is approximately where I live. You can see the tracks of all three storms that crossed the center of the state.