Probably one of the scariest experiences of our lives, we were impacted by a hurricane this past week, the largest ever recorded in Atlantic history.
She was huge. And powerful.
The entire storm was bigger than the state of Florida!
Named Irma, she started as a tropical storm and barreled her way from Africa west into the Caribbean, destroying everything in her path. She quickly grew into a Category 5 hurricane with maximum winds of 181 mph, and decimated the islands of Barbuda, St. Maarten and St. Thomas, before skirting Puerto Rico and heading to Cuba.
Over a week before it hit.
Models showing it move south and west, making landfall in the Caribbean and Florida imminent.
The island of Barbuda, where 95% of buildings were destroyed, became inhabitable.
St. Maarten sustained heavy damage. This was their airport.
And St. Thomas was just set to rubble.
The forecasts for Florida started to look more and more grim throughout the week, as the hurricane models started showing Irma's path impacting our state, and we started to prepare our supplies for hurricane readiness, the Governor pleading Florida residents to stay vigilant and for those on the coast to heed evacuation warnings, and especially so once the evacuations became mandatory. I made sure to take pictures of the house and all the rooms/possessions for insurance purposes.
5 days out and we were in trouble.
Mass evacuation from the Keys and south Florida. People were in traffic for hours and ran out of gas.
Backyard and patio furniture into our third car garage for safe keeping.
Even Lolo out west grew concerned, and proceeded to cut his vacation short, getting a ticket and flying home from Salt Lake City where they were with Mike to attend a convention there. I picked him up and drove him back to Avon Park, so he could start preparing their house and property from the storm.
Malcolm and I hit Walmart a week earlier and scored on water before everyone in Florida ran out.
Dropping off Lolo in Avon Park at 2 AM Wednesday morning.
We anticipated the arrival of Irma over the weekend. Schools were cancelled state wide by the governor so the kids stayed home on Friday. We made final preparations, doing last minute inventory on supplies and making last minute food shopping, and made silly videos for our friends so they could stop worrying about the impending storm, if but for a few minutes. We attended church on Sabbath and then hunkered down for the duration of the weekend and storm on Sunday.
Kohl helping to make some banana chocolate chip bread.
Lunch with the Clarke's and Drapers after church. Our last supper!
The morning of landfall, which was supposed to happen in the Keys, we awoke to light rain and high humidity. The outer bands of Irma were already reaching around the state, and we were already feeling its effects. We had a chance to make some baked goods and film some more clips for our follow up video, ducking inside the fox den when tornado warnings would pop up in the area due to all the thunderstorms the hurricane was creating. We did a video conference call with several families to check up on one another before wishing everyone good luck and a safe night as we awaited Irma's arrival.
Breakfast out on the patio.
Kohl working on some homework.
Brae relaxing in the kitchen on one of her devices.
Tornado warnings moved us into the fox den.
We all fit snugly, including Tux!
Tornado alerts gone, we video chatted with other families. The Touchards, Bergherms and Z's.
And the Whitakers, Bennie's, and Meidingers.
A FaceTime call with Lolo, to make sure he was ready and prepared.
We were dismayed when we saw the last and latest forecast for Irma after she made landfall in Naples: instead of going up the west coast over Tampa like everyone had originally thought, she went straight up the peninsula, through Highlands County over Avon Park and up through Lake County, the eye going just over Lakeland and Clermont, which is 15 miles west of us! So that meant we were going to experience the hardest winds, nearest the eye. Fortunately Irma was starting to weaken, and would only be a Category 1, maybe a weak 2 by they time she got to us, but still. I could only imagine what a category 5 was like when it hit those Caribbean islands.
The winds came through and increased into the night. It was around midnight through 2 AM when the worst winds whipped through. Every time a gust came it sounded like jet engines taking off from our driveway. There was a constant high pitched howl as the wind continued to bear down. We had everyone sleep downstairs in the living room just in case we needed to go into the fox den quickly, lest we had a window smash or something. Tangie and I clasped hands and silently prayed for the safety of our home and family.
Irma engulfed the entire state. The eye approaching just west of Orlando.
Everyone in sleeping bags in the living room floor.
We barely slept through the night, understandably, but we were awakened with panic in our hearts when we heard the sound of rushing and bubbling water, realizing that the location of the sound was coming from underneath the carpet in the living room. I ended up going outside to turn off the water main into the house, in case we had a broken pipe in the foundation, but surprisingly the carpet wasn't wet at all. Still, it was a cause for concern, and we moved all the furniture away into the dining room just in case. Then I remembered we had the same sound coming from the same area last year when Hurricane Matthew came through, so I wondered if perhaps there was a drain underneath for all the runoff water coming from the driveways down towards the lake behind us. Fortunately it didn't impact us, but it gave us quite a scare.
We awoke the following morning, very groggy and haggard, but thankful we didn't sustain any damage to the house, save a couple of missing window screens. I did a quick walk around the house and saw some shingles next to the house, but looking at our roof it looked as if it wasn't from ours. The wind and gusts continued but lessened in intensity. We called and got in touch with Lolo; he had survived a very sleepless night, as they lost quite a number of jackfruit trees, as well he had lost power, and would be out for 5 days. Fortunately for us our power stayed on, so we were able to host the Bergs and Grodacks for supper once the mandatory curfew was lifted, to give them some reprieve from the heat. Corey even brought her deep freezer to plug into our garage, to save all their frozen goods! We were glad that everyone was ok.
Still grey skies, the neighbor's papaya and oak trees on the ground.
Our baby cypress a little crooked.
We did lose our butterfly tree out back.
A before and after on the neighbor's oak tree.
Bergs and Grodacks coming over to get some air conditioning.
A nice reason to get the families together for a meal.
The girls enjoying some catch up.
Monday Night Football, guess who was playing?
After a very intense weekend and hurricane experience in an already crazy hurricane season with Harvey doing crazy damage and flooding in Texas, we are grateful that we were spared with minimal to no damage. But others were not so fortunate, so we send our thoughts and prayers to them as the recovery and cleanup efforts continue.
We lost all our Italian cypress trees at the front of our subdivision.
All but 2.
Seeing trees on top of houses.
Even Madelyn's favorite tree at the school playground toppled.
She actually started to cry when she saw it had fallen.
We volunteered to help clean up the school grounds on Tuesday.
Helping to pick up sticks and debris.
Only a few families came to help but we helped make the school look like normal.
We packed over 15 bags of leaves and branches! Great work guys!!
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