Hello, everyone. I ended up evacuating and drove across the state to a relative’s home between Orlando and Jacksonville. The hurricane winds reached here overnight. It was noisy but nothing like what had happened back in Onya’s and my area. Anyway, a friend who probably shouldn’t have been out on the road drove up to my place a couple hours ago and reported no damage. Had him walk around the length of it. Others in the “park” I live in did suffer damage but none in my section. Hard to believe it was not worse. For goshsakes the dome roof on Tropicana Stadium down in St. Petersburg blew off. And Tampa—yeesh. Happy to be okay and all but feels like these past couple of days have taken years off m’life expectancy. The storm’s slight turn and landfall just south of the Tampa Bay area may have made all the difference.
John Archibald was living in St. Pete per posts a few years ago. Don’t know if he’s still here.
Orlando is on the east coast and I live in the northwest tip of Tampa Bay over on the west coast. If you see the horrific video of Clearwater and Tampa, I’m in between those two cities.
Regrets? Too many evacs the past few years (not to mention days) that could be lived without. That’s for sure. But this was the first direct hit—or as close to a full-blown direct hit—in the TB area in 103 years. Would like to think it’ll take another century before the next one. So I’ll hold to the trade-off. Then again, another depression is forming off the west coast of Africa right now. Ugh.
During Hurricane Milton, South Florida receieved next to no rain. During the past few days, however, there have been long stretches of seemingly endless precipitation, including this morning. At least the temperatures have dropped from the 90s to the 70s.
Temps down to proper winter now, about 0 degrees. Seen the year's first snow flakes today, but nothing that has landed on the ground properly yet. Just around the corner, though. There's a poignant link here -- when I was born in this exact town, exactly 47 years ago today, it was also the first day of snow.
