Hurricane Irma

Not fun here right now. Edge service for connectivity is intermittent at best. Many limbs and trees have fallen. I think one of the houses down the way may have been smashed into partially or worse going by what I heard. I am hoping it was not inhabited at the time if I am correct. Cannot safely inspect much yet, but I think the vehicles and animal pens are okay as of now. If I can put the reptiles outdoors in the afternoon, that would be nice. Tortoises have this way of passing the time in tubs by emptying their bowels and >100-lb tortoises have a lot to show for their efforts in that regard.

The wind is still going, but the rain has stopped for a bit. I will be able to assess things more accurately after daybreak. I am grateful for what seems to be a gentle personal outcome. Things could have been much worse here.

I'm glad to see you both posting and to hear that so far y'all are physically OK. Please be careful if you try to go outside.

Like others have said, best of luck to all over there.

Sounds as though it's basically over by now, but power still off to many people. Hope all was well for you all, don't envy you the clean up (especially if you are buried in tortoise poop....)

Hurricane Jose seems to be looping the loop out in the Atlantic, not going to come your way, just lots of rain from the Irma fall out. Going to be hot and humid, those battery fans are going to be worth their purchase price.

I see warnings to people to boil their drinking water in some areas, remember you can also chlorinate with 8 drops of household bleach per gallon, (2 drops per litre), mix and let stand for 30 mins.

No running water here since it works via well pump. I have a supply of drinking water to an extent (which I have been rationing for the dogs) and I am collecting rainwater as I am able. Sunny days like today heat everything up and increase the water need while not providing replenishment. Ran into some impact/damage surveyors and asked when they predicted restoration would occur in my area. Likely not before the middle of next week. Gasoline is still difficult to come by in some areas. I am hoping my gym has power and water around ten minutes away. Otherwise, I have to drive 45 minutes each way for power and water. Not only does the time get consumed, but the gasoline quickly depletes that way. All of this said, I have it a heck of a lot better than a lot of other people, so I still feel fortunate.

Glad to hear from you Nick, you're obviously going to have a rough time over the next few days/weeks, but no major structural damage?

One of the things we've used to collect rainwater in the past (if you are not now cursed with fine, dry weather) is a tarpaulin: tie the top two corners as far apart as you can to high points such as trees or house gutters, then bring the bottom two corners together into a point laid in some form of receptacle, and it acts like a huge funnel, catching even fine rain.

Not much happened here at all. Winds and rain weren't any worse than a typical hefty thunderstorm. Just shook a bunch of branches out of some trees. Most of which were dead wood and going to fall anyway. No trees here got toppled or had their tops snapped off. Heck, we had some black plastic buckets out in the yard that we got plants in from a nursery and they didn't even get pushed around by the wind.

Lost power at 8:30 am Monday morning, however. Just came back 6:20 pm today (Tuesday), so it was out for around 34 hours. Comcast also got knocked out because of a tree falling on the line along our road. We took a drive late yesterday to see if anyone else had power and to check the power lines along the road, and went to the post office while we were out. Post office had a sign on the door stating that they were closed till further notice. Hope I get a letter in my post office box telling me when they will reopen. They even had the mail drop-off boxes wrapped in plastic so no one could give them any back logged work to do when they came back to work.

The Onan generator ran like a champ, keeping the well pump running, and the freezer and refrigerator over in the old reptile building provided power to keep the food from going bad. Connie moved a few things from the house refrigerator and freezer over there, so we didn't lose anything. I was monitoring the propane usage of the generator which was 60 percent in that 500 gallon tank, and I am guessing we still had enough fuel for 10 more days if the power had stayed out that long. If these storms get to be a regular thing I may have to see if I can get an electrician to run a feed to the house with some sort of switch where I can select either the house or the other buildings, as needed. The water pump is in the breaker box for the reptile building, so I really need power to both of them.

Interestingly enough the temps here dropped WAY down from what should be normal. Only got up to 65 degrees on Monday, so we didn't even need the battery powered fans for sleeping comfort.

Today Connie and were putting things back together today from our preparations for the storm, and cleaning up the debris that got shook out of the trees. Didn't need to crank up any of the chain saws, fortunately. Most of preparations we did prior to the storm was wasted effort, as it turned out, but necessary, I suppose, from the potential impact up here of Irma. I guess a lot of people are on the trek back home to assess the damages in south Florida. Now there, I am sure, it was a much different story.

Glad to hear you and Connie got off lightly, Rich. You were obviously well prepared as well.

TV I'm seeing shows the Keys to be pretty badly beaten up and people not yet being allowed back in until assessments can be made.

The long term prognosis is that storms are going to become more powerful and more frequent, so even though you don't get hit every year, if you live in "the zone", I'd be taking regular precautions, as we do in the islands.

I'm thinking that the best thing for us to do with even a mild threat of a storm is to just take an emergency vacation somewhere inland. The fact that we were without power for 34 hours from even a relatively mild storm that Irma turned out to be in this area tells me that Florida is just woefully unprepared for real emergencies. Had Irma been a CAT 5 up either coast, Florida would have been knocked back to the stone age for months.