Hurricane Irma

Good idea with the extra bolts, for sure. In the islands, many roofs are only nailed on, and that's why so many get torn off.

The forecasts I'm seeing have Irma down to a cat 1 or 2 by the time it's in your area, and in other good news the one behind, H Jose, seems to be losing power and turning north already, so I don't think that's going to be a problem for you, just got to get through this one.

Power is finally out here. Several trees and large limbs have come down. None on the house so far, but it is very early. We are not even at the more intense stretch for this area yet.

Good luck Nick, hope you have plenty of batteries. News I'm seeing from south Florida seems to suggest its passing through fairly quickly, so hopefully the worst will only be for a few hours. Not fun when it happens at night though.

Thank you. I should be okay for light and cellular charge. The concern of nighttime is correct for sure. The big trees here give me around 2 to as many as 5 seconds if one is coming down when I can see them. They give me no predictive ability in the dark, unfortunately. I know one is coming down by the sound, but not the direction of the fall without sight. One came down last autumn that would have bisected my house if it had happened to have fallen towards it. Good times.

Yes, much as we like the big trees, I have finally come to terms (after power lines were taken out 3 times, and one direct hit on my car) with the fact we can't have them too close to the house, so now we have a tree massacre at the start of every cyclone season. Last year we had one we missed come down into my garden, which would have hit one of three houses if it had fallen in any direction other than it did.

Not much you can do at this point though - and even if one comes down, you don't want to be out at night, in the storm, messing with it. Hope the morning brings some relief. Are you away from the coast?

I am around 30-40 minutes inland. I do not have to worry about the water. "Just" wind and trees. lol

Batten down the hatches then, and hope to hear from you in the morning. It's still daytime here so I'll be monitoring for the next few hours, I'll post if I get any new information that you guys might be missing.

From the NOAA National Hurricane Centre website, most likely times that storm winds will hit different areas of Florida. (prediction as of 5pm Monday)

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/grap...toa34#contents

Forgot to add pic, sorry...

Hope you get power restored pretty quickly, Nick, and none of your trees come down. We've got one VERY large pine tree near the old reptile building that I swear, no matter what direction I look at it, it seems to be leaning in the other direction. But today it sure looked like it was leaning towards the reptile and mouse buildings. Connie has her prize pomelo tree between the two buildings, which really helps protect it in the few cold nights we have every Winter, and she has 10 HUMONGOUS fruits on it this year. I mean, no joke, they are close to the size of her head! She would be heartbroken to have that pine tree crush it.

The forecast for his area has downgraded to where we are only going to be expecting tropical storm class winds. Still nothing to sneeze at, but a LOT better than what I had really been expecting.

Had a couple of micro flickers of the lights as power blipped. Maybe speaking too soon, but I'm feeling like we really dodged a bullet with this one. Had it come up the Gulf and stayed over water all the way up to Tallahassee, it would have likely buzzsawed the entire western coast of Florida along the way before devastating the capitol (and me along with it) at landfall.

Of course, it's not over yet till the fat lady sings, but with any luck, just going to be some heavy rains and some wind around here tomorrow and tomorrow night. I'm not complaining.