Hurricane Milton Thread

Toyman! said:

Scotty Con Queso said:

...Hopefully I'm not getting ahead here, but it seems like this wasn't quite as bad as it could have been?...  

It looks like it reduced strength a fair amount just before landfall. The recorded winds are much lower than Catagory 3, 120 mph sustained winds expected. Egmont Channel recorded a gust of 105 mph which was the highest I have found. The tornadoes it spun off are the real worriers and apparently, there were a lot of them.

Very much hopping this is overall good news!

All good down here in Port Charlotte. We did evacuate to Northport, which ironically is north of us lol closer to the hurricane. But we're good some yard cleanup to do a few pieces of fence to put back together, but everything is good.

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Stampie :

It's the guys who haven't checked in that I'm worried about.

I heard from jgrewe.  He and his folk are good, he has power, probably too busy to check in yet.

Just saw on Facebook that Andy - Lof8 and his wife also fared alright.  

Glad to hear it sounds like mostly it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Fingers crossed that continues.

I'm reminded about how sparse the population is out here in the west... If you guys get tired of this stuff I'm sure there's room to move the GRM CoG left a fair bit. Can we get a chunk of Wyoming for New Daytona Beach? I bet there's even room for a lake big enough you can't see the opposite shore...

 Attempting humor in the the wake of a scare, just in case I've missed badly enough to need the caveat.

Woke up this morning and realized all my fans were still on. Went out and picked up my yard. Don't seem to have lost anything. Sounds like for once, my neighborhood was the one spared an outage, as just down the street they're reporting no power. I'll call it lucky. 

Just got back on line, here on the western/inland side of Volusia county (it's helpful if people post their general locations, I can't always remember who's where). 

We had some power surges, enough to cause the two microwave clocks to reset, but the one on the stove is still reading, so no continuous loss of power. There's a little debris in the yard, but nothing significant.

The garage has some water intrusion along one wall, a regular occurrence in severe rainstorms, no new damage. The big worry was water filling the street, backing up the driveway and overtopping the sandbags, then flooding the whole garage. Despite the volume if rain, it was spread out over enough time that it didn't overwhelm the drainage. 

Roofs on both the garage and house appear okay on a quick assessment, both about four years old. 

I boarded up the eastern windows and one north facing window on the eastern end. I have lots of plywood, and enough of the plylocks that I could board up the whole house, but I don't have all of the plywood cut and ready to go. I'm planning to prepare all of that this weekend. That's what I did in 2004, starting the morning after Charlie came through, and I was really glad when the next three storms came through over the next six weeks. 

As bad as this was, it could have been so much worse. This storm was record breaker in the progression of it's intensity.  The cold front that stalled along the I4 corridor sapped a lot of strength from the storm, and pushed it rapidly eastward and out to sea. If it had slowed or stalled over land, the flooding would have been much worse. 

Just got power back here in Jupiter- happy to see that those in the west did well. Our friends in st Pete only lost a section of fence. 

Because there are so many people on her in/around Volusia county...

My family is booked for a long weekend down there (specifically at New Smyrna), theoretically starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday morning. We of course haven't been able to get ahold of the booking company/customer service group for the time share group (not our time share, I'm not THAT fiscally irresponsible, I only race cars) for several days for ANY information about cancellation policies, etc. 

The very last thing I want to do is to further tax the infrastructure of an area that just got hit, so right now I'm leaning towards "Screw it, we're not going, worst case we lose the points and some money, no big deal" but there's the little voice in the back of my head saying "Or we could drive down Saturday, it really looks like they'll be cleaned up and good to go by then..."

Would I be the shiny happy person if we came down Saturday? Is it "We just got pounded, we're screwed for weeks" or is it "Category 1 means we drink a little more but stay open"?

I'm glad Hurricane Milton wasn't nearly as dangerous as it could have been, but I still feel sorry for those who lost their lives and those with property damage.

Yahoo.com: Hurricane Milton live updates: At least 4 people killed, officials say; 3 million without power as storm leaves wake of destruction in Florida

Tampa Bay spared storm surge threat

Because Hurricane Milton came ashore south of Tampa Bay, the city was spared the heavy storm surge that cities like Sarasota experienced.

That's because the counter-clockwise circulation of the storm ended up pulling water out of Tampa Bay, pushing it to the right-hand side of the hurricane.

"Top of Tampa Bay - 5 ft reverse surge!" WFLA-TV chief meteorologist Jeff Berardelli said in a post on X. "Bottom of Tampa Bay 2 feet of storm surge. Shows you just how close this was to a storm surge catastrophe in Tampa Bay."

Top of Tampa Bay -5 ft revese surge!
Bottom of Tampa Bay 2 feet of storm surge.
Shows you just how close this was to a storm surge catastrophe in Tampa Bay and the residents Tampa/ St Pete.
But unfortunately Sarasota got nailed by ~10 feet pic.twitter.com/VQF0jYOvwO

— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) October 10, 2024

RacerBowie said:

Because there are so many people on her in/around Volusia county...

My family is booked for a long weekend down there (specifically at New Smyrna), theoretically starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday morning. We of course haven't been able to get ahold of the booking company/customer service group for the time share group (not our time share, I'm not THAT fiscally irresponsible, I only race cars) for several days for ANY information about cancellation policies, etc. 

The very last thing I want to do is to further tax the infrastructure of an area that just got hit, so right now I'm leaning towards "Screw it, we're not going, worst case we lose the points and some money, no big deal" but there's the little voice in the back of my head saying "Or we could drive down Saturday, it really looks like they'll be cleaned up and good to go by then..."

Would I be the shiny happy person if we came down Saturday? Is it "We just got pounded, we're screwed for weeks" or is it "Category 1 means we drink a little more but stay open"?

Volusia got hit pretty hard, but resto crews are already getting things turned back on pretty well. The big issue into the weekend and even next week is going to be downed trees and localized flooding. The mess is pretty widespread and it's going to make getting back to normal a little slow. Like, you're probably fine to come down assuming the place is functional, but I wouldn't expect to find a fully functioning infrastructure as far as stuff like groceries and restaurants and stores and whatnot. 

In reply to RacerBowie :

I'm not close to that part of the county, so no personal input. I do know that the city of Deland where I live has asked that no one get out on the roads yet. In New Smyrna (NSB), there's definitely going to be trees and power lines down, they're both further south and right on the ocean. We had hurricane force winds here, I think that wind speeds there would have been 20-40 mph higher. 

I think that if you do come, it's probably not going to be fun. 

RacerBowie said:

Because there are so many people on her in/around Volusia county...

[snip] right now I'm leaning towards "Screw it, we're not going, worst case we lose the points and some money, no big deal" but there's the little voice in the back of my head saying "Or we could drive down Saturday, it really looks like they'll be cleaned up and good to go by then..."

I think GRM HQ is in that area, but I'd be inclined to go if the power is on.

Yeah, some businesses may have government loans, disaster insurance, etc, but at least in my town there will be a dozen taco shops, pizza places, shrimp houses, etc. that will take a 4x8 sheet of plywood off their windows today, spray paint, "EAT HEAR NOW - ABIERTA AHORA" on it and set it against the light pole by the street.

Eat out as much as you can and tip liberally.

And, yeah, we've heard from pretty much everyone on team GRM so far today and we all have a mess on our hands, but no serious disasters. I lost a couple canopies on the shop, but they were getting old and crappy anyway so this is a good excuse to rework them. We're in Ormond, about three miles west of 95 and it was an absolute banger here last night. 40-50mph steady and gusts above 60. Honestly I'm surprised we didn't lose a bunch of pool screens because they were taking the full brunt of the wind for several hours, but I guess Helene shook al lthe loose stuff out of the trees last week so there was a minimal amount of debris flying around in the windstream.

We have an immense amount of water on the property now, although not as much as with Ian two years ago. It's going to make cleanup slow and sloppy, but the ducks are loving it.

We've got no power at the moment, but we have internet, so that means power is nearby, so getting us juiced back up shouldn't take long. In the meantime the old-school ultra loud hammer store 7k genny is keeping us in running water, refrigerated food and televised entertainment.

My in laws are in DeLand and they got a ton of rain. They're still without power and the road is blocked. They are off of Taylor rd.  

Marjorie said she was riding it out by herself.  I'm assuming you folks have checked on her.

Purple Frog said:

Marjorie said she was riding it out by herself.  I'm assuming you folks have checked on her.

Yeah she and the many cats she was cat sitting are fine. They lost a good sized tree, but it doesn't look like it hit much beyond dragging a bit of gutter down with it. 

Relations in Lakeland checked in this morning. They got away with nothing but a few hours without power and a little damage to some siding that they expect to repair themselves. Very relieved to hear that. Apparently some nearby neighborhoods took a pretty good pounding. 

RacerBowie said:

Because there are so many people on her in/around Volusia county...

My family is booked for a long weekend down there (specifically at New Smyrna), theoretically starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday morning. We of course haven't been able to get ahold of the booking company/customer service group for the time share group (not our time share, I'm not THAT fiscally irresponsible, I only race cars) for several days for ANY information about cancellation policies, etc. 

The very last thing I want to do is to further tax the infrastructure of an area that just got hit, so right now I'm leaning towards "Screw it, we're not going, worst case we lose the points and some money, no big deal" but there's the little voice in the back of my head saying "Or we could drive down Saturday, it really looks like they'll be cleaned up and good to go by then..."

Would I be the shiny happy person if we came down Saturday? Is it "We just got pounded, we're screwed for weeks" or is it "Category 1 means we drink a little more but stay open"?

I follow NSB closely, while we live in Gainesville. They proactively cut power to the beach side yesterday from what I read and closed the bridges once winds hit 35 mph. They were supposed to reopen them at 11 am this morning. Looks like lots of trees down, some power lines down and localized flooding, but no mass destruction like the areas that either took direct storm surge or tornadoes. 

Thanks all. I'll continue to monitor, but I'll let the devil on my shoulder saying "yolo, send it on Saturday" keep whispering.

Some time on the beach with a tasty beverage is very much needed right now.

One friend lives just south of Sarasota, but was visiting their son in OK, so hopefully they have a house, still! Every one else we know had no major problems. 
I still have to travel through it, but I'm gonna try leaving tomorrow late AM, instead of heading out this evening. 
hope by the time I get to the bad spots, the traffic won't be horrible. 

Wind took down a home made car port/paint booth in my backyard. Landed on top of my '83 Cressida and my '68 Amazon wagon. Both project cars so if they're done, c'est la vie. Gonna be a project getting the thing off the cars though. I'll post pics when I get internet back. Cell service says "NO" to photo uploads currently.

In reply to hobiercr :

Can you send the pics to me via text?  I could post em for ya

Checking in from Ormond Beach. Like JG said, it was a banger: just a constant white noise of wind and rain. 

We lost power around midnight. The houses across the street had power until about 3:00 this morning. I finally went to sleep around 5:30.

We have a frame house surrounded by big trees, so hurricanes are always extra stressful. We lost a good-sized limb off one tree, but I think/hope the tree can be saved. That limb is kinda hanging on another limb, so we’ll wait for the arborist. It’s too big and too close to the house to mess with.

Another larger tree in our backyard will likely have to come down, and we lost a smaller one. No damage to the house. One fence is down. Lots of debris but we’ve had worse. 

We did some clean-up today but it’s been rainy. Got to use my e-chainsaw.

No flooding near us, but our soil drains quickly and we sit a little high at like 23 feet above sea level–supposedly the highest point in the county is around the corner from us. 

Still no power but I got our internet hooked up.

So, perhaps our big news: The bridge in our neighborhood is blocked off–we were told that it was “washed out” yet it’s still standing–so that means just one way out for now. 

Going to bed early tonight. 

A nice side benefit of this: neighbors helping neighbors. Our next-door neighbor was helping his next-door neighbor, while I helped our neighbor across the street. Both of our next-door neighbors offered generator power. One is powering the house next to them.