Irma Aftermath

Sunday there was no church, which was simply weird.  It’s not often that you just don’t have any church at all.  But after killing time and playing games, watching a movie (or sleeping through one, as the case may be- Fantastic Beasts was not so fantastic in my opinion) we were finally waiting for the big show to begin.  It’s interesting because you have been watching the news for DAYS and been given a basic timeline of what to expect and when, and now it was FINALLY time to sit back and see if the weather gods were right.  (Kind of like that whole solar eclipse thing...)  We had been told that massive power outages would occur.  Without a doubt.  By the time 9:30pm rolled around, the winds were definitely picking up and we had had a lot of big gusts, but we were still thinking we were going to get really lucky and be the only ones with power come morning.  Nope.  At about 9:45pm there was a gust and then a big BOOM and then it went dark.  Dangit! We were pretty disappointed, but the lanterns came out and our game of Monopoly continued.  

Now I can lose at Monopoly in the dark!

I love this photo because it was taken at the exact moment Cindy started to realize that a moth had gotten in and was flying around the lantern.  Cindy HATES moths.  

The worst of our weather was supposed to start at about midnight so at about that time we basically weathered the worst by sitting on our couch and watching what we could see out the living room window. 

Mom, we never got closer than this to the window.  Probably.
And yes, that is a TIE fighter protecting our window.

Only the really big gusts made the windows shake and I didn’t really think that they would break, but it still made for a tense night.  Because we have a lot of big oak trees in our yard, the night was marked with constant giant thuds as big branches hit the ground and roof.  One of the first big noises of one ripping off and falling to the ground happened right outside the living room window.  That was the first moment where I thought, “Holy cow, something could actually come crashing through this window….” Needless to say it was a long 2 and a half hours! We were in contact with family and friends through Facebook and texting as it happened, so it definitely made us feel not so alone. The track for the storm had been fluctuating all week and had at latest been forecasted to go over Brandon to our west, however, after making landfall it started traveling due north, which put the eye on track to go directly over Lakeland.  This was pretty much my first real hurricane in Florida and it was a direct hit on Lakeland.  What are the odds?! Very thankfully it was a weak Cat 2 storm by the time it reached us.  I cannot even begin to imagine riding out anything stronger than this storm nor the amount of damage that could have occurred had it been any stronger than what it was.  We were so lucky.

This is a Cat 5 of cuteness.  Know your scale.

In the end we had a lot of downed tree branches, we were without power for about 16 hours, we did use our generator for two really long stretches to power the ac window unit and our fridge (and it worked like a champ) and our school were cancelled until Monday.  Here are some pictures of the aftermath and cleanup...(I don't really have any video of the storm itself.  It was dark and I didn't want my phone battery to die.  Plus, any video would have sucked anyway, seeing as how the storm hit in the pitch black dead of night.


The storm was over at about 2am.  We had the generator up and running powering a window AC unit and the fridge by about 3am.  And this was Jacob on the roof clearing branches at 7:32am.  I'm proud of him for waiting that long.  

Only found one shingle, but I don't think it was ours.

This is a really good before and after of one of our oak trees.  

Poor guy!  But raking all the leaves this February better be WAY easier.

Here is Luke coming up with this idea totally on his own
with no help from his mom.

Important safety tip, Egon.  If you live in Florida and do not own a pair of these, you are doing it wrong.  Not only because they are rain boots and it rains all the time here, but because they are boots! They are great for mild yard work, traipsing about (and who doesn't love to traipse?) and basically avoiding having your legs touch anything remotely creepy or grassy or wet. 

  

If you don't have some, get some!

I'm posing! I'm in the road and I'm posing!

I survived a hurricane and all I got was this lousy pile of debris.

Bonus story time!  At about 2am when the worst of the storm passed and everything was eerily calm again, we opened the front door to look around and when we looked up at this tree, the front frond closest to the electrical transformer was kind of on fire!  I'm not sure exactly why because it obviously hits the line all the time, but it was a little bit of a nervous moment for sure.  It fizzled out in the wind without too much more excitement, but we decided this big guy is coming down this week.  

Forgive me!

As we drove around town the next day, it was clear that there was extensive damage in some places. Just around the corner on Peterson Road there was this flooding in a very specific low lying area.  So crazy!

And the big giant oak tree in the back of the church building that gave me shade for three summers when I parked back there for primary fell over!  

You served me well. I will miss you.

As my parents were out of town to go see my brand new nephew Bryce, I was in charge of feeding their cat each day.  After doing some cleanup at our house, I drove over to assess the damage there. As I drove down Strickland Ave. it looked like a bomb went off or a tornado had hit.  The amount of fallen trees was incredible!  And as I came over the small hill to get to their street, I saw this:

Night version: (1000% more creepy)

As you may have guessed, they did not have power at their house and it is probably going to be a while before they do :(  And sadly, my parent's roof was completely fine.  (They were really hoping for it to be gone so they could get a new one because it is 1,200 years old.)  However, their fence was totally blown over.

I always wondered what the neighbor's yard looked like

Even though the fence was a casualty, delicious flavor survived!

I'm still alive!

This was the scene down 98 near Winter Lake Road and basically every traffic light in Lakeland was not working either. 

Another common sight was signs blown out.

But you know what?  After all of that, things were back to normal pretty fast for us.  We finished our cleanup by about 3:30pm on Monday.  Not bad considering we all had about 4 hours of sleep and no power.





Here's another good before and after picture of our tree.

The weather was absolutely surreal on Monday afternoon.  Breezy, sunny, cool and 78!!!  We spent the early afternoon sitting in camp chairs in the front driveway enjoying the freak winter temps.

He opened the hatch, there was a box, the rest is history.

You can see our trashcan in the background.  It did not get picked up on Friday
and won't be for another week.  We have added about four bags since then
so we REALLY need Friday to get here soon...

This picture really sums up Cucuface's relationship with Yoshi

I will end this post with this photo:

It's almost like it never even happened....