LilMsFoodie

regarding wildlife: across my retention pond sits a huge banyan tree. With Jeanne still blowing hard in Fort Myers, my tree is full of all manner of birds and ducks, tucked into the roots. Herons, Ibis, Egrets, Ahingas, Muscovies, brown ducks, Osprey and others. Just the regular suspects on my lake, but today gathered in the protective branches of this huge tree. It gives me great comfort to look out at them and know they are safe. After Charlie, the tree also had quite a few Roseate Spoonbills who I assume had evacuated from Sanibel's Ding Darling Sanctuary. They are not here today and I hope they are safe.

I am grateful that this 'cane is not as powerful as it could have been. It is hard to find anything to be grateful for right now, so that will have to do. Glad everyone is safe. LMF

antlori

LMF, I saw your earlier posting about the "white noise". Do you have a machine to create this? I'm asking because one of my cats is terrified of thunderstorms and very heavy rainfall. He was abandoned by his previous owner and lived on the streets for awhile before we took him in so I guess that's how he developed his phobia. When he hears thunder or rain he drops to his belly and crawls down to the basement. We can't lure him out even with his favorite treats. When he thinks it's safe, he will venture back upstairs (usually an hour or so after the rain stops). Nothing we do seems to help him feel secure. The vet said that sedatives don't usually help with cats as it just stresses them out more. Maybe the white noise would mask the sound of the rain and thunder. What do you think?

OO

Hi Scarlett! That icon is sort of what I feel like. Weary...so ready for this to be over. Am glad your casa grande was spared...it sure looked for a while like it might be in for it. Can't wait to read your trip report...IF you ever decide to come home again, that is! Who would blame you?

Jeanne just seems to go on and on and on and on. We are on the backside now, which isn't much different from the front. I hear there are 9' waves in places in Tampa bay, 10' along shore somewhere in Clearwater, and as high as 20' off shore, and although I'm yards from the bay, and fortunately elevated...I can't see it. I don't dare leave the house to peek around the corner, it is still so rough including horizontal rain.

My Podocarpus tree out front is slowly slowly just sinking to the ground. No crashing loss, just leaning out further and further, now part of it resting on the roof of the casita next door. Toast. The tree off our back patio had the top break out of it. It was too tall anyway, but I can't imagine how it will ever look like anything again. That's all I know about damage as there's no way I'd poke my head out the door further.

DH says he has a new lobby feature. A waterfall cascading from a lobby bar light fixture. Interesting concept. Reminds me of the opening of Hyatt Reunion in Dallas where he was part the opening team. The first day doors opened a main water pipe broke and water cascaded down the glass elevators in the atrium lobby, creating a waterfall falling onto the tops of the elevators then to the base of the elevator shaft. Some of the guests thought it was a new lobby feature! Atrium lobbies were novel in those days (1978), with each one being more fabulous than the one before...but no one had created an 18 story waterfall over elevators before!

The upside here is that it is now a tropical storm and we still have power. My skylights held and the casita is still water tight.

Hopefully those that haven't checked in are OK. Ominous silence in particular from Sarasota, and Treasure Island.

highbay

OO...
Sorry for the delay in responding. My husband dragged me away from the computer to go for a hike to take our minds off of the weather!
We will not be home until Oct.4th. I think we got lucky again. My housewatcher told me they would call if there are any problems, so I'm hoping no new is good news. Glad you were spared the pain of a power outage.
I feel so bad for the people on the East coast. They haven't had any time to recover from Frances.
Take care.

LilMsFoodie

Sound Soother or white noise: usually attached to an alarm/sleep system....what most of us think of as a clock radio. Looked for mine online but I've had it for years...Sharper Image has at least one:
http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/ca...3500&catpage=1
Probably Brookstone also.

Mine has running water, birds (no rest for kitty with that one), loon that is spooky, thunderstorm (if your are wierd), white noise, etc. It helps them and me a lot. Hope this helps. LMF

cigalechanta

Is there any looting going on? If so the B&*^%^%*# should have their hands cut off. I read today in The NYTimes about the sewage problem. Still praying this misery all ends.
OO, I feel so sophisticated posting in Bold. Even in your terrible situation, you took the time to teach me.
May you and everyone and our animals be safe.
Hello to Scarlett.

janeg

Wind & rain starting here in Tallahassee. Son in Jax has been out of power for 6 hours this time. Frances was 13 hrs. This time they ate all the ice cream the minute the lights went out. Then they cooked pork stir-fry & brown rice on the Coleman stove in the garage. Mom reminded him to keep the door open.

Croque_Madame

Hi, OO and you, too, lucky Scarlett off in Portland. Glad you're not here for this stuff, you have already had quite enough of Florida, I think!

I posted my travails over on the Europe board. Have water within AND without at the moment. Am perched on high in the hopes of avoiding electrocution-by-carpet.

The electrocution issue may become a moot point soon as we can hear transformers blowing in the neighborhood and police sirens shrieking as our lights flicker, but somehow stay on. For now, anyway.

Hang in there, Floridians! We're seasoned, sodden veterans now, we can handle anything!

Heartburn3

GREETINGS FROM THE "PLYWOOD" STATE:

Poochie.... we are only about 5 miles apart. Email me, if you want, at [email protected].

I drove by Ft. Laud. beach today and couldn't believe how close the water was to the sidewalk just north of Sunrise Blvd. Not much sand on the roadways until north of Sunrise, too. To anyone with plans for coming to the Ft. Lauderdale area, c'mon down... we are doing fine. I had no problems getting around today. Keep your plans for November (barring anymore storms coming this way!)

Only was out of power 8 hrs (8pm last night to 4am) so I slept through most of the power outage. I consider myself very lucky!

Friends west of Lake Okeechobee (Lake Placid/Avon Park area) told me this afternoon they were still having effects of the hurricane and lost the remaining trees in their yard (well-established trees!) However, they were happy none of the trees fell on their house. Said the roof was "breathing" during the worst part of the hurricane and worried them (they live in an older house.)

Hope all my friends and Fodorites don't have too much damage on the west coast. Take care.

Jayne11159

I'm afraid the ominous silence south of Tampa is due to major power outages in our area (Bradenton). Ours was out for 12 hours today and is only back on because my next door neighbor is on some utility board for the state of FL and she raised you know what. Some poor FPL guy was in our back yard with a chain saw in sheets of rain. I feel a little guilty, but we went without power for a week almost 3 years ago to the day from a tropical storm. We were literally the last block in the city to get our power back. The neighbor was NOT on the utility board at the time!

Around 4:00 this afternoon we got a frantic call from my sister who lives on the Manatee River just west of I-75. She had a foot of water in her house and the tide was still rising. We had to park our Suburban about three blocks from her house so DH, DD and oldest DS and I hiked though about two feet of water with two giant crates to get to her and her critters. I can't describe how gross it was; esp. not knowing what was under the water.

With the help of her neighbors, we got her, the dogs and the cats to our truck and out of there. At one point she had two feet of water in the house. There are glass siding doors across the back of the house and two feet of the river were resting against them and pouring in under the doors through the sandbags. Do you know how strange it is to see things swimming through glass siding doors? It felt like the house was floating out into the river. Just as quickly, the river zipped back to the bank. It was surreal. When it receded tiny parts of what looked like jelly fish and grime coated her tile floor.

Fortunately she had been in the process of moving into a house she just bought in town so most of her valuables had already been moved. I'm sure the renters who were supposed to move in next weekend will be quite distressed as I'm sure it will be weeks or more before sis can get that mess taken care of. I don't even want to think about the high tide in a few hours.

antlori

Thanks for the info on the sound soother, LMF. I'll give it a try.
To all our Florida friends, I hope you're weathering the storm well. I just saw some pictures of the damage on tv and it looks real nasty in places.

hibiscushouse

We lost power around 11:00 am for good yesterday, until about midnight. I was so surprised that it came back on. Happy, but surprised.
What a ride yesterday was! It just didn't want to end! Frustrated to see that the feeder bans that went out into the Gulf picked up in strength before they headed back over top of our heads. It just went on and on. The back of our house faces south, so our seawall did fine. Our dock is level with our seawall cap, so it also survived. Our next door neighbor's dock steps down a couple of steps. We watched the entire dock lift up and down with every wave. The houses across the bay with the seawalls facing north were getting hammered. At the highest level, the bay water was about 1/2 ft from the top of their sea wall and the waves were crashing into their yards. One of the sailboats had his mast snapped, and his front line broke. Kept watching waiting for it to head out in the bay, but it didn't.
Went to check on the condo in Indian Shores, and a dive shop in Indian Rocks had it's front doors blown in and the roof came off. Lots of other roofing material was in the roads from other homes/condo's. Some signs were blown out. Didn't see any trees down (I think most of the weak trees came down in Frances).
One of our storm shutters at the condo blew off and ripped a blade off the fan when it came down. Winds were too strong still at 7:00 pm to go out on the balcony and do anything with the shutter though. So we just left it and hoped it wouldn't be blown into the sliding glass doors. Rebarr (sp?) and some type of metal sheeting for flooring had been lifted off a house that is being built next to the condo and it was a pile of twisted metal in between the house and our parking lot, hanging precariously in the wind.
My kids have school today. They weren't happy, as everyone else had their cancelled. I'm glad though. Funny how a hurricane can make the inside of a house a total wreck and the roof didn't even blow off.
My thoughts now go to those so up in Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Virginia. You all went through so much with Ivan, I hope Jeanne isn't too bad to you. My alma mater is at Western Carolina, and I love that area so. If I understand things correctly, that area went through a lot with Ivan. Crossing my fingers it does better with Jeanne.
As with Frances, I took some pictures and will post them if anyone is interested.

MarthaT

Yay, it's over. I was so lucky and didn't loose power but watched a transformer blow a couple streets away yesterday so that area was dark last night.
Lots more shingles off the roof but no major damage.
I live in Orlando on a small canal off a lake and it was funny watching the ducks Sunday lined up facing the wind just trying to keep their feet on the ground . Some of the egrets and herons were really having a hard time landing and flying away.
Lots of trees down and major traffic lights out but not as much damage as Charley did.
NO MORE NO MORE.

Patrick

Are all the rest of you Floridians playing the Lottery heavier than usual now, hoping for a win so we can afford to pay our insurance premiums next year? I shutter to think about those!

Statia

My thoughts and prayers are with all of you having to endure yet another storm. I hope that all our Florida Fodorites are okay in the wake of Jeanne.

I'm still here on the island. Nope....didn't make it. My travel/buying companion called me from St. Maarten JUST as I was walking out the door on my way to the airport on Saturday evening. Our flight from SJU to MIA on Sunday had been cancelled, but they MIGHT have been able to get us in that afternoon.....no guarantees, however.

So, at that point we decided to postpone the buying trip until next week. After all, we didn't really know WHAT the hurricane might do and didn't want to get stuck somewhere enroute, or lose business days due to flooding or tropical storm weather.

Now, I just hope Jeanne doesn't decide to make a loop like Ivan did since we CAN'T postpone the trip again or the merchandise will never be here and get stocked before Christmas.

Thinking of all of you affected by Jeanne, as well as the other storms this season. Take care of yourselves.

OO

We survived, and relatively unscathed. More trees blown down aside from my two mentioned earlier, lots of debris around, but no structural damage, other than further damage to the dock...which had not yet been repaired from Frances. Now it's worse. There is so much debris on the roads through our property the hotel is using a bobcat with one of those big shovels on the front to clear it out.

We have no idea how our sailboat fared. We couldn't drive last night, and now DH has his hands full here. I don't want to look at it by myself. Driving around is not easy anyway, with lots of debris and traffic lights out. It's flat tire haven.

As Hibiscushouse said...it went on and on last night with the backside. Even at 10 last night you could not stand easily in the wind. We were lucky though...the damage on the east coast is terrible. Category 3 vs Category 1...what a difference.

Glad to hear from you Jayne...I know there were a lot of power outages your way. That's something we never had this time...we were SO lucky. (I had just restocked my frig and freezer from my Frances losses). Your poor sis and her rental home. Is that the first time it has flooded? And Croque_Madame with your flood. I imagine it was seeping around your sandbags. I cannot fathom cleaning up from a flood, how nasty that must be. How much more water did you get...and were you hoping to replace carpeting anyway? That's the only thing that can make that loss somewhat tolerable.

I hope your house is OK Highbay...the eye headed closer and closer to you and the wind off the water was something. Let us know--I'll be thinking of you.

Am glad you stayed put Statia. I was wondering if you had made it or if you were stuck somewhere. I don't know if they shut MIA--Orlando, Tampa, St Pete, Sarasota airports were all closed. I've heard some planes go this morning but there haven't been many. Hopefully there won't be yet another storm either threatening your island, or us agan when you come back for your buying trip! You undoubtedly welcomed a few more days with your newly returned DH, anyway!!

Glad we all escaped relatively unscathed...some emotional buffeting around, but we did OK. Hope Joan is alright...no word from her yet, and Judyrem with her new condo going up on the east coast and a home on the west coast to boot. Nothing from Tandoori either and I suspect she is without power as much of this area is....again.

It seems crass to worry about a boat, but she is our second home too, our weekend escape from the hotel, and we do love her. Once I get down there for a look...hopefully this afternoon, I'll feel much better (I hope). It's somewhat encouraging that we haven't heard from the dockmaster. At least we know she wasn't demasted like Hibiscus' neighbor's boat. (Or I assume they'd call if that happened). There were about 12 lines on her leading to different points on various pilings, so I doubt she could escape her slip either!

Insurance...will they still write it or will we all become assigned risks? Boat as well. They have every justification for a rate hike and I guess we can't blame them. Ouch, though, ouch!

nigelsmom

I'm glad to see that most of u guys from Florida are doing alright & made it safely thru your 4th storm!

I know you guys must be weary and tired and it's totally understandable. Watched the news this morning, only to see a grown man crying because his house went unscathed during Frances, but his luck this time around ran out...

Jayne: My boyfriends family lives in Bradenton & he wanted to fly down & check on them...We'll be trying to reach them again this evening...

OO: Glad thanks for your reports,(glad to hear your okay) my boyfriend is extremly found of your establisment and mentioned staying there again this trip (if we can make it)..What do u think...is this weekend 10/1 too soon?

Jayne11159

nigelsmom-

Where in Bradenton do they live?

highbay

OO:
Thanks for inquiring. We got a call up here last night from our neighbor telling us it had started to flood. YIKES!!! We have a 23' ProKat boat trailered on the side of our house. We invisioned it floating down Hwy 50, tethered to her trailer!

Fortunately, the neighbor called back this morning to let us know that the boat was still in it's original location, and that we have power!!!

So we are indeed very lucky. Didn't ask him about any messes we may have to clean up...it is the least of our worries now. Glad you fared well with the storm. My thoughts and prayers are for those less fortunate than I.

Take care.

OO

Highbay, Fantastic!! I'm so glad to hear. I was concerned for you, but there was no need spelling it out for you yesterday when you could do nothing about it. We'll check you off the worry list.

Nigelsmom, things look pretty good already. We just went to check the boat and driving along I-275 it's as if nothing has happened. Once off the interstate, damage is evident again. It doesn't look as bad as the Frances damage. It was a stronger storm but didn't last as long.

Our landscape crew plus extras were here before dawn. The grounds are almost totally cleaned up tonight. There were bobcats running around scooping up debris and dumping it in dumpsters, chainsaws and blowers operated all day, then shredders. Trees that blew over in the drive leading up to the hotel have been righted. You will see their guide wires now, holding them up until the root ball is stabilized again, but they otherwise look normal. My Podocarpus is a mere shadow of its former self, hacked and sawed. The dock looks pretty ugly with front and back ends missing. The board walk has an odd tilt to portions where pilings were pulled up by the wave action, but it is stable as is, and if you didn't know what it was like before, you wouldn't think much of the tilt. The pools are fine as are the palms around them. Palms...no wonder there are so many in FL--they shrug off the wind.

We were so lucky to keep our power this time. Everyone is commenting how odd it is...those that lost power in Frances have it with Jeanne, and vise versa. As we were driving back from the boat, DH had calls from two other hotels to see how he got through the no power situation with Frances as they are still without it.

Now my good news. Beach Music was sitting high and proud in her slip, not a scratch on her. ONE sail tie, used to tie up the bimini (along with a dozen others) had come off. That was it. The lines had all been re-adjusted which meant the dock master was hard at work during the storm. We owe him...anyone have great ideas for a thank you basket? One dock box, bolted to the dock was ripped right off...bolts in place but box gone. I have no idea how that could happen! But our home away from home is safe, sound, and whole.

As we put things back together there, I saw a head pop up in the water off our stern, a manatee, something you rarely see in the marina, being too busy normally. He was a happy fellow, and stayed in the one area for about 20 minutes, giving us good long looks at his face and back. Life is good. There won't be any more storms: we are finished with them. I feel it in my bones.