TOPIC: Hurricane Mathew - Mother Nature

You have to respect Mother Nature ... Unbelievable power! The eye of Mathew is about dead even with us right now. Sustained winds of 62 mph!! Gusts I'm only guessing at least 70-75 minimum. Lots of devastation in its path. Some damage here on the house ... hopefully no more and we'll be fine. Thanks for everybody checking in on me and asking ... I appreciate all your good thoughts. Been without power since early morning hours, hopefully days to get back on the grid and not weeks.

Check out the video, this is before it got really ugly!

https://vimeo.com/185988323


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Trust you're set up with the requisite supplies for the next few days, and the fridge has been cleaned out (or you have a generator to provide electricity). Glad to hear the eye is off shore and passing, which should mean the winds won't get worse than they are/were when you posted. Just be careful...the aftermath can still be dangerous. Hope the bloody thing does what they predict and finally heads back out to sea and north enough for the cooler clime to put a damper on it and the winds. Take care!!

ralph wrote:
Good Morning Ralph -

I am absolutely amazed at Florida Power and Light. FPL had 7000 additional linemen from across the country in place for Flagler County alone. The crews along with supplies were strategically placed throughout the county. Literally as soon as the winds came under 45 miles an hour crews were out working to restore power! My power was back on at 2109 for a total of little over 16 hours!!! That is unbelievable to me being in a category four storm! Great job FPL and great job to the Governor for his leadership.

We are still without television and Internet but I think we can live without those!

We had some damage but nothing that can't be repaired. I was on the roof in the strongest part of the storm making repairs. It was a stupid idea as I was climbing up the ladder and stupid idea while I was low crawling in 80mph winds across two sections of roof. There was no services avail if anything would have happened ... services were all grounded by executive order when winds reached 45 mph. I did get the temp repairs made and it saved me a lot of aggravation finding contractors now after the storm and the insurance company tens of thousands of dollars. Looking back now I probably would not do it again. I managed to take video while I was on the roof after I finished the work. I won't post it here because the language was a little colorful!

So I will be busy making repairs, cleaning up the mess all the while preparing for daughters wedding on 22nd!! It's going to be busy around here and I'm sure more of the same "colorful language"!!




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Don, thank goodness you're OK...Glad to hear the electric is back on too...you never know how important those electrons are until they quit flowing! But Geez! I always knew you were one brave motorcyclist (The Alaska Haul Road and all that) ... but climbing around on your roof in 70-80 knot winds? ...Buddy that's where bravery borders well nigh on foolhardiness.... navy guys at sea have been blown overboard in winds of less force...Trust you had that ladder nailed down and hope you were at least wearing a safety harness! Anyway, a few words to the mountains in such situations are more than beneficial IMHO!

ralph wrote:
Hi Ralph -

You are so right about good ol electric. When it first came back online I think I had most every light was lit ... I felt like a man that just hit a million dollar jackpot!!! I was happy, mostly because I could brew some COFFEE!!

Me climbing on the roof in those conditions was definitely not my brightest idea!! I knew it as I set the ladder and each rung I climbed the little voice inside kept screaming "stupid"!! By the way the ladder was not nailed in place and it blew away into the yard forcing me to jump ... lucky it's a ranch. I also think I lucked out because the ground was pretty soft from all the rain and it absorbed the impact pretty good. Should have seen me holding down 8' piece of flimsy tin with my knees, elbows and hands!

Check out pic of the day ... you will enjoy another one of my crazy idea/adventure!


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That's pretty funny Don. We can almost see you clinging to the downspout, trying to get down from the roof. There was a Kodak moment if I ever heard of one. Glad to hear your ok.
You know, we don't believe for one minute that you don't have a alternative method of making coffee. No generator, gas grill, camping stove, yea right. I think we know you better than that. We have all of the above now. When we first bought our house we had to go 3 days without electric when a small F1 tornado came through. Which means no water either because we are on a well. I can still remember carrying buckets of water from the creek to make the toilet flush. Now we have a generator big enough to run the furnace and well pump. It usually comes in handy about once a year. We are glad to hear you survived with only minor damage. It could have been alot worse. Take care