Milton

We’re getting 50mph gusts right now and the thing’s still 150 miles offshore. Power went out for a few seconds then came back on.
 
Still have power, one minor leak in the roof (expected), local weather folks are saying tornadoes are the biggest threat with the storm passing south of us. The dogs know what's up, they are acting weird and clingy. It's a waiting game now, its closest point to us should happen around 5AM as a Cat 1, high tropical storm if we're lucky.

Constant drizzle to moderate rainfall since this morning around 7, so everything is already just saturated.
 
Holy shit...unless something changes, we never lost power. It flickered a few times, but never went out.

The storm has crossed the state and is in the Atlantic. It is still dark out, so I haven't been able to ascertain any damage. 2 leaks so far, not unexpected given our roof's age.

Now I have to remove all of the plywood. Ugh. I'm glad we put it up though. The storm was a closer to Orlando than expected and we caught the northwest quadrant with the heavy rain and wind. All of the tornadoes were to the south side of the storm. The eye was pretty close to Orlando International. Looks like we got about 7 inches of rain over the last 24 hours with winds right at hurricane strength.
 
Gusts are rolling in now, probably 30 mph.

We live about 7 miles from the Sanford airport. National Weather Service

Two hurricane hunters are out there right now, chunking along between 7 and 10k. NOAA and some of @DA SWO's old crew.

Live Flight Tracker - Real-Time Flight Tracker Map | Flightradar24

I figure I have about 2 hours before we're playing cards by lantern light.
Speaking of NOAA's hurricane hunters...
 
Sitrep. Finally got cell service back a minute ago. Massive destruction here. Our house made it okay with minimal damage but trees wrapped up in power lines blocking our farm road and all the other roads around here. My son and I and neighbors were out with the chainsaws and tractors at first light clearing 3 enormous trees from the main road. But we can’t clear our own because of the danger until power company comes up…and it might be days.

We lost power at 6pm last night. My fruit trees are uprooted, my fences are broken in many places, big trees and large tree limbs down all over the farm. I will be clearing fallen trees for months.

We are anticipating no power for at least a week.

On the bright side, we cooked percolator coffee and frozen Jimmy dean sausage biscuits on the grill this morning after our chainsaw work. The weather is fairly pleasant. We are unhurt, the horse rode it out like a trooper, TR and Joey—the pups are fine (although TR was very scared all night. And the cat could give a shit about anything.

Mrs Gunz is on vacation this week so thankfully she didn’t have to stay at work—like during Irma—and besides her coworker just called her and told her there’s a dead guy in the parking garage.

That’s about it for now. Lots of work to do.
 
Access road to our place. We gave it a good long look and decided for safety reasons not to start cutting it up. It’s the whole top half of a tree that broke in two and is being held up by a lower branch. I’ve cut down and cut up plenty of trees in my day but I’m going to hold off on this one until we absolutely need to get out.

Meantime I’ve got plenty of other trees down that need cutting up.

IMG_2839.jpeg
 
Access road to our place. We gave it a good long look and decided for safety reasons not to start cutting it up. It’s the whole top half of a tree that broke in two and is being held up by a lower branch. I’ve cut down and cut up plenty of trees in my day but I’m going to hold off on this one until we absolutely need to get out.

Meantime I’ve got plenty of other trees down that need cutting up.

View attachment 45967
Good call. Wait for a line crew with a boom to release the tension on the line. If you really need to get out, I can send the Pic to some line friends for advice.
 
Access road to our place. We gave it a good long look and decided for safety reasons not to start cutting it up. It’s the whole top half of a tree that broke in two and is being held up by a lower branch. I’ve cut down and cut up plenty of trees in my day but I’m going to hold off on this one until we absolutely need to get out.

Meantime I’ve got plenty of other trees down that need cutting up.

View attachment 45967

You have 3 sons and 1 is with you? Hear me out:

Is he your favorite son?
 
Back
Top