What's with hurricane season?

[Kimby]

Nov 13, 2020 15:53:49 GMT casimira said:

I haven't seen Kimby on here since before the storm hit around her property in Florida. I hope all is well with her situation.

Sorry to have been so absent lately. My iphone is so plugged up with photos, I can’t use it to do emails and that’s how I get notified about activity on Any Port.

Our house on Sanibel is fine. We arrived Wednesday as Eta left the area. Rather a turbulent approach to RSW but the pilot put her down safely. Causeway had been closed earlier in the day but reopened before we needed it.

At our place some dead palm fronds fell out of the trees. That’s about it. We do have minimal water damage from the previous drenching that left standing water all over our lot and under our stilt house. The lower level workshop storage room under the house had had actual wet water in it, and anything that wasn’t elevated (which most stuff was) got soaked. Mainly cardboard moving boxes and particle board shelving. And a couple cheap headboards we were going to Goodwill anyway.

I found a couple shed snakeskins on our doorstep, 10’ off the ground. How’d they get up here? My orchids hanging in the buttonwood tree have been infested with big red and black ants so I’m soaking them in buckets till the ants leave, taking their eggs with them. And the final insult, the owl box in which a pair of screech owls raised two babies in May has been taken over by honeybees. It will cost $200 to have them humanely removed, so we plan to ignore them till we need to trim the tree the owl box is bolted to. Neither of us is allergic to bee stings and the world can’t have too many pollinators!

Thanks for asking, casi. And sorry hmtb about the no flush situation. That sucks!

[htmb]

Hi, Kimby. So glad you don’t have any major hurricane damage. The water issue was reported by Huckle. She’s over on the Atlantic coast, north of Miami.

It sounds like you’ve got a couple of snakes enjoying your doorstep while you’re away.

[Kimby]

Oops, sorry to mix up my Florida AnyPorters that start with H!

It looks like the storm slotted itself perfectly to miss both of us, htmb! Can we hope this is it for 2020, or do we need to worry about Iota?

[bjd]

Kimby, did you see that Pence and his wife were going to Sanibel Island too? I hope the place is big enough that you can avoid him easily.

[kerouac2]

I saw that Mike Pence never made it to Sanibel for "unspecified reasons."

[htmb]

I heard he didn’t go because of the storm. Besides, after January 20th, he and mother will have plenty of Sanibel time.

[casimira]

It's that time of year again and not even June 1st, there are already a couple of "disturbances" brewing in the waters.
I heard the predictions for how many potential storms that may occur and it was something ungodly like 20 or so.
Thus far, this region has been inundated with double the average rainfall for this year.
A low level tornado blew through our neighborhood and took down several trees on our block a week ago.
Where we go from here is anybody's guess.
And so, the angst and worry begins...

[Kimby]

You have to worry during hurricane season, casi, like we worry in Montana during fire season. Both natural disaster seasons are getting longer, more intense and more destructive. (All weather related events seem to be worsening with global climate change.)

We will worry a tad less about the Sanibel house this year as we got a new 130mph roof (presuming the roofers used enough nails), new sturdier skylights, and we finally got hurricane shutters for all the windows.

We made them ourselves, from lightweight clear plastic honeycombed panels sold by Lowe’s. The are hung with screws into ferrules we inserted into the window frames. Mr. Kimby can put them up himself, while I ready the kitchen for power outages: unplugging the fridge and emptying it, wiping it out with bleach water, unplugging dishwasher, disposal and microwave, pouring vinegar in the drains and stoppering them. We also put more of the stuff up on blocks in the under-house storage to prevent water damage.

But it will have to rain a LOT for water to get that high, as it has hardly rained at all this spring.

Montana is very dry too, though it’s been raining softly since we got home on Tuesday. (Of course! It was 83 the previous week. 43 today. Back to the land of long underwear and pile jackets indoors.!)

[casimira]

Yep, I now we are not the only region of the country that is prone to natural disasters. Here's hoping we can get through another year of all this where we live in varying regions.

[kerouac2]

Ana has now brewed in the Atlantic, but she's not going anywhere. Next!

[Kimby]

That’s the way we like them!

[casimira]

We are due to have our first Tropical Depression over the weekend here. May have to put out some sandbags at the "old" house. What good furniture we have left is vulnerable to water entering the downstairs. What a pain. Even with flood insurance, if it did flood I don't think we could file a claim as the house is not inhabitable right now.

[kerouac2]

Claudette is not yet officially named, but it is obvious that somewhere on the Gulf Coast is going to be hit or at least drenched.

[bixaorellana]

Fingers crossed for no flooding on your old street, Casimira.

Still raining here, with no end in sight. I'm supposed to go somewhere at 11, but ....

[casimira]

Yes, big rain later this p.m. So far, it appears that it will be concentrated more to our East But, we know how that can change. And, of course this isn't our first rodeo .And, it's a long f'n season.

[kerouac2]

Tropical storm Claudette has already passed through New Orleans and is on the way to the east coast through the Deep South. She's fast!

[casimira]

It barely touched us thank goodness. A windy rain event was about the size of it. All the media hype (as always) makes it sound so much more dramatic and of course sensational. My husband went out in it during a break in the rain with our dog and I stayed in with the little runaway cat who had no intentions of going out into it save a brief interlude where he went under the house to "do his thing" and then came back in shortly thereafter.

[kerouac2]

Just to indicate how wild the world is becoming, there was a tornado in France today which destroyed one of those pictureque village churches. Ten years ago, the French didn't even know what a tornado was except from watching American news.

[lugg]

Jun 19, 2021 19:32:57 GMT casimira said:

It barely touched us thank goodness

Good news Casimira. I can quite imagine how a cat would not want to be out on such a day. My own will not go out if thereis even a gentle mist.

[casimira]

Now that we have made our final decision on staying at the same locale and rebuilding, we are also relieved that our animals will be back in their original home/territory. In some ways I think, and perhaps it's anthropomorphizing to some degree, Pompeii was more than doing what was instinctual but, at the same time sending us a message that that was where we needed to stay. He seems much calmer and perhaps is picking up on our "vibe" that we have made this decision.

[bixaorellana]

That makes perfect sense ~ "It is our home, humans!"

[kerouac2]

Danny sprang up and fizzled just as fast. I hope that South Carolina and Georgia needed some rain.

[kerouac2]

Elsa is on her way to the Gulf of Mexico, but she still has a long way to go.

[casimira]

Jul 1, 2021 16:52:23 GMT kerouac2 said:

Elsa is on her way to the Gulf of Mexico, but she still has a long way to go.

Elsa and Fred. Sounds like the name of an elderly couple from a 1950's sitcom like "The Honeymooners".

[casimira]

Elsa appears to be making a bit of a turn Westward into the Gulf. Not good news for us I'm afraid.

[htmb]

Not sure how Elsa affected Sanibel, but it’s headed my way next and is predicted to make landfall at Cedar Key. That could change, of course.
It’s times like this that I really don’t like being in Florida.

[kerouac2]

On top of that, Elsa has regained hurricane strength.

[htmb]

Thanks, Huckle. We’ve had it much worse up here with buckets of rain, flooding, and tornado activity. My immediate area seems to have fared okay, though we did have a tornado a couple miles away this morning at 6:00. Our rivers were at flood stage before the storm, so this will create havoc for low-lying areas. We’re still having some wind and heavy rain showers, but I think the tornado-type weather has moved north. I still have power, despite several flickers, so that’s a good thing.

[casimira]

Glad that our Floridian friends were spared the worst of it.
It appears that it is headed straight on up the Eastern seaboard and may pose some serious storm surge on the SE tip of Long Island where my brother lives.

I know what you mean HTMB about living nearby a hurricane corridor.  It makes for an anxiety ridden state with each and every storm that comes our way and their unpredictability keeps me on edge. Not just for NOLA but most of my family and friends that live on the Atlantic coast.

[htmb]

When I was a kid my parents built a concrete block and brick house in the middle of a large orange grove. Each block was filled with sand and, because the house was on a hill with a partial basement, one room was totally underground with no windows. Whenever we had a hurricane, all the relatives came to stay in that house because it was seen as the safest place to be. It couldn’t flood and there were no trees to fall on the roof. I especially loved the underground windowless room because I’m overly sensitive to noise, especially wind. I know now the house wasn’t totally fail safe, but I always felt secure whenever we had a storm. Whenever we have a hurricane I’m reminded of my old home.

Here’s hoping Elsa moves swiftly up the east coast and spares family and friends along the way!