Hurricane Milton

[TroyC]

Power and Internet out at my place. Across the  street power never went out. Some power already restored. No major damage. 12" of rain here in 24 hours.

[Old Greenhorn]

Anybody hear from Caveman yet?

[Jeff]

Yes,  i sent him an r u o k at 9am.

Reply
"Good here. We have a bit
Of a mess"

[aigheadish]

I feel for you guys and I'm glad everyone is ok! 

I was watching from here too and was thinking about this junk hitting at night. So scary! We've had a few big wind storms up here and that's scary enough and nothing like the storms you guys get. 

[Raider Bill]

Got a nice divot in my new roof.
Could have been worse if it hadn't wobbled south at last minute.
They say we got 16" rain in few hours.
Still 10s of thousands without power.

[caveman]

This was an odd storm for me.  I cannot remember one dumping this much rain on us in so short an amount of time.  The one that hit Houston a few years ago must have been even worse.

We did not have any damage to structures.  I'm glad we boarded up.  For five or six hours last night sticks and limbs could be heard smacking the boards.  We lost power around midnight.  I walked outside a few times during the storm to check on trees near the house or to try to see fences close to the house.


This is the road leaving our house headed towards U.S. 98.


Heading east, away from the highway.  I'm going to let it dry out a few days before I get too crazy with the cleanup.  Some neighbors had some damage to machine sheds.  We were very fortunate that it was not a lot worse.

[customsawyer]

Glad everyone is okay. All the other stuff can be fixed.

[Raider Bill]

455k people still without power here.
 Accordng to the outage map.
I've got power but no internet so my business is still closed.

[TroyC]

Still without electricity and Internet in Orlando. Everyone around me has electric 

[Ianab]

Still without electricity and Internet in Orlando. Everyone around me has electric 

Sucks, but the power co usually prioritizes the biggest faults first, and then works down to the minor ones that only affect a couple of houses.  If one repair gets power back to 500 folks, and another only reconnects 2, well you can understand which one gets fixed first. 

We had a bad wind storm years ago, and were nearly 3 days before power came back on. Not that they didn't have a crew working on it, just they started at the main road and had to fix about 20 faults in about 7 miles of line before they got to the end of the line at our place. But each fault they fixed got a couple more houses livened up. 

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Still without electricity and Internet in Orlando. Everyone around me has electric 

Sucks, but the power co usually prioritizes the biggest faults first, and then works down to the minor ones that only affect a couple of houses.  If one repair gets power back to 500 folks, and another only reconnects 2, well you can understand which one gets fixed first.

Shortly after we moved to our property out in the country we had a pretty bad ice-storm that took out a lot of power lines, one of those 2-days-w/o-power storms. When the crew finally came to get me hooked back up I was rather grateful... They're not allowed to accept gifts from customers, but I put a couple of frozen Porterhouse steaks in each of the cabs and told them dinner was on me.
Yaknow, my power's only ever out for a few hours now? Weird.

[trimguy]

How did Jmoore ( spelling )make out ?

[Raider Bill]

Still 400k  without power as of this morning in my county.
Having problems getting parts is slowing things down.
No gas or propane to be had.

[caveman]

JMoore did well in this storm.  He had enough roof damage from the last one (Helene) that he'll need a new roof.  He has a tarp and sandbags on his house right now.  He built a vinyl privacy fence around his backyard last year, but he took all of the uprights out of it and strapped them on a trailer deck, so his fence is fine.  He used four ratchet straps to keep his gazebo attached to terra firma.

I may try to get him over here to help put metal back on our lumber piles today.  It's just still so wet at my place that everything is a muddy mess.

[caveman]

I was out unsuccessfully trying to get a fire to burn to start getting rid of slabs so I could have a place to burn hurricane debris when I saw some linemen from Detroit clearing a line to my neighbor's place this afternoon.  I did not have anything cold for them to drink or anything hot to feed them, but they seemed to appreciate the thumbs up and me taking a picture of them.  

I'm going to have to wait a week or two to start on my mess due to the soft muddy ground.  I have a lot of trees down and some fences to fix, but they will still need attention in November. 

Today, a guy who drive a forklift at a place we sell dunnage called and wanted me to paint Tom Sawyer's fence.  He was only a mile away, so I went to take a look.  While he was trying to get me to cut some valuable cedar trees out of his yard that were broken and entangled in oak trees, I heard what sounded like a barber chairing tree from another neighbor. 

As I was driving away, I noticed what seemed to be a monkey pod tree so I drove over to take a looksee.  At first, I saw a lady on a zeroturn mower who I recognized.  Then, I saw two former students drinking beer and running chainsaws.  I asked If they had plans for the logs and they did not.  I told them I'd be back in five minutes.  I cut up five logs and they loaded and brought them to me with an oak log that will be good dunnage.

Tomorrow I'll head down to Anna Maria Island to assess damage to our place there.  I'm just about over storms for a while.

[Raider Bill]

Is monkey pod good wood?

[caveman]

It is a very soft hardwood.  It dulls blades like crazy and sometimes it's difficult to saw flat and other times it saws perfect.  The heartwood is dark like walnut, so it sells well.  The sawdust is like coleslaw coming out of a chainsaw or the mill.  It's also bad about barber chairing and breaking when it lands.This is a really bad log that we sawed some time ago.  The logs we got yesterday should make better slabs.

[Raider Bill]

It is a very soft hardwood.  It dulls blades like crazy and sometimes it's difficult to saw flat and other times it saws perfect.  The heartwood is dark like walnut, so it sells well.  The sawdust is like coleslaw coming out of a chainsaw or the mill.  It's also bad about barber chairing and breaking when it lands.This is a really bad log that we sawed some time ago.  The logs we got yesterday should make better slabs.

My neighbor had 2 huge ones. At least 4ft DBH right next to his house. They pulled the slab up as they grew.
The bark was like concertina wire, razor blades and they had a lot of limbs. Seed pods were like falling bowling balls coming down a pin ball machine.

When the house was sold both were cut down and carted off along with the house.

[Raider Bill]

That was fun..

Storm hit us with 100 mph gusts 60-70 sustained, 16" of rain in less than 24 hours.

I had some big branches fall, and a bunch of fence panels come down at my house and the rentals.
I have a big branch hanging by a thread above my house.
No telling how long it will take to get a boom truck in here.

A rental lost a porch roof, shingles, and fence panels. A store front had a window blown in.
The cell block did ok.

One kept texting me that their toilet was plugged.

My storage building had a branch puncture the roof.

We never lost power but most everyone else did around us.

We did lose internet, so my company was down from Wednesday till this morning and that is very limited. Now I have to round up the office help.
I am switching to fiber internet. It's buried.

The streets are lined with debris.

I'm amazed how many huge oaks and pines were uprooted. Probably 30 in the county park behind me alone.

Many are homeless or without possessions
The beaches which were destroyed by Helene took a 2nd knockout punch.

They had to evacuate the hospital a couple blocks from my house as the basement flooded and shorted out the electrical starting fires.

This was the worse I've gone through in 40 years.
 
After action recommendations,
 
Many had generators but did not have enough fuel to last as long as they needed too.

People with those big whole house gensets didn't have a chance as most didn't have reserve fuel, and there was no fuel to be had. I heard several brag they had a plenty of fuel but soon ran out pulling full house loads.

The port of Tampa lost power and was unable to pump fuel off the ships and into the trucks.
Sunday when fuel started flowing the state had trucks spread out giving 10 gallons free.

Couple issues with the portables is they had too many things plugged into them so they ran full blast drawing more power than they should. Also, few checked the oil regularly, so some of the motors failed after running 24hr for days under full load.

Wild Bill and I are going propane. He was getting 12 hrs runtime with a 5k using 20 pound tanks.
Thankfully he converted his cheap HF gen to dual fuel after losing power with Helene.
Now we'll do both of mine.

His birthday is tomorrow so I'm buying him a 100 pound tank. I'll be getting a couple more for myself.

Water, people need to have more on hand. When the storm starts this way the shelves are quickly sold out.

Food, So many had counted on a freezer full of food, but it was soon spoiled. Many did not have stockpiles of non-perishables.
 
They closed the county dump after Helene stating to collect FEMA $$ they had to wait for authorization. After a few days negotiating, DeSantis sent the Troopers there to tear down the gates. It was too late. Now we have debris from 2 storms to clean up.

 
I'd like this to be my last storm.
 
 

[Peter Drouin]

I am glad to see some things are working out.
Best of luck.

[Hilltop366]

I'd like this to be my last storm.

Careful what you wish for, it could be taken more than one way!

Glad you and yours came out of it ok!

[Ron Scott]

Sad times for sure.

[aigheadish]

I'm interested in a dual fuel conversion for a cheap HF generator... It'd be lovely to run a line from the house propane tank to a generator. Also, a good note to all to only power the essentials with the generator, not the whole house.

Glad you made it out, but it sounds like prepping for this sort of thing is pretty tough.

We don't get storms like that here but we have seen ice and wind storms knock out power for weeks. Living out in the semi-country I can survive with wood heat for quite a while if needed but the fridge and freezer are pretty important, and a good fuel supply. I feel like it'd be smart to build a fuel house somewhere and start stocking up. A new, full fuel can every paycheck may be smart.

[Magicman]

I thank you Bill for the thoughtful update.  Many others could learn from your insight and experience.

[gspren]

Back to the genys, I think the propane genys are safer as far as fumes, I believe that's why many factories used propane forklifts for indoor use, probably mostly electric now, it's been nearly 40 years since I used the propane forklifts. I have a 500 gal propane tank buried in the back yard for my heat and standby generator, the outfit that delivers seldom lets it go below half full. I've heard that you can dump propane from a 20 lb bottle into the big tanks but I don't know how.