Hurricane Frances

Well, we survived it after all. The east coast took the brunt of it this time. Took a few pictures from the lanai trying to show the force of the wind, only about 45 - 50 mph here, and also how terrified the cat was. This is a cat that is afraid of everything. She somehow found a way to sleep through this. There are 4 avi's also. The first three show wind from the north on Sunday, and the last abreviated one shows wind from the southeast on Monday.(1, 2, 3, & 4). Monday's rain & wind were far worse than the leading edge winds of Sunday. The storm center passed about 30 - 40 miles to the northeast of here, and we lost power sometime before that. It's not a good thing to be sitting around and not have any idea what's coming and how long before it gets here. I've become very used to having a great deal of information before me via the internet. I have a "Tropical Weather" page to look at for links that I'll need to make decisions about incoming storms.

I'm looking into getting a generator to remedy that situation. I'll also have to get about a million extension cords for this to work. We lost about a garbage can's worth of food (mostly meat) in the process of being without power for over 48 hours, so the generator will pay for itself over time. It was a little uncomfortable during this with no A/C or TV. Of course, the beer stayed fairly cool in the cooler.

So now the clean up. We only lost a section of fence during this whole thing. No big deal. I'll either put it back up or replace it on Saturday. The whole fence is a little rotten it turns out. The park behind the house gave us a little shielding from the southwest winds I think. Damage in the park was limited to some limbs down. We really skated through this one, but it was still less than fun.