Hurricane Milton Thread

Before Milton the City hadn't picked up yard debris from Helene yet. I grabbed my lawn trailer and worked with neighbors to get all our "potential projectiles" loaded and strapped down. I parked it in its usual spot in the backyard and the nearby oak added a big branch on top during Milton. Winning!

Checked the County website this am and they had two collection sites open. Beelined to one asap and only had to wait 20 minutes to get in. Unloaded and then went looking for generator gas. That took close to an hour.

hobiercr said:

Before Milton the City hadn't picked up yard debris from Helene yet. I grabbed my lawn trailer and worked with neighbors to get all our "potential projectiles" loaded and strapped down. I parked it in its usual spot in the backyard and the nearby oak added a big branch on top during Milton. Winning!

Checked the County website this am and they had two collection sites open. Beelined to one asap and only had to wait 20 minutes to get in. Unloaded and then went looking for generator gas. That took close to an hour.

I'm happy to hear that your place is okay!

Family made it home.  Power is out on a couple spots in the condo, but that is pretty much it.  Hopefully just a few breakers flipped.

In reply to racerfink :

Uh, yeah.  I am going to go ahead and guess the guy with the trailer did not make it across.

Towing a trailer in hurricane force winds / tornado is bad... mmmkay?

In reply to brandonsmash :

Is it the same community as the one in the news clip I posted? (A few posts back)

My father lives in the one in the clip I posted. 

Here in Valrico, east of Tampa, it was scary for a long time.  We did not incur any significant damage but many of our neighbors did, including uprooted trees damaging homes and cars. We had significant street flooding, not from the storm surge so much as the extreme rainfall, and it got into some of the neighbors' cars and homes. We are on TECO/Tampa Electric and never lost power, but some friends in the other end of our neighborhood are still without power as of Friday afternoon.  Many traffic lights are out, and there have been fire trucks and ambulances going back and forth all day on the main road by us.  TECO had line crews from around the US and as far away as Canada pre-staged to begin restoration work immediately after the storm, but there is a lot of damage to repair.

Danny Shields (Forum Supporter) said:

Here in Valrico, east of Tampa, it was scary for a long time.  We did not incur any significant damage but many of our neighbors did, including uprooted trees damaging homes and cars. We had significant street flooding, not from the storm surge so much as the extreme rainfall, and it got into some of the neighbors' cars and homes. We are on TECO/Tampa Electric and never lost power, but some friends in the other end of our neighborhood are still without power as of Friday afternoon.  Many traffic lights are out, and there have been fire trucks and ambulances going back and forth all day on the main road by us.  TECO had line crews from around the US and as far away as Canada pre-staged to begin restoration work immediately after the storm, but there is a lot of damage to repair.

Glad to hear you are ok Danny, Andrew Wong here from the Suncoast PCA autocrosses. It did look like a lot of people in the Brandon area got a lot of that flooding.

We just got power in my part of Lutz as of 6pm after it went out at 2:30 am the morning of the storm. Was checking my community Facebook page and it started slow rolling around 2pm today. A cousin 5 minutes away never lost power, but lost internet on Spectrum. I am really glad at least the weather cooled considerably that it made this power outage bearable vs say an August outage. 

Friend in New Syrmna beach still doesn't have power at his house. 

Hey Andrew and Danny! (It’s like a local autocross.)

Still no power here in Ormond, although our neighbors across the street have it. No estimate when our power will return, either. 

We have fiber internet, and it’s working. A neighbor with Spectum said his was still out.

We had to take the dog to Jax for a vet appointment today. The wind damage seemed to peter out in Flagler, although lots of standing water north of there. 

Lots of power company trucks heading south on 95.

The arborist came by today to look at everything and said he’ll be back during the week. Just realized that I haven’t downloaded my tree photos from my camera. 

Just about sunset, so we’re making sure all of our lanterns are recharged. 

Power projected to be on at home Tuesday noonish

Work still doesn't have power.  As of now they are gonna check Sunday night and let us know day-to-day.

Guess I'll go back down Sunday afternoon, see how bad it is, maybe find a friend with a generator and sleep on their couch.

Edit: from Duke

Our power restoration prognosis in Volusia is a bit less rosy than Mr_Asa's

But that's also the outlook for almost full restoration. The hardest hit or flooded areas—and we have a lot of those—will need to wait on power until infrastructure to access lines is restored, and that's likely what's throwing our curve off. Plenty of us Volusians are are getting power back regularly even today. My mom got hers back today, and it sounds like David has power once again.

We still don;t have power at our place, but my generator is humming along and the internet is working, so all things considered it's not too bad.

I even managed to get my hose off the roof of the shop today. apparently it went for a hell of a ride during the storm.

Hey, yeah, I lived. Couple of trees crunched a corner of the house by the master bedroom, but I think it's mostly soffit so no immediate worries about it leaking. Pool screened enclosure is considerably less screened. As JG said, it was a noisy night. I feel like Indiana Jones, but why is it always night??

Tim's 89-year-old mom ended up being ordered to evacuate from her nice modern building with the giant backup generator, so I did have some company for the storm. No power; been cooking for her and Katie's husband with the help of a generator, and Tim got home tonight and joined us. Thank goodness--besides being just glad to have him home, my arm is tired from pull-starting the genny. I am proud of myself for getting it plugged in and started, and making the switch from the main panel to the transfer panel. Thanks forum member TJ for coming to help me get prepped and for the lesson on starting it. You and Chris Tropea are lifesavers!

And we got an estimated power restoration time! FPL says 95% of the county is supposed to be restored by 10/17 at 11:59 p.m., and I'm supposed to nick under that deadline at 11:45 p.m. on the 17th. Hey, at least I'm not in the 5% who will still be waiting. I was worried, because I have yet to see a power crew.

Margie

Yesterday (Friday) morning on I-10 east of Pensacola headed in. This was at least 50 - probably closer to 80 - military vehicle convoy. The cavalry is coming. 

Meanwhile, our neighborhood is flooded on both roads out of the subdivision. Pinellas sheriff has the high water vehicle taxi to shuttle people across. Mike from Mike's Weather Page was in my neighborhood to report on it. Our street is almost dry but folks there are on a power-less island at this point. Hope it recedes soon. Glad we evacuated. 

glueguy (Forum Supporter) said:

Meanwhile, our neighborhood is flooded on both roads out of the subdivision. Pinellas sheriff has the high water vehicle taxi to shuttle people across. Mike from Mike's Weather Page was in my neighborhood to report on it. Our street is almost dry but folks there are on a power-less island at this point. Hope it recedes soon. Glad we evacuated. 

Not just coastal areas, I keep seeing reports that inland locations are still massively flooded.  Near as I can tell Fowler, over by USF is still completely covered.  I think this is going to jumpstart a lot of reworking of infrastructure.  At least I hope it is.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DA_jA8Gxegv/

Yeah that Fowler flooding is crazy. I don't think anyone expected that. Total non-flood zone area I'm pretty sure. 

My mom told me back when she got here back in 79 the Fowler area near USF used to flood really bad but not on the roads but on the fences nearby.  

In reply to No Time :

I'm not sure, the link in your comment doesn't work for me. It shows up as an invalid link.

The one they live at is near the Elk's lodge, if that helps.

Edit: Royal Garden Estates?

Traveling last night wasn't bad. Slept in car near ocala. Turnpike is busy, as always. But so far not worse. Lot of RVs and camper coming home, or being towed by company trucks coming down to work, and talked to group of power workers from Kentucky convoying their boom trucks to St Pete. 

Power returned last night but, just before the big reveal on Columbo, went out again. It came back around 1:30 this morning. 

Yesterday’s work:

Picked up the big stuff and secured the fences enough to keep the dog in.

Today’s work:

Generator returned, cars fetched.

So far only one visit to Ace. 

Waiting for the rain to stop so we can get back to cleaning. 

Making progress. 

My cousin is sleeping with 40 of his closest friends in a semi Bunk house in Plant City outside of Tampa. I think he was home for about 3 days from either Virginia or North Carolina for Helene before heading to FLA. 

In reply to brandonsmash :

I fixed the link. My dads in Waterside, just off Cortez Rd. 

We're doing okay. Celebrated Tim's mom's 89th bday yesterday by cutting a couple trees off the house and burning the debris. She worked right alongside us, amazing. Damage to the roof is a bit worse than anticipated, now that we can see it. Seems still watertight. No pics, because only weak cellular for now, and no power still, but estimate has moved closer: We're now supposed to have it restored by Tuesday night.

Margie

We still have no power, either, but at least it's getting easier to find gas. I think the biggest problem is that I've crossed that threshold where it's hard to sleep with the hum of a generator in the background to the point where it'll be hard to sleep *without* the hum of a generator in the background. 

My wife is also in limbo a bit as she was originally supposed to return to school Friday (which was never going to happen in a million years and I can't believe that was even the original plan), but her school still has no power, and apparently has more than a few trees down in the parking lots and driveways. There's also some major road arteries washed out not too far from her school. So I'm curious to see if she's back teaching tomorrow or if they continue to delay to wait for repairs. Her county is kind of notorious for their impatience ending up coming back to bit them and trying to get people in classrooms too soon only to end up losing more days than if they had just been patient in the first place. So we'll see how they play this one. Likely not the smart way.

One thing I've learned from this one is that I'm definitely wiring a whole-house input for the generator instead of just our five-circuit transfer panel. Would have saved a lot of stubbed toes.

Remember that dumpster on the roof a few pages back?  At 45 seconds into this clip you can see it removed.