So many awful things happening in the state of Florida. Not just hurricane Milton but off shoot tornadoes as well, how very unlucky. Tidal surges of up to fifteen feet in additional height, wind gusts up to 180 MPH, and everything associated with flooding, and high winds damage. It does feel a bit like voyeurism sitting in our comfy, dry home a thousand miles away watching this stuff unfold on CNN. I think my wife just gets a kick out of seeing Anderson Cooper suffer out in the elements every so often when she knows he’s worth 50 million easy, and his family had a couple hundred billion back in their heyday.
We had like three inches of snow melt flood our basement nearly a decade ago, and all the flooring, about 2 ft of drywall on every wall had to come out. Rugs, books, clothes that went mouldy all had to get tossed. Furniture was warped and ruined. It happened while we were away in Florida of all things. Small world. So I can’t imagine the ruin of 15 feet worth of sewage, salt water, dead bodies, and general sludge would do to your average home. Storm shutters, stilts, and cinderblocks be damned I guess.
My father inlaws place in the Keys is set to only get 1-3 ft of surge waters, so perhaps the bbq will float away, and the hot tub will shift across the property line, or fill up with crud, but it’s a storm the place should weather. It gets bolted up tight, strapped down, and chained for all it is worth, right down into the coral foundations upon which it is situated. Unlike Irma, this particular storm was bad farther north up the state, towards Tampa Bay. I hope Busch Gardens fares well, and the animals are all ok!
It feels pretty wild to watch houses break up, and float away on live television. Not much you can do when mother nature gets riled up, and wants to unleash hell. Best to not make things worse! Much like Neil Degrasse Tyson, I too am surprised we’ve never found a way to harness the power of major storms like these to produce energy for ourselves. Just think of all the gigawatts left unharnessed when these category 3, 4, 5’s roll by blowing shit up unmolested. Now there’s a humanitarian project. Imagine portable power generators placed in the path of upcoming storms generating energy to be used by clean up crews, towns, cities while they repair themselves, captured from the very storms that ruined the area. Oh to dream.
I still don’t quite understand why they feel the need to place live anchors out into the storms for video coverage. The wind, and rain makes the audio terrible, and the poor people can hardly hear what’s being asked of them, or said during their on air segments. It’s a weird form of torture for on air personalities. Pay back for the cushy desk job? I don’t really know.
I think it was after hurricane Maria that we ventured down to the Keys about four months after the storm passed by, when we saw first hand just how much debris, and damage was caused. Belongings piled up down the roads, trees, leaves, and brush piles forty feet tall on the vacant lots, just endless miles of garbage piles waiting to be trucked out to somewhere else. It was wild. Smelled kinda funky too. My father in law had to pull out the entire kitchen, appliances, flooring, drywall, light fixtures, just about everything and start again. He made the floors vinyl tiles that would weather the salt water, and could be pulled up & washed thoroughly of bacteria etc… then get put back when the sub flooring was replaced. The surge waters wound up pouring in over the top of the door. Otherwise the first nine feet of the surge was unnoticed. Tough luck on that one.
Thursday today. I folded and put away about five loads of the girls laundry yesterday. Didn’t take me the whole 90 minutes like I was expecting, but it did take me 75, so I was pretty, pretty, pretty close in my estimation. The house is getting cooler too. I’m trying to not turn on the furnace yet. I think the next step is to close the windows entirely. All September the windows were wide open. Then I left them all open just a crack. Next is shut them up tight, and then we can think about the furnace. That first burning of dust is so smelly. I swapped out the furnacevfilter last Friday, so that’s still good for another 90 days, or there about. We will have a warmer period coming, there usually is another 10-21 days of 11°C/17°C sunny days coming in late October and early November. That’s when I do the bulk of the leaves. Though, truth be told I did mulch up at least two bagging days worth with the mower because I wasn’t in the mood to start leaves just yet. I have no other choice for the rest of October, as I have all of our Halloween decorations up on the lawn, and wired in. Now I will have to bag up the leaves, as I can’t use the lawn mower with all that fabric lying around, and guide wires stuck out of the ground. The grass atleast isn’t doing too much right now anyway. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!
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