Disasters. Did you experience any natural disasters in your lifetime? Tell us about them. If not, then discuss these events that happened to parents, grandparents or others in your family.
Hurricane Charley over Orlando, FL in 2004 |
Big storms coming soon...
Well, the wind is blowin' harder now
Fifty knots or there abouts,
There's white caps on the ocean.
And I'm watching for water spouts
It's time to close the shutters
It's time to go inside.
-- Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season by Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy's song captures the mood of hurricane season, but I think there really is no rhyme or reason to it. Living in Florida, we've had several brushes with hurricanes over the years. The usual pattern was that they would hug the east coast before making landfall and by the time they came to our area, they had weakened quite a bit. While we got a lot of wind and rain, we never got any major damage.
Erin in the Today Newspaper |
Then came 2004. Florida is hard to see on this map showing the paths of the 2004 storms. First came Charley on August 13. Yes, it was Friday the 13th! I had listened to the news at lunchtime and it was predicted to come in south of us and cause wind and rain, but not too much was expected. We were talking about it at work and decided to look at the current path. I won't repeat the exclamations several of the guys made! It had strengthened and was heading straight for us! I had never experienced a hurricane coming from the west which brings the worst side of the storm. Soon after, they dismissed us from work to make what preparations we could. I had already gassed up the car and had food and water on hand, so I didn't get in the frenzied crowds at the grocery stores or long lines at the gas stations. My parents had plywood boards prepared for their windows, so my sister and her family and I decided to ride the storm out at their house. We all helped board up the windows and brought over whatever food and water we had. It's an eerie feeling being in a boarded up house since you can't see what's going on outside, but we could hear the wind picking up. The Summer Olympics had their opening ceremony that night and as we were watching the parade of nations the power went out. After a sleepless night listening to the howling wind and things going bump in the night, we ventured outside to see how we fared.
Downtown Orlando after Charley - This is a road! |
Frances over Florida |
Jeanne loops back to Florida |
- Charley
- Frances
- Jeanne
- For Sale
The local newspaper columnist's article that day started out with "Jeanne is coming and I don't care anymore!" I think that about summed it up for everyone as we were all just weary at that point. This had all happened from August 13 - Sept. 25, so there was no time to recover between storms. People were caught off guard by Charley and prepared like crazy for Frances, but didn't do as much for Jeanne. Jeanne brought more wind and rain, but we came through OK. I'm hoping 2004 is the worst hurricane season that I'll ever see!
Full size views of the hurricane track images are at wikipedia's article on the 2004 hurricane season: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Atlantic_hurricane_season
More Orlando pictures of the 2004 hurricanes are available on the Orlando Sentinel website.
That's a great summary of 2004 in Florida. Hope we never see a year like that again. I liked the Jimmy Buffett reference! :)
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