Sorry Charley

It hit us hard. Very hard. It was about 10x worse than I thought it'd be. The eye went right through our neck of the woods...I heard a report it was at the airport which is only 10 minutes away from us. We've been without power since around 7pm on Friday.

Before we lost power I cleared a spot in our crawlspace that is attached to our laundry room. It's a totally interior space...no exterior-facing walls. We rode it out there. From later reports we learned it was directly over us for about 35 minutes...somewhere around a quarter after 9pm it hit us. It was terrible. The wind was blowing harder than I'd ever seen and it sounded like it was on the other side of our laundry room door. It's my opinion anyone walking outside at that time would have been blown away by the high winds. I don't know anything about the mph of the winds or anything...news has been sporadic since we only have a battery powered radio at home.

The next morning there was debris *everywhere*. Especially roof shingles. Some roofs in our neighborhood were taken down to the plywood. Lots of visible plywood around us now. Our house sustained only minor damage. Our downspout was ripped off and something hit my car and left a mark on its hood. We had some water seep in near the front door but that was it. Spent Saturday clearing debris from around our house.

There was a ton of damage to our surrounding area. Most of the 'florida rooms' (enclosed screened porches) have been smashed. I've seen some things I'd previously only seen on TV...signs bent at 45 degree angles, lighted signs for Burger King and Publix smashed...our local streetlight posts were bent in such a way where one direction's arm was facing the total other direction...it had been bent 90 degrees. And this is a minute walk from our house.

We threw out everything in our fridge due to the power being out for 2 1/2 days so far. I only hope the Omaha Steaks my Uncle gave us for our anniversary are not spoiled by the time the power (and thereby AC) comes back on.

We left around noon today to come down to Ft. Lauderdale. We're leaving on a cruise tomorrow so I'm down here at an Amerisuites. It's nice to be somewhere with air conditioning and working lights. Cellphone use has been spotty/unusable due to the number of cell towers destroyed during the storm.