Hurricane Milton covered the state of Florida and wreaked havoc, cost lives and did millions of dollars in damage. It is still too soon to even assess the amount of damage that was done, but there is no doubt this destructive force of nature will go down in the record books.
We live on the Eastern side of Florida in Daytona Beach, and watched for days as Milton slowly crept its way across the Gulf with an anticipated landfall somewhere near Tampa. It reached category five across the open waters with winds sustained at 185 MPH. I can’t even imagine the force of such wind.
As it finally reached Florida as a category three storm, the outer bands began to reach us on the Eastern side of the state hours before it would actually hit us. It spawned numerous tornadoes and brought sheets of rain adding to the already saturated ground.
We prepared for days bringing in all of the outdoor furnishings, yard decor and making sure all of our emergency supplies were in order. We filled the bathtub the morning it was to arrive, did all of the laundry in case we lost power, bought Ice bags for the freezers and coolers, made sure we had plenty of bottled water and felt as ready as we could be for the impending storm.
Late into the evening around 11:00 PM the winds really began to pick up. We were getting sustained winds in the fifties and gusts in the mid-seventies. We have lived in Florda for three years, this was our fifth hurricane, however two of those we were just in the outer bands as they skirted North on the gulf side, so we did not see or experience much.
There were two that really affected us and that was Nicole and Ian which did a lot of damage. It had been two years since Ian and that was the most damaging hurricane since we had arrived in Florida. It took down sea walls and did a lot of flooding and coastal damage.
And now we had Milton, by midnight winds were up in the sixties and seventies sustained and gusts in the eighties. Throughout the night the winds kept increasing to the upper eighties and wind gusts at over one hundred MPH. I have never personally been in winds that high, so this was a first for me.
We stayed awake all night, and Gene had to do repairs on the screen door when the winds were at their peak as the wind had broken the lock and latch on the door and it was banging and flapping in the wind, we thought it may rip the door right off the hinges so he was trying to fix it but couldn’t in that scenario so he used some mulch bags we had and propped them up against the door to keep it from blowing open.
The photo above is looking out our front window, winds at this time were sustained at 86 MPH with gusts around 100+.
Although we had slight damage, a few trees leaning, and broken door on the screened lanai, we have nothing to complain about. We came through this storm with flying colors. The lake did not overflow and damage in the community as a whole has been minimal. There are others who are not as fortunate, and we pray for those that were impacted by this storm. We do feel very grateful as it could have been so much worse.
We will be taking a drive tomorrow to go out and assess the damage in our area and pray for those who lost loved ones in this storm.
We have really enjoyed living in Florida, but hurricanes are not for the weak or the faint of heart. There is a lot of prep work that must be done prior to the arrival of a hurricane and cleanup after. Neighbors help neighbors around here and now I see why these communities are so tight.
I’m ready for hurricane season to be over, we just had Helene two weeks ago and fortunately we were not really affected by that one, I am ready for sunshine and ready to get this house sold so we can travel.
A big prayer up to those lost this year in Helene and now Milton and I pray we don’t have any more storms before hurricane season comes to an end.
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