Landfall

We will drive back to Sarasota today, and are expecting a long journey across Alligator Alley, the main road that runs east to west in the southern part of the state.

Information on the condition of our house is patchy as most neighbours evacuated and it sounds as if access to where we live is difficult. We do know we have no power or mobile phone service.

Once again miraculously Tampa avoided the main brunt of the hurricane forced winds, and landfall was close to us in Siesta Key, which was also severely damaged in Helene.

Economically and from a population mass point of view, a major hurricane into Tampa Bay would result in about the worst outcome in the south of the country, other than probably Miami.

As for poor Siesta Key, which is a beautiful spot, that will take a lot of rebuilding. Barrier islands along the coast from Anna Maria to Casey Key are currently all shut off.

Milton made landfall at 8.30pm as a Cat 3 storm, with winds gusting at 125 mph. Fortunately as expected it did lose a lot of strength on approach to Florida but the intensity still took it the whole way across the state as a hurricane, which is unusual.

Rainfall in our area was about 5 inches according to reports, which was lucky, whereas north of us in St. Petersburg they had 18 inches, which is incredible. That’s a 1-in-500-year flooding event. Flooding will also be bad across what they call the I-4 corridor with Orlando at its centre.

The Tampa Bay Rays baseball stadium in St. Petersburg had its roof peeled off.

Storm surge was my biggest fear, and I am hopeful that as we were close to landfall, the major storm surge was a bit south of us. It did sound as if Venice and Nokomis saw a lot of sea water surge.

Hundreds of tornado cells spun off from the hurricane winds. Here in Ft. Lauderdale we were under a tornado watch yesterday and across the state they caused much damage and sadly fatalities.

Home awaits, and we are very anxious to see what has happened to it, but with 3.4 million people without power in the state, it might be a while before I get back online.