I don't have a personal weather station, but since I'm within a few miles of Melbourne International Airport, I tend to use their numbers for what we experienced. Those haven't been posted so the best summary I can give is that we had minimal to no damage - the metal part of one of my fence's gates was ripped out. Weather Underground showed we had max sustained winds of 68 mph in the early morning. Every other time I've looked wind gusts were 15 or more mph higher, so I'll guess it gusted to the mid 80s.
I was awakened at about 1AM and heard our backup generator running. As I tried to force some sense into my head, the generator shut off. The rule of thumb on this generator is that when the power goes down, it waits 10 seconds before starting up to ensure the power isn't back, yet. Once it has been running, if power returns, it keeps running for around 10 minutes in case the power coming back on is intermittent, or too low. Basically, if power is out for 15 seconds, the generator turns on and will run for 10 minutes.
That's just a long way of explaining that our power might have been off for all of about 15 seconds, although it could have been off longer. I woke up, heard the generator and moments later heard it go silent.
Aside from that, the work is mostly to clean up leaves and broken branches on the yard, and take down the shutters. Virtually all of the leaves and branches are from my neighbor's trees. I had one element of my log periodic HF antenna snap off, just like happened with hurricane Ian a couple of years ago. I believe I have the metal to fix it so that shouldn't be a big deal, either.
Not losing power is the big deal. Kudos to Florida Power and Light.
Similar here. No real wind until 5:30 this morning as the eye cleared the coast. Back eye wall was blowing pretty well. All the down trees in the neighborhood pointed south. My station's high gust was 50 mph, sheltered by trees and buildings. 8" of rain in 24 hours. My shop had 1" of water on the floor. The south side of the storm opening up last night saved us a lot of wind and flooding. Dodged a bullet, I'm thinking.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear you weathered the storm, SiG!
ReplyDelete" I had one element of my log periodic HF antenna snap off"
ReplyDeleteThink of it as nature's way of pruning weak antenna elements, just like it does with tree limbs. ;P
Here's praying for ALL those affected by BOTH storms!
I looked up the storm path on Weather Underground. With what you said in this post, the center of the storm came close.
ReplyDeleteI endorse Igor's statement.
Glad for you, it is great you and your loved ones made it OK.
ReplyDelete