Thursday October 10th 2024

I am about to spend my third night away from home after evacuating from the path of hurricane Milton. My original plan was to return to central Florida today, but when I checked in on Tuesday it seemed like another night to make sure the storm had cleared the area was prudent.

Life here in Georgia about three miles north of the Florida state line has been relatively calm. Wind and rain didn’t make it to this area until about 5PM Wednesday evening. This morning the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing. There was nothing to complain about the weather here.

I am located in an area with several hotel/motel type accommodations and lots of fast food restaurants. A MacDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and several no name brand food outlets are all within walking distance. Yesterday and today I have made several circuits around the hotels and to the restaurants for exercise and nutrition. There are plenty of other evacuees doing similar things.

The rest of the time I watched the weather channel on the TV and various Orlando and Tampa TV stations on Internet feeds. It was informative and nerve racking at the same time. During the afternoon Wednesday three or four tornado warnings were issued for the area my base camp and RV home storage lot are located. It doesn’t seem like any actual tornadoes touched down in the area, but there were tornadoes on the same general path. If there had been significant damage, I think the TV stations would have swarmed the area. No news is good news. I hope.

The path Milton chose to cross the state was also not to my liking. It looks like the center of the storm passed pretty close to my base camp or perhaps it took a path right between my base camp and the RV storage lot. The winds should have been down a lot by then, but it is a little too close for assurance of minimal damage. On a positive note, I checked the power companies outage map this afternoon and there were no outages documented in my base camp’s community.

I am returning home tomorrow with my fingers and toes crossed. Whatever I find, I’ll deal with it, but damn I’ve haven’t owned the place for a month yet.