/dev/random

Yet another tropical depression has formed and it’s expected to develop into tropical storm Gamma, the 24th named storm this season. Thankfully it looks like it probably won’t affect us.
We only have a little more than two weeks left in this hurricane season and it’s been a pretty wild one. I don’t want to go [...]

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Life is slowly getting back to normal after Wilma. My entire complex now has power and many traffic signals at major intersections are now working, but a lot are still out so driving can still be a bit of a challenge. The grocery stores are fully stocked so we can now buy food, and there [...]

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In the last few days I’ve learned a lot more about lift stations than I ever wanted to know. We usually don’t think about where our waste goes until something goes wrong.
Our community has a lift station which pumps out to the city’s lift station, both of which run on electricity. Since the power [...]

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I’ve been without power from 7AM on Monday Oct. 24 until 9:30AM today, Nov. 2 after Hurricane Wilma, which is why I haven’t posted anything in the last week. Luckily I didn’t have any damage and nobody here was injured. A few people had generators, but most of us gathered around the clubhouse every night [...]

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Flooding

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

We’ve been spending the last few days watching the news & waiting for Wilma. We already have a lot of flooding from the heavy rains we had Friday night.

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Hurricane Wilma may hit us this weekend. This has been a hell of a season, and it’ll probably be like this from now on. So far we’ve been lucky and avoided any damage, but our luck can’t hold out forever.
I don’t think I can take another season like this one. Enough already!

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There must have been a lightning strike right outside my window. I saw it and heard the thunder at the exact same moment. That was scary! The cats are still hiding. My DirecTV has been out for almost an hour.

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Despite fears that gas prices would rise after hurricane Rita, I found that gas prices actually went down. I had half a tank but I filled it up today at $2.79/gallon. Last week the same station was charging $2.83/gallon.

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Hurricane Rita is now heading into the gulf after missing us. We got some rain with very little wind, but no flooding or other damage. Unfortunately it’s probably going to hit Texas or Louisiana as at least a Category 2 storm.

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Let’s see if this works…

Sun-Sentinel’s downtown Fort Lauderdale webcam

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Hurricane Rita hit us. It’s now raining very hard, although the wind isn’t too strong. We’re not getting a direct hit - this is one of the outer bands.

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Tropical Storm Rita is heading towards us, with the worst expected to hit tomorrow. We’ve already been getting some rain today.

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There are now three disturbances churning around in the tropics. Thankfully hurricane Maria doesn’t look like it will be a threat to any land.

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Thankfully we missed the worst of Katrina. It was only a category 1 storm when it hit us and it’s now far away from us. After it left south Florida, it strengthened to category 5 and it’s now heading towards New Orleans. This is going to be really bad. Hurricane Andrew was a category 5 [...]

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We escaped with little damage other than a lot of downed trees and a few signs destroyed. Luckily we never lost power, although much of the surrounding neighborhood still has no power. The Publix around the corner has only emergency power with no refrigeration or air conditioning. The ATM was working & they were selling [...]

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Katrina demonstrated that there’s no such thing as a ‘minimal hurricane’. Katrina was barely a category 1 storm and the winds we got here didn’t even reach hurricane strength, yet we had as much damage as we did last year from Frances & Jeanne, which were category 3 & 4 storms that didn’t hit us [...]

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Is something missing?

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

The wooden “Embarcadero” sign in front of the clubhouse is gone.

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08-26-05_1351

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

A whole stalk with 6 flowers broke off this orchid during the storm. Yesterday I noticed the stem was bent & I planned to cut it off and put the flowers in a vase, but it got blown away before I could do it.

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Damaged tree

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

No major damage and we never lost power. There were a lot of branches down and a few damaged screens. The worst damage we had was this newly planted palm tree that got taken down. I’ve posted a full gallery at www.mcdevzone.com/gallery/katrina.

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It’s now 11:45PM. The wind died down but it’s still raining.

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