Ask Lemmy

Tampa.

No damage to house, no flooding, but still no power. A lot of older fences were knocked down by the wind and almost the entire power grid went down. Water is still on and safe. Lost some food but cooked a lot of the perishables last week to eat because it gave us a lot of notice, had time to prepare.

It was a very windy storm, the house shook. We were not in an evacuation zone, stayed. I did sleep through a lot of it.

We are ok, bored I would say, there are restaurants and groceries reopened so it's not as bad as it could be. Lights are on at my place of work and there's a shower there so if we don't regain power over the weekend I will go early on Monday for a hot shower, I am not enjoying the cold showers.

Day 2 no power, the streets are dark, disaster tourism is at its peak.

In Orlando. It’s was extremely windy and rainy all last night and into this morning, but then it cleared up pretty quick. I didn’t lose services, but lots of others did. There’s debris everywhere from trees and whatnot.

I sheltered at my mom’s condo to keep her company. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse for us.

I'm about 30 minutes south of Tampa Bay. We got hit hard by wind but the flooding was less than it was during Helene, but we also had a dam or something burst during that which caused a majority of the flooding. Our power was out for the night but we woke up to it being back on. We're lucky because I have family not even a mile away that still doesnt have power tonight. Lots of trees knocked down and blocking roads, but I saw about a dozen different landscaping businesses going through the neighborhoods and clearing up roads and getting rid of the downed trees. I have family that live in a community with a golf course and the houses on the course got wrecked by the wind. A majority of houses in Florida, especially with pools, have these screened cages called lanai's and a lot of those have either been ripped open or completely collapsed. It seems like most stores are gonna open back up tomorrow so people will be able to get essentials again. I think everyone is just thankful that it wasn't as bad as it could be.

I'm curious ( I'm not in FL )

So it rapidly decreased in intensity a hour or so before landfall? I know someone near Tampa that they lost their car and home, but overall damage is significantly less than what happened in the Carolina mountains from Helene, is that correct?

Any ideas why it deintensified so? Is it worse than I understand? Pretty much everywhere reads like this ended up being far less destructive than anticipated, but that the anticipated storm and destruction would have been record setting.

70% of my area is without power but somehow I still have it. Likely people will be without power for multiple days. Add to that, many people I know are "trapped" in their neighborhoods (unless you have a giant lifted truck) due to high levels of standing water in the roads that has not yet receded. I don't live in an area with storm surge flooding, so the flooding in this area is due to the torrential rains. Thankfully my neighborhood does not flood. Weird that for me everything is as normal basically but other people are having a bit of an ordeal.

At least in my area, we didn't get large trees downed, only small ones, so I don't know anyone with trees falling through their roofs or anything thank goodness. At least everyone I know is safe even if they are without power and can't physically get out.

Tornadoes touched down very close to some people I know across the state as well, but thankfully no one was hurt either. One even had a tornado in their same neighborhood.

I live a bit north of where the eye made landfall, so our winds and storm surge were not quite as high as in Sarasota/Bradenton, but we had some of the heaviest rainfall in a very long while for the area.