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Not as strong as Charley was when it hit. Compare and contrast the videos. If CNN is making a big deal about simple debris and a few feet of water Naples was spared the worst.
It was definitely not as bad as it could've been or as bad as the mainstream, panic inducing media predicted, but it was still pretty damn bad. Not Harvey, or Sandy bad, at least WRT flooding. The Keys got absolutely hammered from what little we've been able to hear.
I've been (and stayed) in Naples for the last 3 major hurricanes and a bunch of smaller ones.
Charley was not nearly as bad as Irma in Naples.
Up the road in PG etc, all the way to Orlando, Charlie was much worse. We were spared by the last minute turn. It was supposed to hit well north of Tampa. IIRC,. we weren't even in the cone until the morning Charlie hit, so we hadn't even boarded up for that one. Fortunately, nothing worse than a few branches down and we lost power for 2 days. Cable TV/internet and landlines worked all through it.
Wilma was a lot worse for us than Charlie, but still no major damage.
Irma was worse than Charley and Wilma, combined, here in Naples, by far.
My 50' pine trees were bent 90 degrees at times, and the very worst of it lasted several hours. We though that the eye missed us. The trees looked like those in the atomic bomb test films where they planted giant pine trees near the blast to test their protective properties.
I don't have an anemometer at the house, but I believe them when they say there were wind gusts of 130 mph+. I've never seen anything like it.
Our lot in the (close in) estates flooded to a point I've never seen in the nearly 20 years we've been in this house. About 4.75 of our 5 acres was underwater. We've never had a drop of standing water at lot grade until Irma. We'd get a bit every couple of years in the low spots created when they graded, but never a drop at the original lot grade. I've got some drone footage from Monday morning, and it looked like a huge lake where all of our houses were little islands. I am so glad that our area required an inverted septic tank, which required the house grade to be well above lot grade. The area where I park my commuter car has never had more than an inch of water on it, and there was nearly a foot on Monday morning. I'm glad I moved it up into the driveway.
Every car but my "classic" which was in the garage, sustained damage, another first for Irma. We've never had more than some twigs and tree sap on the cars before. Mostly minor dents, but one might be totaled after a 50 foot tree fell directly on it. I've even got video of the tree falling on the car, shot from the small eyebrow window in our entranceway that we left uncovered. You can hear the tree crack in the video over the sound of the howling wind and rain a second before it hit the car and exploded in a shower of branches. I ended up getting about an hour of video total from that spot, and in that time, the weather goes from tropical storm ish "this isn't too bad" to "HOLY $*** it's armageddon" over the course of a few hours.
We still have no power or cable. Cell data and voice just started working for us (slowly) today. Been running the generator non stop since Sunday evening. We've got a couple of small window units and can run the well pumps to take the edge off.
I will say that the panic buying before and after Irma is, by far, the worst I've ever seen in 30 years living here. Stuff is starting to come back and stores are opening.
Gas has been the hardest thing to get, going back to a WEEK before Irma hit. It's still bad. Folks waited over 6 hours yesterday at the station near my house. VBR/951). The line to get gas at Sam's stretched all the way south on airport past Pelican Marsh yesterday afternoon. Anyplace that's had gas in the last 4 days has had very long lines and deputies keeping tempers in check. Good thing I stocked up early, but I still had to dip into my reserve supply (in my classic car) last night. This evening, we were able to top everything off, so, hopefully, the fuel deliveries are getting getting back to normal.
Power is being restored pretty quickly to many areas. We had several "refugees" stay at our place during and after the storm because we had the generator and AC. All have gotten their power restored, so we're hoping we're next.
There are lots of traffic lights out, pushing the normal Naples driving buffoonery off the scale. People blow through busy intersections like there can't possibly be other cars on the cross streets. Oh wait, they do that on normals days here..... ;-)
It's been a long week........
Last edited by Tripower455; 09-14-2017 at 10:41 PM..
^ Wow...
Good friends from our previous North Naples area house/golf community finally threw in the towel on Wednesday, and migrated north to our unoccupied Venice area winter house, for the next few days.
Our Winter House golf community in Venice area was not hit nearly as hard as the Naples area.
Good to read that you, your house and stuff came through OK. Hope things recover soon for you and all of the Naples are people.
GL, mD
It was definitely not as bad as it could've been or as bad as the mainstream, panic inducing media predicted, but it was still pretty damn bad. Not Harvey, or Sandy bad, at least WRT flooding. The Keys got absolutely hammered from what little we've been able to hear.
I've been (and stayed) in Naples for the last 3 major hurricanes and a bunch of smaller ones.
Charley was not nearly as bad as Irma in Naples.
Up the road in PG etc, all the way to Orlando, Charlie was much worse. We were spared by the last minute turn. It was supposed to hit well north of Tampa. IIRC,. we weren't even in the cone until the morning Charlie hit, so we hadn't even boarded up for that one. Fortunately, nothing worse than a few branches down and we lost power for 2 days. Cable TV/internet and landlines worked all through it.
Wilma was a lot worse for us than Charlie, but still no major damage.
Irma was worse than Charley and Wilma, combined, here in Naples, by far.
My 50' pine trees were bent 90 degrees at times, and the very worst of it lasted several hours. We though that the eye missed us. The trees looked like those in the atomic bomb test films where they planted giant pine trees near the blast to test their protective properties.
I don't have an anemometer at the house, but I believe them when they say there were wind gusts of 130 mph+. I've never seen anything like it.
Our lot in the (close in) estates flooded to a point I've never seen in the nearly 20 years we've been in this house. About 4.75 of our 5 acres was underwater. We've never had a drop of standing water at lot grade until Irma. We'd get a bit every couple of years in the low spots created when they graded, but never a drop at the original lot grade. I've got some drone footage from Monday morning, and it looked like a huge lake where all of our houses were little islands. I am so glad that our area required an inverted septic tank, which required the house grade to be well above lot grade. The area where I park my commuter car has never had more than an inch of water on it, and there was nearly a foot on Monday morning. I'm glad I moved it up into the driveway.
Every car but my "classic" which was in the garage, sustained damage, another first for Irma. We've never had more than some twigs and tree sap on the cars before. Mostly minor dents, but one might be totaled after a 50 foot tree fell directly on it. I've even got video of the tree falling on the car, shot from the small eyebrow window in our entranceway that we left uncovered. You can hear the tree crack in the video over the sound of the howling wind and rain a second before it hit the car and exploded in a shower of branches. I ended up getting about an hour of video total from that spot, and in that time, the weather goes from tropical storm ish "this isn't too bad" to "HOLY $*** it's armageddon" over the course of a few hours.
We still have no power or cable. Cell data and voice just started working for us (slowly) today. Been running the generator non stop since Sunday evening. We've got a couple of small window units and can run the well pumps to take the edge off.
I will say that the panic buying before and after Irma is, by far, the worst I've ever seen in 30 years living here. Stuff is starting to come back and stores are opening.
Gas has been the hardest thing to get, going back to a WEEK before Irma hit. It's still bad. Folks waited over 6 hours yesterday at the station near my house. VBR/951). The line to get gas at Sam's stretched all the way south on airport past Pelican Marsh yesterday afternoon. Anyplace that's had gas in the last 4 days has had very long lines and deputies keeping tempers in check. Good thing I stocked up early, but I still had to dip into my reserve supply (in my classic car) last night. This evening, we were able to top everything off, so, hopefully, the fuel deliveries are getting getting back to normal.
Power is being restored pretty quickly to many areas. We had several "refugees" stay at our place during and after the storm because we had the generator and AC. All have gotten their power restored, so we're hoping we're next.
There are lots of traffic lights out, pushing the normal Naples driving buffoonery off the scale. People blow through busy intersections like there can't possibly be other cars on the cross streets. Oh wait, they do that on normals days here..... ;-)
It's been a long week........
Very well said. I have to agree with most of that except the "worse than Wilma part". While it may be the case for many, here in East Naples Wilma trashed our house. We lost about 20% of our shingles, some plywood and our lanai. This time around, we only had gutter damage.
I do have to say that driving around here seeing the damage from Irma to the trees is much worse than Wilma but structurally speaking it seems that Wilma caused more.
Either way thank you for the detailed info. It's spot on. I'm happy they're gone.
Very well said. I have to agree with most of that except the "worse than Wilma part". While it may be the case for many, here in East Naples Wilma trashed our house. We lost about 20% of our shingles, some plywood and our lanai. This time around, we only had gutter damage.
I do have to say that driving around here seeing the damage from Irma to the trees is much worse than Wilma but structurally speaking it seems that Wilma caused more.
Either way thank you for the detailed info. It's spot on. I'm happy they're gone.
Everything's relative. Given the choice of having to endure Wilma or Irma again, I'd do Wilma again in a heartbeat!
Last night's rain brought the water level even higher than it was on Monday morning. I'm glad I didn't move the cars down the driveway!
Wilma was a much smaller storm, so the damage was more confined. They definitely didn't close the schools for over 2 weeks for Wilma, nor did we have the sewer, water and fuel supply issues we're still dealing with. The latter is probably the result of Irma hitting so soon after Harvey, locals hoarding it during a holiday weekend and beyond, combined with Collier's penchant for overdevelopment, without the infrastructure to support it.
We've never had an issue getting generator gas by the second day after any of the previous hurricanes, and certainly not 4 days later. I always stocked 3 full days worth of gas for it, with another 2 day, easy to access reserve in my GTO. If we got really desperate, we could get it out of the other cars in the driveway, but that is not too easy these days. Yesterday afternoon, we were in the process of slowly extracting gas from my daughter's storm damaged CRV, mainly to see if we could do it just in case, when we got a text that the station on the corner of 951 and VBR had gas and short-ish (30 minutes) lines. It was slow going, because I couldn't figure out how to bypass the fuel pressure reg shutoff to keep the fuel pump running while disconnected from the injector rail, so the best we could do was about 5 gallons an hour, basically siphoning it via the disconnected injector line. It works in a pinch, but would take forever.
We also spent over an hour trying to get gas out of my friend's boat, which was, surprisingly more difficult than getting it out of my daughter's car. Short of taking it apart to open the tank access (which I was not about to do in this case...... it isn't an emergency), the only way I could get the fuel out was to pump the primer bulb, which would've taken hours to fill a few cans. It would simply not siphon.I'm gonna buy an 12V electric transfer pump for the next time, which will also make it easier to get it from the more modern cars.
Irma has me reconsidering my future hurricane preparations, especially WRT producing/maintaining electrical power.
Last edited by Tripower455; 09-15-2017 at 11:09 AM..
It was definitely not as bad as it could've been or as bad as the mainstream, panic inducing media predicted, but it was still pretty damn bad. Not Harvey, or Sandy bad, at least WRT flooding. The Keys got absolutely hammered from what little we've been able to hear.
I've been (and stayed) in Naples for the last 3 major hurricanes and a bunch of smaller ones.
Charley was not nearly as bad as Irma in Naples.
Up the road in PG etc, all the way to Orlando, Charlie was much worse. We were spared by the last minute turn. It was supposed to hit well north of Tampa. IIRC,. we weren't even in the cone until the morning Charlie hit, so we hadn't even boarded up for that one. Fortunately, nothing worse than a few branches down and we lost power for 2 days. Cable TV/internet and landlines worked all through it.
Wilma was a lot worse for us than Charlie, but still no major damage.
Irma was worse than Charley and Wilma, combined, here in Naples, by far.
My 50' pine trees were bent 90 degrees at times, and the very worst of it lasted several hours. We though that the eye missed us. The trees looked like those in the atomic bomb test films where they planted giant pine trees near the blast to test their protective properties.
I don't have an anemometer at the house, but I believe them when they say there were wind gusts of 130 mph+. I've never seen anything like it.
Our lot in the (close in) estates flooded to a point I've never seen in the nearly 20 years we've been in this house. About 4.75 of our 5 acres was underwater. We've never had a drop of standing water at lot grade until Irma. We'd get a bit every couple of years in the low spots created when they graded, but never a drop at the original lot grade. I've got some drone footage from Monday morning, and it looked like a huge lake where all of our houses were little islands. I am so glad that our area required an inverted septic tank, which required the house grade to be well above lot grade. The area where I park my commuter car has never had more than an inch of water on it, and there was nearly a foot on Monday morning. I'm glad I moved it up into the driveway.
Every car but my "classic" which was in the garage, sustained damage, another first for Irma. We've never had more than some twigs and tree sap on the cars before. Mostly minor dents, but one might be totaled after a 50 foot tree fell directly on it. I've even got video of the tree falling on the car, shot from the small eyebrow window in our entranceway that we left uncovered. You can hear the tree crack in the video over the sound of the howling wind and rain a second before it hit the car and exploded in a shower of branches. I ended up getting about an hour of video total from that spot, and in that time, the weather goes from tropical storm ish "this isn't too bad" to "HOLY $*** it's armageddon" over the course of a few hours.
We still have no power or cable. Cell data and voice just started working for us (slowly) today. Been running the generator non stop since Sunday evening. We've got a couple of small window units and can run the well pumps to take the edge off.
I will say that the panic buying before and after Irma is, by far, the worst I've ever seen in 30 years living here. Stuff is starting to come back and stores are opening.
Gas has been the hardest thing to get, going back to a WEEK before Irma hit. It's still bad. Folks waited over 6 hours yesterday at the station near my house. VBR/951). The line to get gas at Sam's stretched all the way south on airport past Pelican Marsh yesterday afternoon. Anyplace that's had gas in the last 4 days has had very long lines and deputies keeping tempers in check. Good thing I stocked up early, but I still had to dip into my reserve supply (in my classic car) last night. This evening, we were able to top everything off, so, hopefully, the fuel deliveries are getting getting back to normal.
Power is being restored pretty quickly to many areas. We had several "refugees" stay at our place during and after the storm because we had the generator and AC. All have gotten their power restored, so we're hoping we're next.
There are lots of traffic lights out, pushing the normal Naples driving buffoonery off the scale. People blow through busy intersections like there can't possibly be other cars on the cross streets. Oh wait, they do that on normals days here..... ;-)
It's been a long week........
Cuba "saved" Florida. Had the storm not done its little run over the northern Cuban coast (which many models were uncertain on), it would have hit Florida as a much stronger hurricane
The hype was warranted.
Hope you're recovering well. I love the Naples area, hate to see it damaged.
FWIW the effects of Irma were felt up into northern GA. Size does matter
Make sure you change the generator oil...
Gas is getting better, on my way back there was more supply creeping south of Tampa. I topped off several times to stay full. Gasbuddy was spot on.
Also, as Naples is still on curfew plan to get gas right after 6am when stations open and there is no wait.
I'm betting that gas isn't going to be an issue in much of Naples today. Many (most?) places north of Bonita have had gas since at least midday Wed. Lots of the Naples stations got deliveries in the late afternoon yesterday, and they should continue to do so, unless the Santa Fe river in northern FL breaches, closing I-75.....In that case we'll be back to Mad Max conditions for a while longer. If that happens, we're bugging out for a few days.
We're venturing out a little later to go to a friend's for dinner and real internet access. We also need to get more 30wt oil, for the generator's third oil change since last Friday.
My new generator is ready for its second change tomorrow...have 30w and filter ready to go. Lent my two smaller ones out to neighbors once it was clear my primary one was running my 3 and 4 ton AC units just fine.
Latest reports say the Santa Fe won’t flood and close I-75. Cross your fingers!
My new generator is ready for its second change tomorrow...have 30w and filter ready to go. Lent my two smaller ones out to neighbors once it was clear my primary one was running my 3 and 4 ton AC units just fine.
Latest reports say the Santa Fe won’t flood and close I-75. Cross your fingers!
Nice..... After this one, I'm gonna shop larger generators. Mine is definitely more than adequate for most tasks we need it to do, but the well pumps are getting close to it's limits, even with no other load. I kill everything in the house when we shower etc.
The rest of the time, I've been running the fridge, chest freezer, 2 5000btu window shakers, some lights, chargers etc. simultaneously. So far, so good, but I am ready for real electricity.....
Great news on the Santa Fe! We've been somewhat isolated from most news until yesterday. It's actually kind of nice to not be bombarded with BS 24/7...... It's kind of enlightening. To the point I'm gonna start backing away from social media etc.
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