This is my post for freewriters 2521 and 2522 prompts widen the gap and superintendent hosted by @mariannewest
We made it through the storm without any major damage. We never lost power but did lose internet so I could not post until we got it back.
The rain started around 2pm I had to take the picture through the window with a screen on it. I wonder if I should have taken the screens off.
I do not know how many tornados there have been, but around 3pm they said there were 53, I know some touched down but I am not sure how many. One hit the sheriff's in the county south of me. My daughter lost power already, she lost it around 4pm. That is as far as I got with yesterday's post, I will combine them today.
The last I heard, Florida had over one hundred tornados, there were lives lost in them. All of these tornados that happened on my side of Florida happened before the storm made land, it was still many miles in the Gulf. I have never seen tornados like these in Florida and I hope I never see them again.
Between storms my husband and I went outside to check things out and he says, is that thunder? It was the weirdest thunder either of us has ever heard, it seemed to go on a long time. We decided it must be a tornado but could not see it anywhere. Come to find out it was about 5 miles from us, in VLE where we used to live, 2 of them touched down there.
10-10 2024 4pm
In a two hour span, we were flooded and are still flooded, not our home, just the yard, our poor plants are all underwater.
This area had already flooded from the 2 days of rain before the storm but now it has widen the gap, it was only to the edge of the plants, now it goes all the way across the yard.
I was glad that I moved all of my pineapple plants, they would have been sitting in the water, I do not think the water would be good for their roots if they stayed wet.
People in Tampa always say they do not get a direct hit from these storms, they call it the Tampa Shield. I do not know who started that rumor, it might have been a superintendent of the shield department, who knows, but they say it every time a storm gets near them, and every time, they do not get a direct hit. I am not saying the storm did not cause damage in Tampa, what I am talking about is if the eye of the storm had gone into the Tampa Bay area or a little north of it, it would have caused a huge storm surge by pushing all the water into the bay.
I was thinking about these storms and how afterwards people can not find loved ones or friends. It would be nice if someone could design an app that you had to check in with after a certain amount of time, like every hour or so. But it would need to be something that ran on batteries and no internet. Maybe the day will come when we have something like this. I see on FB they have hurricane groups where people say they are safe from the storm, if you are not safe no one knows it, if you had this app and had not checked in, the people who you added to the app would know to go look for you, it could be a life saver.
The storm had not totally cleared us but the rain stopped and it was not blowing that bad and the dogs were wanting out, as I walked out of our driveway I noticed the water had a red color to it, I stopped and looked in it and saw tadpoles.
My husband stayed bent over like he was looking at something so I walked back to him. He says they are all dead. I said, what are dead, and he said the tadpoles. I told him I saw live ones. In the picture, you can see 2 dead tadpoles, they are between the dog's ears reflection. Their bellies were bloated. The water in our yard has no dead tadpoles and is clear.
I lost internet again so I will try to finish this before it goes out again.
You know the storm had passed because the onions were all leaning to the south.
I was talking to my daughter and we are calling this the backwards hurricane. It came from the opposite direction and the storm was worse before it hit land.
When we have a major hurricane they retire the name. I heard that when they retired the name Michael it was replaced with the name Milton. Michael hit on 10-10-2018 and Milton hit on 10-10-2024. It would have been neat if it came out 10 years ago but it was 6.
We lost 3 banana trees, 2 had fruit on them.
photos are mine