Reflections: Hurricane Charlie

Well, its been four years since we were in Florida.

It turns out that we've got two anniversaries on August 13th. My staff infection was the second- Hurricane Charlie was the first. I wanted to upload a couple of the images that we took the night after the storm, but first I'll recollect what happened...

(puts arms in the air and wiggles fingers)
doodeledoo doodeledoo doodeledoo....

So we knew that Hurricane Charlie was going to make landfall that night. It was all over the news. People were reporting on the severe weather near the coast line, and everywhere you turned people were leaving to hustle home from work early.

I remember my boss asking me to stay late that night. Lol fat chance, I basically told them to shove off and I left early. I knew that the storm was going to pass near us, and I wanted to hurry home to prepare.

Well, we ended up having our good friends Blake and Jeremy over that night, and we basically cleared out our freezer. We knew we'd lose power, so why not just eat all we could!? Hey bears can do it.

Anyways, we sat down and played some video games for a while, until we heard reports that the storm had shifted course and now was headed straight over the top of us. It wasn't all too bad for the most part, but a few events did freak us out a bit.

• The sky turns green, very eerie, almost as if the light is coming from the earth and bouncing upward. like the clouds were lit from below. really strange.
• Storm reduces visibility, water is seen spitting through our door (we're on the third floor so it was the wind whipping it around)
• We hear noises outside, opent he door to see a couple gutsy (stupid) neighbors running around the stairs trying to stay on their feet through the wind
  
• We hear the windows begin to shake a bit, so we huddle inside the (very freaking tiny) bathroom. All 6 of us. (Blake, Jeremy, Ashley, myself, Taylor and Madison- our two dogs)
• We hear a noise coming from our bedroom, Blake Jeremy and I leave the bathroom to investigate
• We see the door to our bedroom literally shaking, violently knocking against its frame. We push the door open to find that the window in our bedroom was busted out, a wind tunnel was just pushing right thru the room
• We decide to go back into the bathroom, the storm is so freaking loud. We dont really do much talking, Ashley falls asleep in the tub
• The storm begins to lessen, we leave the bathroom, but wait a while to go outside
  

When we did finally go outside, it was like a tornado hit. And several funnels were spotted during this storm, so we're confident one had passed right over the top of us.

Where we lived there were several parking lots, each divided by a residential apartment complex. None of the parking lots had damage save for ours. On ours, every car with the exception of 1 or 2 (in total there were probably 20 cars parked), lost at least one window during the storm. Our Jeep had two shattered windows. The apartment complex next to ours had a third-floor cavein because of all the water that was on the roof after the storm.

We went around the side of our apartment, and found that the wall to our bathroom had taken damage, and was torn right down to the piping. The next day we could see thru to the outside. Power would not return for what seemed like several weeks, and on every road toward the end, you could find cars that had run out of gas.

Needless to say our apartment was condemned, and we were forced to move. Luck would have it that we already were partially packed, we had planned on moving out a month later...

Regardless, we've always thought of Charlie as the SOB who threw us out of FL.
(In reality we were very fortunate to have not suffered worse, many people had, and our hearts went out to them...)




Check out the wiki on Chaz- the hurricane that threw us out of FL:

The storm continued to strengthen as it turned more to the northeast, and made landfall near the island of Cayo Costa, Florida as a 150 mph (240 km/h) Category 4 hurricane at approximately 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 UTC) on the 13th.^[5][3] An hour later, the hurricane struck Punta Gorda as a 145 mph (230 km/h) storm.^[1] However, the eye had shrunk before landfall, limiting the most powerful winds to an area of 6 nautical miles (11 km) of the center.^[1]

Charley weakened considerably due to its passage over land, but still retained sustained winds of well over 85 mph (135 km/h) as it passed directly over OrlandoAugust 13 (0020-0140 UTC August 14); gusts of up to 106 mph (171 km/h) were recorded at Orlando International Airport.^[3] between 8:20 and 9:40 p.m. on

Last but not least... couple youTube videos of Hurricane Charlie....