Frances aftermath?

Hi Dave,

It's 8:00 PM Sunday night and I'm using my laptop and AOL to access the internet, as DSL will not work w/o power. We have no power from Palm Beach County north to St. Lucie County, about a 60 mile stretch. I understand around 2 million people are w/o power and will be for a few days, upwards of a couple of weeks. We got hit by the south side of the eye-wall last night. Power went off about 10:00 PM last night, including much of Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale). My servers are in Lauderdale, so I don't know if you guys lost access to the site.

The damage in Boca Raton is nothing to waste battery time on, just a lot of trees down. The local office depot had it's face removed, about 1/4 mile from my house. I haven't seen the TV in 24 hours, so I don't know what the story is north of here, but can only assume it is more extensive, as we were on the south side of the eye (the soft side, sorta speak).

We saw winds of around 60 mph last night, really nothing to be concerned over. I heard winds of 90-105 hit Ft. Pierce, Stuart, Jupiter, Port St. Lucie. I hope everyone's OK.

This was a differrent kind of hurricane. It wasn't all that strong, but it was large and slow. It took around 12 hours from the time the west side of the eye made landfall to when the right side of the eye came ashore. Literally, the never-ending storm. Normally, it would take no more than an hour for the eye to pass over you.

I may not have access to the internet for a while. I'll try to check in tomorow for 5 minutes if the battery on the laptop holds up. Hope everyone is well. Take care all.

Carl

We're fine here in Orlando. We had strong winds since lastnight and all through the early AM. It's been on and off since 8 AM, but the rain has been coming all day. Charley took down a lot of the trees in our neighborhood, but Frances broke a few tree limbs, not much.

Electricity is good in all of Orange county except some of the old neighborhoods. The main issue will probably be flooding for lakefront and low-lying homes in the area.

Yachtforums, looks like the east coast was hit pretty bad. We had some family friends in Boca forced to evacuate and they went to their son's house further inland. Also, a lot of boats were damaged. The local news showed video of several large yachts sunken, one crashed into another at the boat slips, and a large (near 100') broke free from its lines and floated in the intracostal (I think it also lost an engine!). Hope you guys make it out with little damage and power restored fast.

Finally, there's another hurricane north of South America and it's the strongest hurricane in recorded history to be at that location (under 10 degrees north of the equator). It has 125 mph winds and is named Ivan. Predictions have it coming towards Florida, but it's too early to tell. It's very far away.