As of 11 pm Sept 26, Lee was under a tropical storm warning and storm was expected to move inland north of Tampa. Hurricane warning wasn’t issued for Lee until 5 pm Tuesday. Even when told to evacuate, many people choose to stay behind for whatever reason.
This 2017 piece is getting a lot of circulation today for obvious reasons Cape Coral may be the best place to gauge the future of the dream—and to see whether Florida has any hope of overcoming its zany developmental, political and environmental history—because Cape Coral is the ultimate microcosm of Florida. It’s literally a peninsula jutting off the peninsula, the least natural, worst-planned, craziest-growing piece of an unnatural, badly planned, crazy-growing state. Man has sculpted it into an almost comically artificial landscape, with a Seven Islands section featuring seven perfectly rectangular islands and an Eight Lakes neighborhood featuring eight perfectly square lakes. And while much of Florida now yo-yos between routine droughts and routine floods, Cape Coral’s fluctuations are particularly wild. This spring, the city faced a water shortage so dire that its fire department feared it couldn’t rely on its hydrants, yet this summer, the city endured a record-breaking flood. And that “50-year rain event” came two weeks before Irma, which was also supposedly a 50-year event. The Boomtown That Shouldn’t Exist
I agree with that, I’m 1200 feet from the river and not in a flood zone. Flood ins was $600 a year for my property, now it was raised to $5k a year. I chose not to get it, that’s on me and I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay for my choices. Mind you my homeowners is 3k a year with wind storm(on 750k coverage A). New house 2021 code CB metal roof impact windows. The flood rates are all over the place right now. The point some may be missing is many, many houses on “barrier islands” aren’t in flood zones. Many are at elevations of 15-20 feet, far higher than houses 5-10-15 miles inland, it’s not just a “barrier island” issue. Right now in my town I know dozens of people who have flooded due to the 30” of rain we got in 30 hours. Never in 200 years have there been floods in these areas should they have gotten flood insurance?
I believe this comes in part from the NHC… I followed the models and predictions very closely, Monday night the official track still had it going into Tampa but there were some good models (euro) that had locked into a quicker turn, it wasn’t until Tuesday am the official track swung right and began to follow the Euro more. When the Euro took over for the GFS I knew it was coming in there and up and out south of Daytona area. you could see the storm turning north earlier than gfs predicted and hitting Cuba Further east, the path was laid out at that point. Maybe the NHC needs to widen their warning zone. Problem is they will miss more and people leave and the next time they are less likely to leave.
This one was particularly difficult because the system was developing and turning, and it's difficult to predict exactly how fast or slow those things will happen. Add to that the oblique angle of approach to the coastline, and a few degrees either way makes a huge difference in the ultimate landfall.
There was quite a bit of question within the various models as to how quick the front would grab Ian and turn it. I’ve watched these things for decades since before TWC existed. Once a storm starts that north turn when it’s interacting with a frontal boundary it’s going north and east. It’s just what they do. I follow a couple real good guys who were talking about about it Sunday. Nonetheless if I’m within 100miles of a cat 4/5 I’ve got my bug out bags packed. I do live in a spot that seems to avoid getting direct ocean based hits over history. It’s the ones that cross the state that seem to give us the most trouble.
Still. It’s big government for people who claim they don’t like big govt. Some of that was for the ice storm that broke the electric grid down there that was “independent”. Just shows some folks are against a safety net until they need one.
In the case of massive natural disasters what would you suggest? Not build anywhere where something might happen? Like I said up thread, that means nothing west of the san andreas fault, pretty much the entire state of Florida and the entire eastern sea board. Throw in The northern half of the country due to massive blizzards and the Mississippi river delta. These aren’t just things that affect millionaires on or the near coast. FEMA isn’t rebuilding a millionaire’s house and federal flood insurance is limited to 250k for flood damage. Many of those policy issues now cost 10k a year is that enough? Or do we say you’re rich you can’t buy this? My county is about 200 miles from where Ian came in, on the opposite side of the state we have thousands of houses flooded that have not seen problems with rising water in hundreds of years. Maybe some of you are only focusing on the video of Ft Myers not sure but I think some of the usually well thought our comments are due to not understanding the full scope of this disaster. Mind you I live 1000 feet from the river and didn’t get one bit of damage hell I didn’t even lose power, so I have zero dog in this hunt.
this is a start. This 100% solar community endured Hurricane Ian with no loss of power and minimal damage — CNN
Great idea and if Ian had come in 12 miles north there would be solar panels floating in the gulf right now..
If you look at the path, they only missed the dead center by a few miles, and were on the south side, which is generally the worst side to be on. This was pretty close to a worst case for them, and they came through fine.
Well, to start, the northern states don't seem to be using FEMA money for their blizzards at the rate of states like Texas and Florida. If we are going to discuss the issues of building in places, it seems fair to point out issues of magnitude. And, it would also be great if political leadership in places like Texas and Florida would recognize the massive subsidization that their states are getting from the federal government. Instead, we are left with the reaction that government funding (even disaster relief) for others is socialism or wasteful goverent spending while even more government funding for them is necessary aid.
Nah, they are probably like zone E. Pretty far inland. Basically no chance of storm surge or “floating” solar panels. They actually got pretty close to the eastern eye too, although for whatever reason the east side of this storm was weaker. It’s fair to say the solar array wasn’t tested by 140mph winds (more like 100mph). I wonder if they have redundancies (what winds they are designed to withstand on paper, if they can afford to lose a certain % of panels, or if they can connect to the regular grid if necessary, etc). I am in Zone D in south Lee county with underground utilities and we also *never* lost power, and similarly “got lucky” with the eastern eyewall not being the more powerful side. Other property farther north and west got walloped with the full brunt of the eye and sustained a bit more damage (neighborhood actually looked quite apocalyptic), but somehow it too only had very a brief power outage, we were lucky to avoid flooding which is what caused the greater harm here (typically the storm surge is the real cause of destruction). As far as power it’s all about the underground utilities!
You must be near a hospital grid as those are the most hardened systems and first to be restored. Underground power in communities is fed by overhead power coming to the community so while the UG will help eliminate any problems within the community, if the OH lines outside the neighborhood have problems the neighborhood is dark, like mine. Not many in Lee have power yet based on what I am hearing from my employees. Office in North Naples has power, house in south Lee doesn't
I’m in volusia county. On a dreaded barrier island. Lived on it in 3 different houses for 48 of my 54 years of life. We’ve seen plenty of tropical action and I’ll tell you this storm caused as much if not more damage overall than Charley which was the worst until now. Charley was fast and caused lots of old trees to go down. This one was slow and dumped upwards of 30 inches of rain in some areas. There was very minimal flooding of the barrier island a hand full of spots that are low to begin with. Move inland 4-8 miles and there are whole subdivisions that never have come close to flooding we are talking hundreds if not thousands of homes. We weren’t in the “eye wall” and by the time it got to us it was downgraded to a TS yet numerous reports show sustained winds well of 74 mph and gusts to 100 or higher. By the damage to roofs I’ve seen I believe it. The issue we had was the high to the NE that caused a huge pressure gradient much like SS Sandy the more severe wind field was well away from the eye. I had to rebuild in 2021 due to a total loss house fire, went all CB, impact windows, metal roof. My wife and I had many heated discussions about the extra cost for the metal roof. As we sat in the house with the winds howling (me not worried one bit) she said boy I’m glad we built the house this way, that metal roof was a good idea…. My long winded point is anywhere in Florida is going to be susceptible to this type of system.