Here we go again.
 

We’re getting are azzes kicked again in Sw Florida

high tide is an hour away and Fort Myers beach became inaccessible
at 7pm.

:(
Be careful people !!!
cat 4 now !

Power just cut out here in Naples. We are down to a half gallon of vodka and 3 Guinness. Food is already low and eyeing up the older dog to throw on the Vodka fueled sterno grill for breakfast .

So so Hott. A/c has been off for what seems a lifetime . Ice cubes are melting .

You should of gone shopping before that chit hit's.lol be safe

We have pretty big water in Sarasota bay. Pool deck 12” under saltwater, 8” saltwater in garage. Boat floated off the lift but tied to dock pilings, which are within an inch of being submerged. House is built up 5’ so ok there. Think it has peaked here, water level down 3” in last 30 minutes. Guessing it was about a 4’-5’ surge. Neighbor has at least one electric car full of water. St Armand’s circle had a little bay water in it at noon, 4’ higher now.

If that’s not bad enough, my 86 yr old Dad moved to the F’ing panhandle last spring. He’s about 30 mi SE of Tallahassee! He told he was going to Lake City to get out of the way.

Watching on TWC. Hope all are safe!

How did everyone there make out?

Waiting for the Haulover video to drop...

Were you expecting a year off?

Would have been nice. We were actually looking at moving to the Panhandle soon after 40 years in Naples . Scratch that off the list .

I told wife let’s sell and move onto the boat and just keep going back and forth out of the hurricane zones .

Glad I got the boat pulled out and is heavily blocked 40 miles inland. Heavy wind could still get it .

Just got our power back on in Naples a couple hours ago. I had the a/c cranked down to freezer temps for the whole day before the storm. You had to wear a coat inside . Being on the second floor of a 3 story concrete building we are pretty insulated it never really got unbearable as we didn’t ever open the doors .

I have a window shaker and small generator for just this occasion but it was on the boat keeping it cool and dry while it’s out of the water.

Go figure…. My dad’s place is on the Econfina river 22 miles inland from the landfall site just west of Perry. Beautiful setting but old cracker house, went through the eye and the only damage was a fallen oak tree on a detached carport.

The flooding on the whole gulf coast is unbelievable, even with the storm 150 miles off shore.

Seeing picture from Asheville NC flooding, chimney rock is wiped clean. This thing was devastating.

Yea I was at my buddies restaurant on the beach in Bonita watching as they were trying to stave the water from entering the recently rebuilt restaurant that almost got completely wiped out by Ian.

At about 6 pm the water came up about 3 feet in 20 minutes and it was futile at that point. Had to leave the parking lot across the street before we were trapped on the beach. Going up there today. Judging by the amount of sand I saw in the parking lot I would guess they have 3 feet inside on the bottom floor.

Salty Sams got 3 feet of water and the owner seems to be losing his Sonny disposition he had from just getting the marina and restaurants up and running again from Ian’s destruction.

Look up Keaton Beach in the big bend area.

I assume you are talking about Docs? I have friends about a mile from there on Bonita Beach Rd. They just finished the restoration on their home (from Ian) on the Gulf side & got hit again by the surge. Piled 3 feet of sand against their house, washed out the paver driveway (again) & had almost a foot of water inside.

Yep looks like Fort Myers beach 2 years ago tomorrow. It’s not just that area but the flooding going all the way up the coast.

Car insurance will no longer include flood at this point says my wife in the insurance biz.

I just came from there after having the best pizza 🍕 in Sw Florida . I thought the situation was hopeless when I left but my old buddy Billy that owns the Waverunner rental biz showed up with a gas powered trash pump and got inside the restaurant and kept it pumped and dry until after midnight when the water started receding .

It’s a miracle they saved it without any water entering but lots of visqueene plastic and at the last minute we were using plastic trash bags to cover the openings and sand bag over them.

it’s not the first rodeo Back in the day in the 90s and 2000s when I was operating my parasail business out of there we had a few midnight runnings trying to rescue the waverunners on the beach.

The No name storms back in the day would Phuck us up. I can remember waking up one night to it blowing like Hell about 3am as did my room mate who ran the stand for everything.

Nothing like arriving to 12 waverunners all locked together beating around in the surf. We cut them apart with cable cutters and cut them loose so they could wash across the parking lot and across the street.

Good times.

The storms had names since at least back in the sixties. It is just that nobody was talking about them. Don’t know why that changed.

Let’s hope this is the last one this season.

They are forecasting another one in the gulf to possibly develop by late next week.
No name storm is a term commonly used around here, it generally refers to a local system that doesn’t necessarily meet the criteria of true tropical systems but still causes severe damage.
March 1993 was the first time I recall hearing the term. We had a late winter low pressure roll through the gulf which gave most of the state a steady 55 mph wind for half the night and all the next day. Then two nights of freezes.
The west wind carried salt spray at least 30 mi inland and burned all the leaves off the west side of citrus trees.

You know, at what point DO you just say F it and quit trying to fight Mother Nature? I have nothing but admiration for those who endure this madness year after year after year, or at least storm after storm after storm, you know? To have to completely rebuild/replace/start over...man, that is just not in me to do so.

Got it. Thanks.

That might apply to the panhandle but not the entire state.The big bend area and points west are in “hurricane alley” and get the lions share. I’ve been here all my life and have never had any real damage to the house. We had to clean out the garage yesterday and rinse it out, but back to normal today. I’ve had a place out west for 20+ yrs and have been through three severe windstorms out there just from thunderstorms.

It's a money game now. Insurance deductible is so high that you basically fix it out of pocket until the next blow. Very good friend spent $200K fixing his place last time for Ian and it is damaged again. He can afford it, I go to the place every Winter for a few days, but at what point do you say enough.

No names storms were actually spring cold fronts that were stronger than forecasted. Weather predictions have become much better than 30 years ago.

Ive lived in tornado alley my whole life and they are usually small in comparison to a hurricane, the destruction and loss of life is way less so Id rather deal with the twisters.

This is a real issue^^^^^^

The deductible can be 5%, so if you have a 3mm waterfront home then the first 150K is on you! If you switch to a 10% deductible (to save premiums) then its $300,000 before they will even send anyone out to "look" at the damage. So imagine paying 40K a year for insurance BUT if something happens you are on the hook for the first 150-300K and they don't have to do anything. 150K can fix a lot of damage! The other thing in the valuation is the lot. If the house is older (3mm value) then the lot is likely 2/3 of that value. So you are really just insuring the 1mm older home, NOT the 2mm lot since that likely isn't going anywhere unless it washes into the ocean.

We had a tornado touch down recently, it was literally a 3 min blast. My buddy is 250K deep in his claim (roof, impact glass, center console flipped off the lift upside down into the water). The glitch then comes, if the impact windows are 20+ years old and insurance will pay for 20 broken windows do you just replace the rest so they all match/ all the same age (new). A quick tornado basically turned into a home remodeling project.

I'd love to live in a paid off older home and carry ZERO insurance except liability. If the house gets wrecked, oh well scrape the lot and build a new one. Every year I get to live there without paying thousands in insurance is a "WIN"

I've lived within 5 miles of the coastline for over 40 years in SE Florida. ZERO claims for hurricanes/floods/car damage. I've seen plenty of damage but east coast hasn't really gotten the storm surge that puts 10ft of water through the town like the recent west coast storms have done. In most cases you have plenty of time to plan/prepare unlike a tornado. Flash flooding can happen even when there is no hurricane, Fort Lauderdale got it really bad last year after a blast of day long rain. People came out of work to find flooded parking lots and roads.

So while the TV clips are heartbreaking keep in mind the media zeros in on those places to make it seem like the whole state is knee deep in muddy water.

My neighbor is a investigator for the state, insurance fraud division. He has been re-assigned to go after the "storm roofers" that show up and try to do work in Florida after a storm for cash (no licenses, permits, etc). His whole division convoyed up to northern Florida today, these guys are cops/ unmarked cars and have statewide jurisdiction. People are desperate and end up getting screwed after the storm when a fly by night contractor shows up and takes their money for shoddy unpermitted work.

Asheville is a mess, a friend is up there this week to close on a house. Library is the only place with internet, cell service is super spotty. They were NOT prepared for the deluge of water (later mud).

Parents got 3’ in the house, st Pete beach. Weren’t allowed to go out there until Saturday late afternoon. Flooding was Thursday night. Kind of a late start to get the house cleaned out and dried out.

Contents uninsured to manage premium and our experience with a total loss on a house in a tornado was that insurance barely pays on contents anyways.

I have 2 friends that lost everything from the hurricane. 1 in South Pasadena and the other in Treasure Island. Water was up 6-8' on the walls.

Buddy of mine has an older block house on the water in St Pete he totally remodeled 5 years ago. He got 3 feet also. I think he is seriously thinking of taking the full amount it was insured for and selling it as is or an empty lot. He would sold it last year as they bought a vacation home up in northern Georgia and actually prefer to live up there.

Insurance coverage will be either insanely expensive or non existent.

Waterfront living will be for the wealthy that can afford to build on concrete pilings 12 feet above sea level and don’t need it insured.

Bonita beach has no beach anymore the water at high tide is mere feet from the parking in the county parks now.

PM me the address and what he wants for it.

little early for that , he is still a little in shock but I’ll keep you posted

Your parents place wood or concrete ? Single family ? Age ?

so sad, cant imagine going through this

Cinder block from 1960ish?

2 years now since Ian and 80% the condos on Fort Myers beach are still uninhabitable . Lot of people displaced. Not everyone resident was a seasonal visitor. Soo many of the houses haven’t been touched.

Figuring it was the top of the market and tired of the crappy water coming down the Caloosahatchee, we sold our South Cape Coral canal house just a few months before Ian put a few feet of water in it in 2022. For the 6 years we owned it, along with a couple of other properties, we would sweat it out every time a storm blew through (live in Iowa). Insurance was bad then, I cannot imagine it now. It will be interesting what happens with the real estate market along the coast. I will stick with owning a home at LOTO and "rent and run" in Florida.

Cape Corals flooding during Ian was crazy with water all the way out to Chiquita Blvd.

I feel pretty safe on our second story condo a couple miles from the beach 🏝️ n Naples but there is always the possibility of a direct hit that would take the roof off . My boat is being sold or moved out of the hurricane zones before next spring.