Hurricane Irma Approaching · · PAGE 46.

September 10 2017:  The first of the outer rain bands arrived around 5 PM today.  The storm shutters were closed and locked earlier today.  Here are my first pictures of the rain taken at 5:25 PM showing the flow of water away from the house.  The paver stones behind the Florida room have always been slow to drain rain water away from the house.

When I was clearing the gutters and downspouts before the storm came, I had uncovered a plastic water "chute" buried in the leaves under the downspout from the gutter seen here.  I had removed a bunch of leaves in the path from this location going East from here toward the big culvert near the access road.  I pointed the water chute in that direction to keep the water seen here to a minimum.

The cars are parked at the north end of the access road away from the trees.  This photo was taken from the open garage door.

Viewing the street at 5:29 PM from the front door reveals small tree limbs already down across the street and water filling the gutters on both sides of the street.

Here is another photo from the Florida room sliding door showing just how much water has accumulated in the back yard in the past FIVE minutes.  The water seen here drains mostly to the west, but some of it can also go toward the drainage ditch and culvert to the east side of the lot.

All that water from the paver stones area comes down to the northwest corner of the Florida room before moving out into the back yard.  The downspout for the gutter on the north side of the Florida room comes down here also.  This is the source of all that water seen in the photo above.  I keep leaves cleared away from this path to insure no water comes into the Florida room at the sliding doors.  The floor in the Florida room has a downward slope from the house to the sliding doors.

Hurricane Irma Aftermath

September 11, 2017:  The morning after the storm was time to see what all that noise was about last night before the power went out.  The first photo of the day below was taken at 9:07 AM.  It shows the east side of the house with plenty of limbs and Spanish moss debris on the ground.

All that was needed to get the cars out was a rake, not a chain saw.

However, there is a need for a chain saw in this photo.  The gutters are also clogged up  again.

Here is the view from the access road looking across the back of the property.

Walking across the top of the drainage ditch and culvert shows a big tree limb on the right that needs to be added to the pile of debris as the clean up begins.  That flowing water is the overflow from the water retention ponds on the closed golf course.

ONE REALLY BIG part of the tree came down from the upper canopy and missed the corner of the house by about THREE FEET.  Notice there is NOT a DENT in the rain gutter.  We heard and felt a large THUMP at about 10 PM last night when we still had electric power.  The wind was blowing around 70 or 75 MPH when this thing came down.

This image is showing some large limbs just to the right of the image above.

Just beyond the tree in the photo above is the photo below showing much of the back yard.  The big tree in this photo is just about centered in the back yard.  This tree has some old limbs that come down when the wind blows at times when there are no storms.  Those old limbs are covered with moss and usually infested with "Bull Ants" (big ones).

I walked up to the putting green to get this image showing very little debris on the roof of the Florida room.  The gutters here are full again as expected.  No shingles were lost in the high winds.

The back yard is full of the small clusters of Spanish moss and the small limbs that kept it in the trees before the storm.

The tree philodendrons here in the back yard are flexible and survived the high winds.  A few days later, I removed a number of leaves that were laying down to the ground.

This is the only limb to come down west of the Florida room.

Debris on the southwest side of the house is smaller in size compared to the east side of the house.

The 30 MPH speed limit sign is still there.  It marks the property line and is seen here "edge on" and is almost invisible to the camera.