More than you ever wanted to know about a hurricane

Well, Wilma came in for a visit. Can I just say here how much I hate uninvited guests? The least they can do is call ahead or something.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few pictures and a little bit of our experience with you, my whole 5 readers. :)

This is kinda partial therapy for me. A lot of people experienced much worse than us. In no way do I mean for this to be some kind of bitchfest. What I will put before you is this: if this is how hard it was for us, I can't imagine what those people went through.

Because they'd announced that the schools were closed and Mike had recieved a call from work to tell him the shop was closed, we stayed up Sunday night. This was partially nerves and partially from the mistaken idea that we could just sleep during the storm if we tired ourselves out enough. So, we were up and awake at 5 a.m. when the transformers blew and the power went out. It was like listening to shotgun blasts. Not one, but several.

Now, what we'd thought (because the hype in the news is such that you listen for all of 5 minutes and then shut the stupid tv off) was that by the time the storm got to us, it would be a category 2 at best. Honestly, I'd gotten the idea from the forecast track that the eye would pass a little further north. The thing about Cat 2 storms (even Cat 3's if they are a little further away) is that the outer part of the storm is usually a bunch of wind and rain. Potentially a little damaging, but not unmanagable. People who are going to take the worst brunt of these storms are the ones the actual eye passes over.

Turns out, we were part of those lucky enough to get the eye. I'm still unclear as to whether the storm was a Cat 2 or 3 when it first hit us. We were hearing about wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. The eye of this storm was huge. The worst of it was on the eastern side - the part that hit us first. For anyone unfamiliar with how this works, the center of the eye is relatively calm, but the surrounding edges - called the eyewall - have the worst of everything that makes a hurricane dangerous. So, all that said, picture the circle that would be the eye of this hurricane moving across south Florida in a northeasternly direction. Now picture the southeastern portion of the eyewall passing over my apartment building. With me so far? Now, picture the eye passing just north of us (no joke - less than a mile north of us) but not over us so that we got the southern part of the eyewall as well. That's the technical talk.

Back to 5 a.m. with the shotgun-like bangs of transformers blowing.

And the sky turning green. Yes, I said green.

The biggest concern at this point is that the news reports had said this side of the storm would have the biggest potential for creating tornadoes. Wasn't sure at the time, but it seemed like the sudden pressure change and insane blue-green color that was lighting up the otherwise black-dark sky was an indication there may be a tornado outside. My son's bed is situated under a large window. We woke him and Steve up and piled into our tiny hallway and listened.

Scary doesn't begin to cover the next 7 hours.

We calmed Caedyn. I watched that large window from where I sat in the hall. We heard noises I can barely describe. Howling wind. Crashes. Banging. When the wind really kicked up hard, the windows shook. At one point, it felt like the building was shaking. We got the radio working.

I've been through these storms before. Grew up here in South Florida. Taking a page from my mom's book, I passed out junk food and made jokes to try to keep us distracted. We listened to the radio and learned that we were experiencing the eyewall. In all those storms, I've never been in that place before - nearest the eye. They said that on our side (the eastern side), the winds would be coming from the south. They said the storm was moving very fast (17-20 m.p.h., which is impressively fast for a hurricane which usually moves in the 7-12 m.p.h. range) and that the eye would give us a break of about 45 minutes.

I watched pieces of the roof fly past the window. I watched the trees outside the north-facing window (the one over Caedyn's bed) bend unnaturally. Then I watched the branches raise upward like the tree would take flight any minute. At some time around 8 a.m., I finally reached my parents on the cell phone. They now own a mobile home and had followed mandatory evacuation orders, going to stay in a hotel. They were fine and watching from their room. At one point, while I was on the phone with Mom, we hear a loud crashing sound just outside and jumped a mile high.

When we chanced a glance out the front window, we saw that the rain gutter and part of the roof had fallen onto the cars in the parking lot. Looked like my car got hit at the time.

Mom called a little later to say that it had gotten calm and quiet. The eye was passing over her. We figured it'd be a few minutes before we experienced the same. The differenced turned out to be this simple - their hotel was on the other side of I-595 which is less than a mile north of us. We never saw the eye. The radio instructed that the winds would shift and come from the north - right where that big window is that I'd been watching the diminishing trees and neato colors earlier.

There were now slightly longer periods between gusts and we took the opportunity to look out the windows. The difference was mind-numbing. Mike has since ventured out and explained to me that we're seeing the side of the trailer park that fared the best. That's scary. Turned out the debris that fell on the cars just missed mine. Later inspection showed some cuts and scrapes on the driver's side door. So lucky us. Thanking God every minute.

When the eye began to move further on, the winds shifted and began coming from the west rather than the north because we were on the bottom side of the eye rather than in it's direct path. I can't stress to you how important this is. If we'd have had to experience the same force of windspeeds from the north, I'm certain we'd have lost the windows on that side of the building.

We'd been sitting in this cramped hallway for hours and our nerves were pretty much raw by now. So when we heard a crash in the kitchen, I think we all fell apart. Steve grabbed shoes and ventured into the kitchen while we feared the worst - figuring the kitchen window was gone. Thankfully, it wasn't. It is broken, but in one corner where it was hit by a piece of wood from the roof of the corner of the building. I need to tell you this was a miracle. Not only because the whole thing didn't get smashed, but because we later found out that the glass itself doesn't sit in a track in the frame, but is glued in place. The force of the wind should've knocked it out. The window is south-facing. There is no logical explanation for why it stayed in place. We've since announced that God put his finger on the window and said, "No, not today."

I think I finally passed out from exhaustion (and heavy meds) around eleven or so. Got an hour or two of sleep.

I have a few pictures I'll try to get either put up or linked up in a few minutes.

We were very lucky. The apartments on either corner of our building have holes in their part of the roof. One apartment's ceilings collapsed in every room. Another's bathroom ceiling collapsed. Those on the first floor in those corners were flooded.

My parents lost half their roof.

Lots of damage and destruction.

We're thanking God for how safe and lucky we were.

If you've read this far, thanks for listening. Needed to talk about this and get it out.