Lesson Learned

 

This Post was published originally on 9/29/2020.

For unknown reasons it failed to appear on my Blog page.

If you read it previously, I apologize for my confusion.

 Lesson learned: Don’t make jokes about hurricanes in the Gulf.

 On Sep 14, I walked to the beach while Double Red flags warned of a Hurricane offshore.

I blithely posted a Facebook Live video of the heavy surf (which we only get with hurricanes.)

I commented on the FaceBook post that Sally was 100-miles south of Orange Beach and headed for New Orleans and showed blue sky’s to our west.

I added, “This will blow past us in the Gulf and be in north Louisiana by tomorrow night.” WRONG!

Sally encountered strong headwinds, did a 360 circle for a day, and came ashore in Orange Beach near midnight Sep 16, 16-years to the date that Hurricane Ivan ravaged Orange Beach in 2004. The northern wall of Sally’s “eye” with 100+ MPH winds passed atop our house (with us inside) at 3:15 AM and a peaceful calm lasted until almost 5 AM with the southern eye-wall returned, but weakened. We were with power for five days, and a "boil water alert" for city water.

None of the 30+ residents of our subdivision evacuated before Sally and we had no one injured.

Sally caused no structural damage, but like Ivan, it blew away all the roof shingles, drenching the interior. Ivan forced me rebuild the interior and replace the roofing shingles.

This time, our house lost cap-shingles across the crown-ridge and Hip-joints with Sally.

Did I mention we received 30-inches of rain in 24-hours? A lot if the rain found it’s way under where the shingles failed and we had wet ceilings in the front part of the house. Fortunately, none of our ceiling’s collapsed, but many of my neighbors were not so lucky. None of the houses in our complex had any structural damages, but all had water leaks from the roof; 30” of rain!

My Family asks, “How can you live in such a dangerous place?”

We grew up in the “Tornado Alley” area around Kansas City, MO & Kansas. There are dozens of tornado alerts and frequent hail-damage to roofs and cars every spring/summer. Even with the Tornado Alerts, you never know exactly where they will form and strike.

This is the second hurricane in 16 years, and I wouldn’t trade the sugar-white sands, turquoise waters, mild winters, and spectacular sunsets for “Tornado Alley.”

 Thanks for riding along,

Frank

 

PS

Did I mention I HAD a book release scheduled for Oct 15??

BIG OOOOPS thanks to Sally.

South in the Fall (Book 3 in the Apprentice series) is rescheduled for release on Nov 15, 2020.