So how did we fare?

I know that all of you are curious how Pasco County and Quilted Twins, specifically, in Dade City, FL, fared with regards to Hurricane Idalia which came through Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug 29 and 30.

Since we here in Poland are 6 hours ahead of EST in the states, I was able to put on a You Tube channel with live coverage in the morning and gauge the progress. I could also see that it would not terribly impact us as we are inland quite a bit. However, always, always wind can be an issue. Since we all have plenty of trees in central Florida, the possibility of branches down or trees down is for real.

This was the first of the rain through Mom’s picture window right at 4 p.m. on her birthday, Aug. 29.

Tornado warnings got us into safe places in our homes for a bit!

Rachael takes over: We did get a lot of steady rain throughout the night, beginning just before I fell asleep around 10:30 or 11 p.m. Well, I’m not really sure when it began. I woke up at 1:11 a.m. to hearing the constant rain, and again at 4, at 7 and all morning, off and on on Aug. 30. I didn’t actually climb out of bed until 9:20, when the tornado warning came through via telephone.

After sitting in a safe bathroom for a while, I decided it was over, and went about my morning, doing pretty much nothing, but resting and watching the devastation.

By noon, that had exhausted me, and the low pressure system lulled me right into an afternoon nap, something i’ve not done for months, except when ill.

However, I was curious if things were ok at the store, so I got over there around 2:45 p.m. to check on power, internet, etc. and then Becky asked me to find some evidences of a hurricane. (Trust me, my body knew that we had been through the stress, but I was hard pressed to find a lot of damage in our immediate area.)

But being the obedient twin sister that I am, I drove around a bit yesterday afternoon looking for damage, but was hard pressed to find much. Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful for being about 98% spared of anything, other than a loss of sleep, a great deal of stress and the mental build up of ‘what ifs” that comes with such an event.

 

I did find a few fun and interesting things.

I found this duck who appeared to have lost his way, and was waddling around a neighborhood, probably hunting water.

Then I found a chicken was loose. After the first band of rain came through on Tuesday, I found these beautiful sand hill cranes wandering through a different neighborhood!

Mainly I found a few downed limbs. What happens is that during these storms, all of the dead limbs from previous interactions with storms, causing broken limbs way up high, then, these storms come, and they come crashing down to the ground, already dead as doornails.

After driving around town for 30 minutes, I came home, and found my own yard replete with them. Several of these are from my own yard or our church’s yard.

There are some times that the fresh and green limbs break off as shown here. The last picture is out front of the store.

Just a very, very piles of Spanish moss found the ground! Most of it stayed on the trees.

Mom’s beautiful stately oak trees didn’t even lose much of their incredibly thick Spanish Moss.

Usually after such a storm, there are piles and piles of moss everywhere. I did find a few small piles, but that was about it.

 

Our retention pond at the office did its job, but even though it rained steadily for what seemed like hours, our ground is dry and the water table is low, so this didn’t even fill completely up.

All in all, we’re incredibly thankful that we were spared. We are so very sorry for those who were NOT, but I think by going in at the big bend of Florida, a highly UNPOPULATED part of Florida, that the loss of life will be much less than it would have been otherwise.

Our store will be opening at noon today, if you’re interested in coming out and supporting us. Otherwise, online is always open!

Thanks again for caring.

Back to Becky -

0 quilts left in my “Quilt 90 quilts in 31 days” challenge plus I finished 3 more. I am almost done with all 120. (Just three left!)

Becky Petersen2 Comments