A couple weeks ago we got a little over a week's notice that we had a tropical storm coming our way. Since I moved here nearly six years ago we have had a close call nearly every year but nothing ever actually hits directly here. The closest thing we ever got was when Fay went through Naples and zigzagged across the state covering every square inch of Florida. All we got was 8 inches of rain, nothing spectacular.We also had a close one two years ago when a storm went through the upper keys and gave us a whole two hours of rain. Every time a storm would come I would hope for a hit, wanting to experience a storm, and every time the storm would turn to my disappointment.This year is a different situation. Last fall I planted four mango trees and a jackfruit tree that aren't big enough to handle a major storm yet. So right now I'm not in the mood to have my trees destroyed just so I can experience a storm.
A week before the storm the guy at work that does our media relations was going on and on about how the storm was going to hit us. The cone had the storm coming right into Miami but the average error on 7 days is 260 miles. I told him we are in the safest spot possible since it was going to miss us by 260 miles and all we are going to get is a lot of rain since we will be on the dirty side of the storm. He kept going on and on about how he worked for the media for 24 years, how he's never seen the models agree so consistently, how they haven't changed in four days, and how much better the technology was getting. Well first off they did change over four days, he wasn't paying close enough attention (I was looking at the same site as he was). Next, he worked for the media, but he's not a meteorologist. And yes the technology is better, but even at 2 days the error is something like 50-75 miles, so a week's forecast is meaningless. We had a little debate and I sounded to everyone like I'm the fool who has become complacent due to all the misses year after year.
Well a couple days before the storm it became more evident that it was going to miss us. The storm's area was huge and this makes it develop slower than a more compact storm (Andrew). It took a more northerly path over Cuba which made me a little nervous but then it started moving more west. Nevertheless, I decided I needed to prepare just in case the storm pulled a surprise last minute turn. I had prepared by buying water 5 days in advance and I thought I could close my shutters in just a couple hours. I have accordion shutters so most of them just close right up but in the back I have to put down three rails to close up the entire patio. I also have panels for my front door, side garage door, and attic fan.
Isaac was forecasted to come through late Sunday night. I decided that Saturday would be my day to prepare. I closed most of my shutters in just 10 minutes. I didn't bother with the panels because the storm wasn't big enough. If it started to get bigger I could do the panels in under an hour. But the big surprise that I was handed was when I did the panels on the patio. I had to remove the screws in the patio, put the rail down, and then put the screws back. I had no idea removing the screws would be so hard. I put WD40 on them, went to Home Depot to buy the biggest screwdriver I could find, and after 2 hours I still couldn't get all the screws out. I ended up getting out 2/3 of the screws and only putting back in about half of them. So by Saturday afternoon my house was ready. I took a break and decided to do the garage Sunday. Sunday I cleaned out the garage and somehow managed to squeeze both of our cars inside so no flying debris could beat them up.
The heavy rain started Sunday morning. I think it was around 2 or 3 in the morning I heard my shutters getting slammed. It sounded like someone was shooting them with a fire hose. It was some of the hardest rain I have ever seen.heard. It would rain really hard for 15 minutes, the band would pass, and 45 minutes later it would all start over again. It was like this all day. From Miramar to Coral Springs we got the worst of it. Over 8 inches Sunday with even more coming Monday. Sunday night right before bed I heard what sounded like a fire alarm going off. All of our cellphones were alerting us of a tornado warning in our area. This would ruin my night.
I finally went to bed around 11:30 and I was getting woken up every 45 minutes when another band would come through. I would hear the rain slamming into the shutters and the wind whistling. The wind was actually no worse than the Santa Anas but the fear of tornadoes everytime it picked up ruined my night. Monday I had to go to work and the rain was still coming down hard. I didn't have the best time driving the 38 miles to work. Every time I would make a lane change it would turn into a lane change and a half due to the wind. Finally in the early afternoon the storm had passed and the skies had cleared
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When I got home I saw just how much rain we got. The official reading for Coral Springs was 10.8 inches. However the rain was coming down sideways and it wasn't all measured, it's just not possible to measure rain when it's coming down like this. I think the actual amount was closer to 15 inches. The canal that had been dropped from the normal 8-10 feet to 4 feet on Saturday was now around 14 feet. It was up on my yard, my bananas and plants were swimming, my neighbor's trees were swimming, a neighbor's dock was swimming, etc. I don't know if they had to turn off the pumps to clean them up or what happened but it was backed up pretty good. An hour after I took the pictures they had the pumps running again and the canal had dropped 3 feet off my lawn.
It was a good storm. No real damage, just a lot of rain. Sunday morning I had lost a KRU banana plant but that's no biggie. I lost a couple more bananas that night and my jackfruit got pushed over a bit. I was able to pull it back up straight and it's like nothing ever happened. I did have a bit of a mess to clean up from the wind, mostly a big mess in my pool.
Path of Isaac. What they don't show is after it dissipated it brought rain to Indiana then moved back south into the Gulf Of Mexico where they had to watch it for redevelopment. As of this morning it has a 50% chance of redeveloping and hitting Florida again.
Sunday morning radar
This is that band that got stuck over us for hours on Monday.
Some really heavy rain Sunday
This is what the canal looks like before the storm. It actually got a little lower than this.
The canal at it's high point
Flooding by my work. This is a street not a canal.
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