Hurricane Milton

You've been on my mind the last day or so as we've watched the trajectory. Hope you and those you love stay safe!

~Angela

Bill,
Make sure that you get out of harm’s way and be sure that you find someplace safe. We are thinking about you and praying for your safety.

hope all of you there will ride out the storm.

Godspeed Mahoney.

How did you make out? Hope all is well.

If you are interested in the power outage status, and the general picture it paints of affected areas, you may find the web site:

https://poweroutage.us/

interesting. While it gives the (still very high as I type at 2.4 million) current number of Florida customer outages on the main page, if you click on Florida you can see a more detailed map (probably by county).

When I started looking at this late yesterday the number of customer locations out of service was somewhat over 3 million, so 2.4 million is real progress, but still a whole lot of trouble.

Well, my wife and I are still here. Lots of wind, lots of rain, but all in all, we were extremely lucky. Lost power for 3 days. 1 screen will have to be replaced and my wife's plumeria tree was partially uprooted. This apparently happened after the center came thru and the wind switched direction. Some of my neighbors came over and helped on the trimming and replanting. We hope that it will be suuccessful.
In regards to my comment that if appears that our house is the bull's eye. Well that pretty much is what happened. I went out at 4am and we were definitely in the eye of Milton. The eye of Milton passed over this part of Merritt Island,FL
Thanks to all who commemted on my original post.

Our prayers go out to those that suffered major damage from both Helene and Milton.

I'm glad to hear your damage was minimal. Thanks for updating us!

Good news to know you made it through without major damage. We have all been thinking about you, so thanks for the follow up. I wish the best to everyone affected by these awful storms.

While the nice map at:

https://poweroutage.us/area/state/florida

says that customers without power is down from over 3 million when I started looking to 290,000 now, that factor of ten improvement is tempered by the dismay I feel at so many people being without power for so long. Spoiled food in the refrigerator, trouble communicating, no air conditioning (this is Florida...) and so on and on.

I own a small generator, but it will not pick up the startup transient for my refrigerator. And in a mass crisis I doubt I could find a supply of gasoline to keep it running after the first few hours.

The trick to owning a generator is to pick one for which you have an adequate fuel supply on hand.

Natural gas is best if you have service.

Propane, if you have it to heat, cook, hot water etc. but you must have at least a 400 gal. storage tank.

Diesel, if you heat with fuel oil.

Gasoline is the least desirable due to the inability to resupply during a disaster. It is also difficult to store due to it's relatively short shelf life. Unfortunately, it may be your only option if you have an all electric home.

I also have a small gasoline generator which is large enough to handle the household essentials. I keep 5 gal of gas on hand and rotate it every few months. I also never let the gas tanks in our vehicles get below half. If a storm is imminent, I top them off and siphon gas from them as needed during a prolonged power outage.

Power outages are becoming more frequent where I live. To avoid the hassle (and safety issues) of dealing with gasoline, I installed a diesel, whole house generator, which I fuel from our 1000 gal home heating fuel oil tank. This setup will run for a month or more should it ever become necessary.

My prayers go out to the poor people in the hurricane stricken areas and hopefully, they will recover quickly.