I evacuated into the path of the storm
I made a trip to Kissimmee to avoid Charley and was relieved for a short while, when I heard that the path changed. The path changing is one of those mixed blessings; it isn't going to hit you, but you know it's going to hit someone.
While checking into the hotel next to Orlando International Airport shortly before 3, Kissimmee got it's first squall line, which was unnerving since i had just received a call that the storm was coming towards Orlando.
In the first squall line, the sky went from slightly overcast to dark in less than 10 minutes. First the wind kicked up and then rain came flying through. I say flying since it wasn't the normal rain we get in the thunderstorms, which is heavy and falls pretty much vertically, this flew across the car, more horizontal than vertical. The xterra was being pushed around a little bit.
After checking in and getting settled, I started watching the news and confirmed that I had moved into the path of the storm and my apt in Tampa, was high and dry. Sigh.
The Orlando stations radio/tv were doing a great job in getting the word out and the warnings and advice were the exact same things I had heard in Tampa the day before. There definitely was a sense of urgency, since the projected path from Tampa was supposed to go up I75 towards Ocala, which would have skipped the Orlando region.
All over I4, there are traffic cameras which provide video feeds, so an interesting view of the storm developed. The tv stations were able to show the storm's progress up I4 as the night progressed.
The doppler radar was amazing, the projected speeds and impact points and times seemed pretty dead on. We would get prior warnings about when to expect the winds, the rain, and finally the wall, which provided a sense of security through the knowledge it gave you.
Then, starting around 8:00PM, the wind started picking up. I was happy to see that the wind blew parallel to my window, since I was concerned that wind would blow directly into the window (I was on the 4th floor).
In the next half hour, the accelleration of the storm conditions was amazing. I'm used to gusting, but this was completely different. Everything just kept getting faster and faster.
Behind the hotel is a long term parking lot for the airport and next to that was a lighted car rental agency. The light from that car rental agency provided a view of the storm coming through.
The lights dimmed 3 or 4 times before finally going out after 8:30pm and that's when it hit Kissimmee.
My first impressions were of the strange lightning. Well, it wasn't lightning, it turned out there were transformers blowing all over the place. You would see an odd blue-green glow and then there would be an explosion of sparks and sometimes there was a strange humming noise. That happened all over the place.
The window in my room held up very well and while there was quite a bit of shaking and vibration, I felt 'safe' standing a few feet back and watching the storm come through.
Since the lights at the car rental agency remained on, I could see the _waves_ of rain come flying through and while there was a bunch of rain coming through, none of it stayed on the ground, since it was blown away immediately.
The sound was hard to describe. I've heard the wind from some heavy thunder storms and it reminded me of that, except it was much louder and constant. It wasn't just the howling and roar I've heard from occaisional gusts, it just kept going and going.
Suprisingly, I had cell phone service during the whole affair, so my friends and family kept getting calls from me. It must have been a height/range thing though, because once when I went to the 1st floor, my service dropped.
From the video you see on tv, I was expecting to see the stuff (grass, leaves, etc) flying around, but I was couldn't get over the amount of chaos inside the storm. It wasn't as if stuff moved just right to left, but you would have pockets of wind that would throw stuff the opposite way or spin it around.
The palm trees were unreal. You would seem them bending and bending, but they didn't break.
Some of the younger trees in the parking lot went over in this stage.
I was doing fine in this part of the storm, but then there was another 'stage' where the winds, the rains and the noise amped up to another level. The only way to describe it is "more, much more".
It was in this heavy part of the storm that larger items starting flying around. You could see pieces of aluminum siding or sheeting blowing around. It looks like when you blow the paper wrapped off the end of a straw.
The aluminum sheeting was unnerving. You'd heard it flying through the air and then it would hit something with a bang. If it landed, you'd hear it scraping across the ground which sounds like something out of a movie.
Unfortunately, some of the sheeting was coming off our roof and flying into the long term parking, so I feel bad about the people coming back and finding their car with the damage from sheeting hitting it.
It was at this point, the eye came through. Since Charley had come half way across the state, it wasn't the dead calm center you hear about, but it was a breather compared to what we had just been through. It gave some of us a chance to come out in the hall and see how everyone was doing. I had met other people from the Tampa Bay area there and they were nervous, but ok. It was a pet-friendly hotel and the dogs I saw seemed ok, not great, but ok.
I saw some people checking on cars with flashlights through the windows, but nobody wanted to go outside, which is smart.
The eye passed all too quickly and it started up again. It is odd how you get 'used' to something and the noises from the backside of the storm were completely different than what I heard before. That was odd, to say the least.
I guess the front side of the storm loosened up some stuff and the back side came along to finish the job. Right away, sheeting was flying around again and hitting things.
The fancy metal parking lot lights didn't break, but looked like some kind of crazy metronomes; each one moving to their own time.
The first sign of the movement of the storm away from us was the lessening of the rain (and the wind, but that took longer to go away) and the transformers. Yep, it seemed you could follow the path of the storm, by the way the transformers would light up the night further and further away from us. Also, even thought the night ws dark, there was a nig chunk of the sky that was even blacker and it was going away from us.
After the winds died down enough (the clouds were racing by for quite a while though), we started going out and there were trees down all over the place. In our hotel, I didn't hear of injuries, thank goodness, but there were some cars damaged.
I can not imagine how the people in Punta Gorda got through a cat4, a cat2 was bad enough for me. Although it was a huge hassle to get evacuated and I evacutated _into_ the path of the storm, I know there's no sticking it out for me in the future.
I have to give the power people a huge amount of credit, we got power back on at 5:30am. After driving out of Kissimmee this morning, I can't imagine the amount of line work that will need to be done. There are lines down, poles down, poles snapped tensioning the lines, lines wrapped up in trees, etc. What a dangerous mess for them.