The Summer the Hurricanes Came to Town
August and September 2004
It looks like we've got another hurricane
to contend with as Hurricane Jeanne moves towards Central Florida.
If Jeanne stays on course this will be the third hurricane to hit
Central Florida in 6 weeks, and the fourth hurricane to hit the state
of Florida. We'll be getting the Ranch ready again for the
weekend of September 24th. We'll post new updates as we're able.
If the storm stays on it's current track we expect the Ranch will be
without power for a number of days after the storm leaves the area.
After riding out Hurricane Charley on the weekend of August 13th
(yes - Friday the 13th) we
weathered Hurricane Frances three weeks later on the Labor Day weekend.
Fortunately there was little additional damage. We
lost another small oak tree in the front pasture, a couple of the
older citrus trees in the grove, and a large tree limb in the back
yard. As with Charley, we had no damage to the house or any of
the buildings. The power was back on just two days after Frances
hit - it was four days for Hurricane Charley.
The cows weathered the storms without issue. We evacuated the
horses for Hurricane Frances. They rode out Charley just fine,
but Charley was rougher than expected so we didn't want to take any
chances with Frances. The horses are
doing fine and have not returned to the Ranch yet. They stayed at "Hurricane Summer Camp"
up in Alachua County while
Hurricane
Ivan was deciding where he wanted to go. They'll be returning
home soon.
We expected wind conditions for Frances to be worse than Charley, but
it wasn't the case here in Fort Christmas. Frances moved through
very slowly so the impact of the
rain was more severe. We received 8 inches of rain at the Ranch
over the 36 hours the storm took to cross Central Florida.
All activities at the Ranch continue to be suspended pending the
clean up from the hurricanes. Of course, clean up would go much
faster if we'd stop getting storms every few weeks.
