Friday The Thirteenth: Charley's Coming

On the morning of 8/13/04, my wife and I were discussing what to do about evacuating. If Charley stayed offshore and headed for Tampa as forecast we should only see 70-80 mph winds and be safe at home (we live in a home that is part mobile home and part frame). Just to be safe we decided to stay at a friends home about 2 miles away. That turned out to be a wise decision.
At our friends home we watched the weather on a big screen tv not expecting much from this category 2 hurricane that was going to skirt us on its way further north. About an hour and a half before it was to pass by however everything changed. Charley had suddenly become category 3 and had turned just a bit more east. Still not a threat for a direct hit but things would be a bit worse than expected. Our host wondered aloud if we shouldn't perhaps leave to go further inland. About that time the news bulletin came that Charley was a category 4 storm and that it had changed course again. We watched anxiously as the weathercaster plotted the new course on the radar images and the arrow he drew pointed directly to us!
My friend really wanted to leave now but the weather was already very bad as evidenced by several trees that had fallen on the property. I told him if we left now there would be trees and powerlines on the roads as well as the fact that we definitely would be safer in a house than in cars. We decided to stay.
As the storm came closer more trees fell. We bagan to see debris flying everywhere (we later discovered that most of what we saw was part of his barn and a storage shed). I all some 60 trees were toppled. evantaully the pool cage fell as well. At the height of the storm I heard the "freight train" sound of high wind ( I have a train track at the edge of my back yard so i am very familiar with what a train sounds like). We survived with the house for the most part intact and once the winds died down we ventured out to explore the damage. The next few pictures will show you what we found.