Well Hurricane Ian was a roller coast of anxiety and stress. Thankfully it did not do much of anything here, though the 30 hour power outage was frustrating. We did not lose power until about 3 hours before the last of the rain. Even the winds mostly died after that. Only twigs and leaves down, not limbs of any significance here, but further south in St. Pete, there were some tree's toppled. Also like with Hurricane Irma, the strong and consistently northerly wind pushed water out of Hillsborough Bay, Tampa Bay and other coastal waters from here northward to the Nature Coast. Flaroads and I did head down to South Tampa on Wednesday morning to see the extremely low water along Bayshore Boulevard and Ballast Point. Strongest wind gusts we felt were probably around 55 MPH.
Tampa/St. Pete was vastly spared from this storm. The heavy rainfall caught people off guard in Orlando and along the East Coast. The storm surge was more than expected along the East Coast too. But the impacts in Southwest Florida were significant as everyone knows by now. I was really surprised that when the first hurricane warnings were issued, Hillsborough, Pinellas were under them, but Lee was only under a tropical storm warning. The model divergence stayed consistent almost to the end, with the GFS showing the westerly track initially toward the Big Bend and the European showing Tampa Bay, and then ultimately Punta Gorda.
I was just talking to someone at the gym who said that a friend of his moved his boat from here down to Ft. Myers, and they still have no idea of where it is. So many boats down there washed onto land or taken to who know's where? A friend of mine who lives in Clearwater evacuated to Daytona. The area where he stayed was walloped with heavy rain and significantly strong winds than we had here. There was even a report of an EF2 tornado down in Delray Beach, so unless you were somewhere west of Live Oak, you experienced some kind of impact from Hurricane Ian in Florida.
Anyway, just now logging on to the forum, even though the weather has been beautiful since Ian pulled away ten days ago.
