Charley was predicted to make landfall right on top of us. Instead it hit a few hours drive to the south in Punta Gorda. We used to vacation at a resort down there named Palm Island. I’ve been watching for it on the news coverage of the devastation but haven’t seen anything that looked like it yet. It probably doesn’t look like it used to though.
I find it ironic that my folks over in Winter Haven, about two hours drive east from where we are, invited us over to their place to wait out the storm. We stayed here and in the end they had much more weather than we did. They lost some shingles from their roof, some screens on the porch, and have trees down all around the neighborhood. The big problem right now is they have no electricity and it’s hard to figure when it may come back on. I’ve seen helicopter shots of damage in Polk county near where my folks live that look an awful lot like those down in Punta Gorda.
If they had that much damage that far inland it makes me wonder just how devastating it would have been had the storm made landfall here in Tampa Bay. This area is much more heavily populated and developed. And even though we are in an area that is designated a non-evacuation zone, where we live is only a few miles from the coastline. I have to think that had it followed the predicted path our home would have had the potential to have suffered catastrophic damage. I would really like to talk to some of the “experts” about that.