Like everywhere else Orlando has a variety of weather depending on the time of year. August is known as hurricane season and in 2004 for very good reason! We thought we would share with you our day following hurricane charley. We were at our houses having come across for a working holiday to upgrade one of our houses and pay more visits to the parks.
We arrived, from Manchester, on Thursday and started to hear reports of ‘Charley’ from all sorts of areas with all sorts of advice on how we should prepare for its arrival. We decided to put the BBQ and pool furniture in the garage, sit tight and wait! We watched the trees on the golf course swaying and the rain was quite dramatic but by 10:30 p.m. ‘Friday the Thirteenth’ we wondered what all the fuss was about and retired to bed.
We arose the following morning to find a couple of the window mosquito nets had been blown on to the rather dampish lawn and the lounge carpet near the pool area was also a bit damp! We watched reports on ‘9’ and thought "where did all that happen"! Going on the Web we then heard, from another owner, how some close by sites had lost power and water? We decided to keep our appointment in Colonial Drive (Down Town Orlando) to view some new furniture. On the way we could see the traffic on the other side of I4 was horrendous, backed up from about junction 55 West to about junction 79 East, with fire engines and police sirens blaring away all over the road.
We left the I4 to go Down Town, the traffic lights were out and we couldn’t see any lit up advertisement boards` nor did our mobiles work. We then started to observe an uprooted tree here and there, then a garage ‘upside down’ with a terrific smell of petrol. Arriving at our destination we found a very large furniture store ‘closed’, except it had very few windows intact and a lot of damaged suites etc. The owner, talking through a shattered window, said ‘he wasn’t allowed to let us in by order of the police’ but, rather optimistically I thought, said he would see us the following day - after church! We did some shopping at the fabulous ‘Super Target’ store (worth a visit for those of you haven’t been there) then to Home Depot to by some ladders to do our repairs and queued up on the I4 to get back to Highlands Reserve. We later heard that some looting had taken place and that a curfew had been imposed!
Back at the ranch all was serene, the kids had just got out of the pool, we downed our G &T had a good dinner and enjoyed a lovely sun set. Residents here told us that this is the first time that they’d had a direct hit. So - to cut a long story short - I don’t think anyone need worry too much about Orlando weather. It could happen anywhere any time!