6 tornadoes came right next to my house. The first one scared us something awful it shook the whole house. Wife and kids went into the closet while I went into the front room, fell to the floor and began praying and weeping. Afterward I put on a diaper, went to my bed and began sucking my thumb. I was shaking for a few days afterwards, not going to lie. Each time I got into my bed I felt the bed shaking and took about 3-4 days to get over that.
We just bought this cedar wood house out on HWY 66 east of Hardee in April so we were right dead smack in the left eye wall. There was no eye whatsoever, just a huge wall from what I've seen.
The first tornado knocked down a very huge live oak that knocked out the power. The 100+ winds we had knocked over another live oak. I lost a few shingles but luckily the previous owner had TWO LAYERS of shingles on this roof, FREAKING SMART. All we did was replace the missing shingles which were at the peak and maybe one sheet at the first row.
As for clean up, it's not a race for me to get this mess cleaned up like others, I only work a couple of hours a day as much as my spine allows it. This morning I cut up the smaller tree but now have to look for a big chainsaw for the Goliath live oak I have to cut up. I want to save the huge pieces to sawmill to use to restore a 100 year old barn on my property. No sense in wasting good oak wood, mainly huge live oak like that that's free.
The remainder of the tornadoes, 5 of them actually came over just about the same path as the first one. I have a screen shot of the radar showing one of the tornadoes. I told my wife it was coming towards us and within a few minutes you could hear it like a freight train coming by my bedroom windows moving north. By that time I put the baby binky in my mouth and said heck with sucking my thumb.
After it was all over, the wife had to change my diaper, then I went outside and it was flooded, my whole yard looked like a swamp. Remember it was raining and raining for a month before Ian even came so we were already flooded. So I turned on the generator, to use the fans, went to sleep. Whenever I woke up the next morning about 4 hours later I was surprised all the water disappeared. Somebody explain to me how come we were flooded with all that rain for a whole month but with one hurricane and flooding all the water disappears in 4 hours? It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen my entire life because for a month the water sat out there the whole time. Crazy stuff...There was some water standing but nothing like it was. I'm talking two feet deep in my back yard but in 4 hours it was all gone by the time I woke up!!!
I'm not ashamed to say I WAS SCARED because of those tornadoes. The hurricane didn't scare me but those tornadoes do.
I pray SK and others are safe, we had a few deaths in Hardee from the floods, very sad stuff...
