Bob,
I've stayed in a variety of beachfront hotels over the years in Daytona Beach Shores when we visit the in-laws. Sad to see the carnage....
Mark, my stays in the Daytona Beach area were sometimes for Speed Week and the 500 and sometimes for less prominent events (SCCA and Corvette Club events). Never stayed on the beach but did take the car out there. I'm always saddened to see damage from weather events.
I used to rent on Hollywood Beach, a SFR between A1A and the Broadwalk. I used to grab my skin diving gear w/the flag, and walk to the end of the block, across the sand, and into the ocean, w/a Hawaiian sling, or the tickle stick & net for spiny lobster. Snapper and grouper were plentiful, as were the lobster. The reefs are no too-far out, so it made for easy work. After a couple of years, I had enough saved to buy a house on the west side of the Intracoastal Waterway, and two blocks off the water. I could get to the same spot on the beach carrying my dive gear on my bicycle, in six minutes if I didn't dawdle. It was just over a mile inland from the ocean, across the Intracoastal Waterway. The biggest storm I recall in terms of water on my property was over 17" in 24 hours, the water came about halfway across my front lawn, and the streets were totally submerged. Since it's sand and limestone, things drain pretty quickly, and in a couple of days, the crowns of the roads were dry, and the shoulders had some standing water. There is a nearby public golf course, and that always turns into a series of lakes until things dry out. It's gotten better as they install new drainage pumps and pipes. However, we're now in south Miami-Dade County, < 2 miles from Biscayne Bay and I've never seen the roadways stay flooded for long.
I recall Wilma, I was working as a planner, and the jurisdiction where I worked had thousands of mobile homes destroyed (the land area of the jurisdiction was ~32 sq. mi.). We were off duty the day of the storm, but the next day we were going site to site looking for entrapped people or bodies. Yes, there was wind clocking from the SW because that was the side of the eye the storm went through on. I have pics on an old phone of entire trailer parks with just the floorpans left, and the walls and roofs "in Kansas." One in particular, next to the Seminole Reservation, never re-opened. Everything was gone and the park permanently closed. It was like that in Hollywood too, an old trailer park by I-95 and Taft St. was re-zoned after it was destroyed, and they're just now getting around to redeveloping it into a 'transit-oriented corridor,' which required rezoning, future land use changes, municipal ordinances, and etc.
Philip, when my mother moved to Florida in 1976 she rented a condo off A1A in Boca Raton for a year. It was on Sweetwater Lane with a 0.2 mile walk to the ocean and I think she expected to walk there every day. Turned out you couldn't open the windows on the ocean side because the on-shore breeze would knock over floor lamps and blow away anything not nailed down. There was enough salt spray in the air to frost the outside of all the windows and corrode anything made of metal. If you didn't open the windows for a week, their opening mechanisms would stop working.
Hurricane Wilma hit us as a category 3 storm but it was the second-most intense tropical cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere, after Hurricane Patricia in 2015. In 2005, Wilma was the twenty-second storm, thirteenth hurricane, sixth major hurricane, fourth Category 5 hurricane, and the second-most destructive hurricane of the 2005 season. Katrina, which first made a mess in Florida, took honors as the most destructive that year. Wilma wasn't the last named tropical storm that year either. We still had Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta. Zeta didn't go away until January 2006, more than a month beyond the normal hurricane season.
Just curious what happens to all of the construction debris? Florida seems to accumulate quite a bit every year!
@Prospecter, Florida has 75 land fill sites where we pile up trash. There are a few that are near the Florida Turnpike and you can always smell when you are getting close. The City of Boca Raton provides household trash collection (including vegitation) but construction debris has to be taken to a landfill that deals with it. After hurricanes they make exceptions for fencing and some construction debris.
Some gets recycled. Other stuff goes to the landfill. "Mount Trashmore"
Philip, my nearest drop-off for construction debris is the Delray Transfer Station. Otherwise it's a 64 mile round trip to the 45th Street "Customer Convenience Drop-off Center in West Palm Beach.
Probably the highest point in the state.
Kay, pretty close. "At 345 feet above mean sea level,
Britton Hill is Florida's highest natural point – and the lowest "high point" in the United States. You can summit without a Sherpa."
Man, I'm gone for a few weeks, and Bob goes and gets aftermarket parts! I'm glad everything went well with the pacemaker and you missed the worst of the storm.
Tom, once again I feel fortunate but dumb. I have to carry another medical card in my wallet at all times and I already have three occular implant cards (not sure which one they removed and replaced). I'm not supposed to drive for three weeks but I assumed that covered people who use the arm next to the pacemaker to drive. I called to get an official position and after a long time on hold, yup, it's three weeks even if you don't have an arm next to the pacemaker. No reason, just because. I'm also not supposed to lift anything that weighs more than 10 pounds for six weeks so I guess I can't get out of bed until I lose 192 pounds. My room already smells pretty bad.
Bob, you are correct, rain season is officially over. I was already starting to think it doesn't rain here after 2-3 weeks without rain... Before that there was a couple of weeks with daily rain showers.
That pulse seems a lot more in the "normal" range. The calories burnt must go roughly hand in hand with the pulse, as it increases with effort. At least from my point of view, everything that helps with calorie burning is a plus
Matias, sounds like you had a fairly dry rainy season. It's hard to drive in the really bad downpours.
Just curious, will these homes get rebuilt, or will they just clean up the mess and move inland?
Kirk, I think it depends. If the homeowner has insurance, they can use the money to rebuild but the insurance usually only covers repairs. If the land is gone along with the house, it probably has to be rebuilt to the newest codes and that could cost way more than the house's insurance covers.
Depends on insurance and bank account. Many should not be, but ego and cash usually wins out.
Andrew, you've got that right! There are two kinds of people that live right on the ocean: 1) people who built a modest house decades ago and 2) people who can replace the McMansion using just the pocket money in their checking account.
Above a certain % of value, damage sustained means more-current codes will apply to a re-build. Obviously, some single-wide placed in the 1960's-'80's isn't going to meet any current codes, and even a post-Andrew mobile home won't meet today's code, which falls under the DOT regulations. Manufactured homes do fall under the current FL building code, it's important to note the difference. This was a topic discussed ad nauseum on another recent thread, even after the current legislation was cited and referenced governing this in the State of Florida, some members insisted on referring to their parochial terms. Words do matter. Also, as any cracker can tell you, we don't care "how we do it in New Jersey (New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, or wherever-else you're 'from')."
I suspect the barrier islands' cost of development will push-aside most of the SW Florida dwellings erected/placed up to the 1990's, speaking of those damaged to the point of being uninhabitable, or which vanished because of the storm surge. The cost of building and insuring the dwellings is going to compel people who cannot afford to rebuild out-of-pocket, and then insure for windstorm and flood (two separate policies) to move out of the area.
Philip, right on all counts. After Ian, it looks like Daytona area governments are waiving building permit fees so people can get their permits and start on repairs and reconstruction. The waiver of fees was only going to last until November 10, 2022 but with Nicole's visit that may be extended.
