At about 2:00 this afternoon we got word that Hurricane Charlie was taking a turn to bring it south of Tampa and towards Orlando. Then at 3:00 it was upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 145 miles per hour and hit Fort Myers, Florida.

As predicted, it tracked right over the top of Orlando and then right over our house. We were hit by three waves of storms. The first was at 3:00 and is seen in the picture moving into the neighborhood. We had another wave at 6:30 and finally the storm right in front of the eye of the storm reached us at 9:00. By the time it reached us, Charlie had weakened to a Category 1 hurricane and the television reported gusts of winds at 70 miles per hour in our area. The wind picked up with each wave with the final wave knocking out the power. Fortunately, we were only without power for 15 minutes. We had just put Abby to bed and when the power went out, she started yelling from her room. We tried to explain that the power went out, but she kept asking “how”. She stayed up with us until the storm had passed and then we convinced her to go back to bed.

Now the eye has passed over us and the back side of the hurricane is pretty weak. We just got finished surveying the yard and it doesn’t look like we sustained any damage. It appears we have survived our first Florida hurricane.