Every time there's a hurricane in the neighborhood of Florida, friends check-in and express concern, which is appreciated. But aside from the fact that Florida is a huge state, it is not affected by weather in the same way from one end to the other. Specifically, living on the western edge of Orange County, we are about 60 miles from the Atlantic coast, and about 65 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. As you probably know, hurricanes don't persist very well over land.
The big storms are serious, so I don't want to trivialize them. But for reasons I'll explain, they are often more of an inconvenience than anything else where we live. This doesn't mean that they aren't stressful or have potential for damage, it's just that it's more in a zone of acceptable risk. The Saffir-Simpson scale, the categories, are in some ways kind of useless for us, because it only describes wind speed. Sure, strong winds can rip the roof off of a building that isn't built to more modern standards, but water is often the bigger problem. Storm surge, which is the process of sucking water off shore, and then pushing it back on shore at high levels, is the thing doing the most coastal damage. Also, inland areas prone to flooding are at risk when the storms dump a lot of rain quickly. The front right quadrant of the storm is also prone to spawning tornados, which as any Midwesterner knows can flatten an entire town. And anywhere, flying debris can pose a danger.
When Walt decided to build the theme parks, one of the reasons that he did it here, cheap land aside, is that the inland position is less of a concern compared to the coasts. And no, they don't disassemble Cinderella Castle in a storm. Hurricanes weaken over land, because they can't suck up energy from the warm water found in the ocean and gulf. Here in the OC, while there are anecdotal measurements of one-minute wind speed in excess of 150 mph, sustained wind at worst usually tops out in the 50's, maybe low 60's. Gusts can go higher. Charlie, in 2004, sustained winds in excess of 80 mph in Orlando, which as best I can tell is the worst that is has been.
The building code, revised in 2002, has a map that indicates what you have to build for to guard against flying debris, relative to 3-second sustained gusts, which are expected to be the maximums reached once in 700 years. We're in the area that requires building for 130 mph winds. Our house was built in 2017, and it was interesting to see all of the things they do differently here. The lower floor is concrete block for the outer walls, and the upper framing and roof is tied down through those walls to the foundation. There are different kinds of brackets and things securing the roof, and in our case, you could see where it was connected closer to the center of the house, through the interior walls. I don't know all of the engineering specifics, but it's fascinating.
We're not in a flood rated area. The nearest pond is about six feet below our foundation, and the lake three blocks away is probably 10 feet below us. Water has a lot of places to go before it could get into our house. There are building tweaks for blown water, too, in that the foundation has a lip that's two inches lower than the floor, where the blocks sit. That's because the blocks are porous, and as we learned at our previous house, water can blow in under them, at the end of the stucco layer.
All this to say, we don't evacuate from the middle of the state, but people from the coasts do come here. The noise gets intense around the house for a few hours, and then it's over. We bring in the patio furniture and wait it out. We've never lost power, probably because we have a battery that never gets used. If we did lose it, the solar and battery could power the house indefinitely, except for the 240V stuff like the AC, water heater and stove. We have propane as a backup for the grill and a camp burner. But we should have refrigeration, lights and Internet. People hoard gas and stuff, which I find odd because supply chain disruptions to the area are brief, if at all. That, and where are you going to drive to?
Irma's center passed about 20 miles west of us in 2017, coming from the south, and Ian passed about 20 miles south of us in 2022, coming from the west. People get hung up on the eye of the storm, but remember that it generally doesn't stay well formed over land. Yes, the eye wall has the fastest wind over water, but it's not even well defined over land. So when you see those "cone of uncertainty" maps and the line goes right over our house, it doesn't matter for us the way that it would for someone on the coast.
I wouldn't describe any of it as fun, but you just avoid the TV hyperbole and watch the NHC's forecast updates every six hours. We don't have the same risk profile, and history of damage, that the coasts do. The variability of the forecasts can be wild, too, up until the last 24 hours. For example, last night, Milton was expected to bring us wind up in the 50+ mph range. As of now, the models all say mid-30's, which is frankly no worse than a really long thunderstorm. But tomorrow the forecast could call for something worse. Or less.
We appreciate your concern, but it's better directed toward the coastal areas, for sure. If you want to make donations, local organizations in affected areas can probably help the most, and I imagine the American Red Cross is also a safe bet.
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