Hurricane Charley

Hurricane Charley ended up being a category 4 storm, but spared Tampa Bay, where the storm surge would have been disastrous. Punta Gorda, where the storm came ashore, had a much smaller population, which led to less damage and fewer casualties than would have occurred in Tampa Bay. However, the damage was still immense.

Lakeland missed most of the worst weather. Our neighborhood has a lot of leaves and small branches in the streets, but that's it. Dad estimated that the winds were around 70 MPH. At one point he wondered if some of our trees would come down, as the trees were bent so that the branches nearly touched the ground. The storm missed the Palatka house, which Dad had also readied.

Some people in south Lakeland might be without power for several days. Anything south of Bartow was pretty bad, especially near Lake Wales--trees on top of houses and blocking roads, downed power lines, roofs ripped off. Whole mobile home parks were flattened, but flooding was minimal. Some communities, including Polk, have curfews to prevent looting, while in addition to power outages that may last for weeks, some people have to boil water for drinking. There's no public school in Polk County for a week! They have to repair the schools, clear the roads, restore power to the east part of the county, etc. Gas is running low at the gas stations with power; ice is precious.


A map of Polk County for reference. It's in the very center of Florida, with Tampa to the west and Orlando northeast of Kissimmee (along I-4). It takes roughly 1~2 hours to drive from my parents' home in Lakeland to Lake Wales. Despite the physical size of the county, only half a million people live there. It's mostly orange groves and cows, especially in the southeast.

The death toll is at 13....15....17 so far, with several due to traffic accidents. (The number kept changing while I was searching for a particular piece of info that refuses to be found! Search engines aren't perfect.) It sounds like there may be some more from mobile home residents who refused to leave, but nothing official yet.


Charley looks pretty calm from space.


A destroyed house.