9-11-17  Tropical Storm Irma hits Atlanta!

Another 9-11, another disaster!  At least people knew this one was coming and were able to prepare for it.  Before Irma was a tropical storm, she was a Level 5 Hurricane that was about 500 miles across!  That is one HUGE hurricane!  A couple days before landfall, it looked like it was going to make a direct hit Miami.  But it changed coarse a bit and hit around Pine Island in the keys and then made a direct hit on Marco Island and Naples.  But the "dirty" part of the hurricane (the upper right side of the spin) did hit Miami, and Ft. Lauderdale, and all the way up the coast really doing a job on Jacksonville.  Then it hit the Georgia coast flooding Tybee Island, Savannah and on up the Carolinas.  Almost the whole state of Florida had an evacuation order and where did they go???----Atlanta!   Traffic was a mess all the way from S. Florida - Atlanta.   The hurricane actually hit S. Florida during the early hours of Sunday, Sept. 9th as a level 4 hurricane (it's run along the East side of Cuba slowed it down a bit).  This was about a week after Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston!  Perhaps people from Florida saw what Harvey did to Houston and what Irma did to a few of the Caribbean islands, so most of the 6.5 million people in Florida who were told to evacuate actually did.  82 people died in Harvey.  So far, it looks like "only" 31 over 3 states (8 being in a nursing home days after landfall when electricity was out and the S. Florida heat got to a bunch of the residents of the home).  Irma went right up the spine of Florida.  By the time it reached Georgia, it was downgraded to a Tropical Storm (60+m/h winds).  Atlanta was then under a tropical storm warning which hit Monday, 9-11.  This was the first time Atlanta ever had a tropical storm---aren't we lucky to be here then?!  About a million houses just in Georgia were without electricity (as many as 16,000,000 in Florida).  Fortunately we only lost electricity for a short amount of time (several times---just long enough to make the tv and computers to go through restarts!).
I even took a few videos when the storm first hit us (about 3pm).  Here's my first attempt at adding one to my blog:

Lots of trees were downed around the area.  I'm really surprised there weren't many down around our complex.  Just a lot of leaves and branches.  Here's what our Taurus looked like the next day:

We also got about 3 inches of rain---which we needed.  All in all, we came through pretty well.  Wish I could say the same for everyone else!