9 November 2020
It’s been a busy 6 days since my last post. First the election results, Eta, and, as always, the pandemic.
Yesterday marked the third time in three days the new cases in the U.S. exceeded 126,000. I’m beginning to think the United States may be too late to get control of this, even with Pfizer’s news of 90% success rate with their vaccine. Florida marked 6,820 new cases and, more worrisome, significant increases in hospitalizations. Broward county jumped 56% in hospitalizations since the beginning of the increase.
It also came to light that state data on Covid which is not released to news media, medical professionals, nor anyone else were leaked by someone in DeSantis’ governors office to a blogger who has been referred to by some scientists as a conspiracy theorist on Covid. Her reading of the unauthorized data is that the number of Covid cases are far below what is being reported by Johns Hopkins – who insist the number of cases and deaths in Florida is significantly higher than reported.
I had my second Covid test on Tuesday, November 3rd. I was promised the results in 3-5 days and tomorrow is the 5th “business” day. If I don’t hear anything by tomorrow, I’ll call for the results on Wednesday. I wanted to get re-tested from all the people who have come in and out of my house during the renovations. At least I’ve never had any symptoms.
Ah Eta! I never trust forecasters so I closed up the house yesterday in anticipation of high winds and rain. I wasn’t too concerned about the winds from the tropical storm, although forecasters kept giving us ranges of 30-65 mph. Instead, my concern with most tropical storms and hurricanes is from tornadoes spawned from the weather system. The good news is I was safe and sound and actually opened up the shutters and moved everything back on the patio today.
I’m not sure which is more taxing – packing and closing everything up or unpacking and opening everything up. I have impact windows but I still close the shutters every time. I figure it’s cheaper to replace a shutter than a window.
Eta turned out to be mostly a rain event. Boy was it ever. Some areas of Broward county had 16 inches of rain in 48 hours. Fort Lauderdale had 8.9 inches in a 48 hour period. I’m not sure what the rainfall was in my neighborhood but several people posted on Facebook areas flooded within my neighborhood and I had a second hand account of someone saying they had never seen water so high in our area. I confirm that opinion. My street never floods but my street had the most water on it I had ever seen.
During my morning walk, I saw several place in the neighborhood that water had come up over the sidewalks. That never happens. Also, most storm drains I passed were not draining even though nothing was blocking the drain. The storm drains were overwhelmed and couldn’t drain the water fast enough.
We would have an intense band of showers that would last 10-15 minutes then a five minute break. The cycle repeated itself all day and all night. I was fortunate not to have any leaks in the house. The one area that tends to leak is the vent to the water heater but in a previous post, I told how I had to get back up on the roof and re-tar the vent stack. It seemed to have done the job!
All in all, it was a wild night. Around 9 pm last night I got a screeching alert on my phone from the National Weather Service about a flood warning. There were three more before I finally got my first cup of coffee this morning – two in the middle of the night. To finish it off, I’ve gotten two more during the day. By my count, that’s 6 within 24 hours and we are still under a flood warning.
To top it off, looks like Eta will double back and hit the western side of Florida near the Tampa-St. Pete area.
My song recommendation is Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia” as a salute to Georgia perhaps turning blue and with Eta, there night is coming.
