We were extremely fortunate that the weather forecasters were so wrong about what we would get from Hurricane Matthew because Melbourne Florida was ground zero for the storm to make landfall with winds clocked at over 130mph.
We were lucky and dodged a bullet with this storm, our losses were very minimal and the storm left our area very quickly. These are the first pictures of what we saw when we ventured out Friday after the winds abated heavily. The sky was very gray and it was windy all day.
The Mango tree by our carport broke from the wind, the whole top half of the tree was sitting on the ground and looked like a tree growing out of the ground, it was not until we looked further that we saw the remains of the tree trunk sticking out of the ground. The top part of the Mango tree was laying against the carport roof and damaged the corner, it took four of us to wrestle the tree trunk off the house and lay it down in the yard.
Jason and Steve our Ace Lawn Technicians came over to help us clean up after the storm, they were a god send for sure. Out on our out-lying lot we had an orange tree that broke off and fell over. Jason and Steve sliced it up with a chain saw and hauled it out to the curb.
We dragged most of the lawn debris and carnage all the way out to the street and made piles along side the road. Today we are still waiting for Waste Management to pick up the lawn and tree waste, they are overloaded with all the debris from the storm.
We normally store the LM-500 UTV in the pole barn but for this storm we brought it under the carport in front of the Ford van to protect it from the wind and rain coming from the North.
Amazingly the swimming pool looked fantastic and we went swimming Friday afternoon even as the after storm winds were whipping through our area.
As promised, no screens were lost anywhere. A big tree limb broke off an oak tree by the pool pump house, the limb bounced off the pool roof screen and fell to the ground between the cage and the pump house. This limb hitting the screen caused the bottom edge to pop free from the frame work but it is still in place and is keeping leaves out until we can get Mike from Newscreen here to repair it. As you can imagine, the screen repair man is very busy after a hurricane.
One panel of rotten fence blocks the view of our propane tank, the fence panel was blown over. Jason and Steve held the panel up while I ran new 4" deck screws into the posts to put it all back together.
Even with the storm raging at its worst outdoors, we slept like babies inside our home, very exhausted from all the preparation. We were so happy that it was not worse.
