Storm Debby

Tropical Storm Debby did arrive yesterday with torrential rain, high winds & even tornado warnings. While it was a tropical storm for us - which means a ton of rain, thunderstorms, winds 25 to 40 mps, it became a hurricane by the time it landed north of us in the Big Bend area of Florida. 

There has been record setting rain here and a lot of flooding in our area and elsewhere. We live on a canal on the Braden River, which is off of the Manatee River. That river flows into Tampa Bay and then the Gulf of Mexico. So we are quite a ways "up the river." We did get some flooding here, but we are okay! No power loss or large trees down, just high water. I must add we climb steps to get into our home, it is 9 feet above sea level.

The water is still up over our dock and seawall. It has receded a bit compared to this earlier photo, but there still is some flooding on our street. We have stayed PUT today. The water should go down more by tomorrow. We'll check google maps for which roads my still be flooded and avoid them of course while making our way to check in on my mom. 

We are grateful the storm moved to the east of us as it traveled from Cuba, and not straight over us. But because we live in a coastal area, we were hit by the bands of rain and the tail of the storm, causing storm surge. I'm so glad it passed through fairly quickly and I'm sorry that will probably not be the case for Georgia & South Carolina. The storm may even travel up the East coast. 

I have put a few additional photos in the extras.