Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Remnants of Hurricane Irma




About three weeks ago, the winds and rains of Hurricane Irma blew through the Ocala area. While no deaths or major damage was reported, a lot of trees were knocked down.

When we first moved to Ocala in 2004, we bought a home in Stonewood Estates, a nice subdivision filled with lovely, large trees - mostly water oaks. The problem with water oaks is that they are rather weak and tend to fall over in high winds. And Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc in that side of town. Many water oaks surrendered to Irma's winds.

The photos posted above were taken a couple of days ago as we drove through Stonewood Estates and other areas east of downtown. In the first photo, you can see our former house on the right, hiding behind a garbage can.

The 2nd photo was taken down the hill from our former house and the 3rd photo was taken several blocks away.  Removal of all this debris is going to take some time as Ocala, a city of trees, has numerous areas filled similar remnants of Irma's visit.

17 comments:

William Kendall said...

None of the hurricanes had any influence up here- I expected it with Harvey, being in Texas, that its remnants would affect us, but not at all.

We did have a brief but intense storm last week that took down the warm spell we had for a couple of weeks, and that actually did some damage, with winds measured past 160 kms an hour near the heart of the storm.

Bill said...

Before I read your post, I thought that someone did a lot of trimming. Didn't realize it was Irma creating such a mess. At least no one died and its only trees but they can be processed in time. Nice photos to document Irma's mess.

Taken For Granted said...

At least the debris at the curb is mostly tree branches and not drywall and the contents of people's homes as has happened in other places. There are still some stately trees in his neighborhood.

Tanya Breese said...

You had a beautiful yard in your old house! Sad to hear about the trees but glad there wasn't anything worse to report!

Linda said...

As with William, who lives in Ottawa, which is about 2 hours away from Montreal, we had very little, if any, effects here...thank goodness. Take good care of yourself, Lowell.

Petrea Burchard said...

I realize you didn't get the worst of it in Ocala, but still, it was one hell of a something-or-other.

Marleen said...

The most important is that no people were killed or injured, but this is also serious damage.

Andy said...

Looks like the the residents of Ocala were lucky. I wish them well in their recovery.

Francisco Manuel Carrajola Oliveira said...

Magnificas e fantásticas estas belas fotografias.
Um abraço e continuação de boa semana.

Andarilhar
Dedais de Francisco e Idalisa
Livros-Autografados

PerthDailyPhoto said...

What a shame Lowell, rather trees than people though.. would be good if the wood could be recycled somehow.

Lois said...

This looks like my neighborhood although this week they brought in a heavy truck with a crane attached to pick up the bigger piles of trees. Just in time for what looks like the next hurricane to come through this weekend!

Sharon said...

That is quite a lot of debris to be cleared away and I see that rather large tree right in front of your old house. That could do some damage if it ever got uprooted. Such a beautiful neighborhood with so many wonderful trees. It's always a shame to lose trees but, even worse to lose your home.
When I was working in Denver for a short period of time, I had just arrived for the beginning of that job in late August and while I was there, they had a freak snow storm that dumped a huge amount of snow on trees that hadn't even started to turn for the fall yet. It was devastating for the trees, all that heavy snow on very full branches just ripped the trees apart. I remember how sad that was to see over 70% of the city's trees severely damaged. Seeing what Irma did in south Florida and especially Puerto Rico is even sadder.

Revrunner said...

And here comes Nate.

RedPat said...

Looks like the big tree in your old house survived!

Kay said...

So much could be worse but I'm sure that's little consolation if you've got piles of debris like this all around your house.

orvokki said...

Ohoh... what the storm is causing.

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

Yikes! I had no idea. your new home was OK though?

I am scrolling along through all the posts I've missed (something is slowing me down as far as computer time goes it seems ... could it possibly be age?) ... enjoyed all your stories and pictures, haven't wanted to weigh you down with a comment on each, but please know I enjoyed all.

"Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again." — Henri Cartier-Bresson