Thank you for those words.  I'm staying put, about 60 miles inland just outside Orlando.  So far we've  had a few showers and a couple nice breezes come through.  The bridges to the barrier islands will be sealed in a couple hours and the evac from the coast is underway.  The gas station at the end of my stgreet jumped their price for regular up 10 cents per gallon yesterday. 

I have a feeling my neighbor has never been through one of these before and had to coax her into doing some pickup outside.  That was only partly successful and I ended up moving some things between our houses into an alcove alongside her house. 

She went somewhere for a short time and returned.  Possibly for some food, good luck, all the water and most of the beer is already gone.

Maybe we'll still have power by morning and through the day.  The trouble is, we have a transformer on the next street that likes to blow up during storms.    When we had the big hurricanes in 2004, I lost power for two weeks.  Not looking forward to that possibility again.

Thanks Steve for the thoughtful words.

I'm in Oviedo, eastern Seminole County and we dodged a huge bullet with this monster that was supposed to make landfall on the Central Florida eastern coast. During the night Matt dropped to a cat 3 with 120 mph winds and shifted east about 20 or so miles sparing further destruction along the coast and inland. It still battered the coastal cities even with the eastern track shift.

We have been with no power since 430am  and have erratic cell phone service. This is the first time I have been able to use my phone. But we have no property damage to our homes out here and thank God for that shift in track to the east, otherwise I think the damages out here, even 50 miles from the coast would have been tragic.

 Ikar

It truly sucks having no electricity for even a short time. We were out of power for over a month when I lived in Miami courtesy of Andrew. Those were dark times indeed.

That is fantastic news PJ! I was concerned about you guys down there.I hope the forecasts for it to turn around are inaccurate.

Appreciate your concern Steve. No unfortunately it's making a wide u turn and coming back to Florida but I think as a remnant or at most a low.

Being without power is an inconvenience so off to my truck to charge my phone battery.

Just hope it doesn't collide with Tropical Storm Nicole sitting out near Bermuda area on the U-turn back to Florida. If anything, both will weaken and disappear. Mother Natire is a fickle biatch.

Sheep

latest report says Matt and Nicole are both weakening. Matt will make a turn but fizzle away 

Glad you guys are ok. Hopefully the power will be back on before too long. Bad enough not to have lights but I know what it's like to be stuck with a freezer full of thawing food going to waste.

Thanks Gamera. We finally got power back at 8pm last night. Apparently our electric company forgot about out gated community as we were the only ones in Oviedo without any power. Their automated reporting service is crap as it failed to collect any of our reported information. I had to actually pull over one of their repair trucks and have the lineman inform the proper dept. Man it's great to have air conditioning again.