Ken Wulfert?

Hey Tom! We are still here in our Naples condo. We decided to stick it out here along with several friends in the building who have weathered hurricanes here. We are prepared about as good as we know how, and the building staff has done a good job putting up the building's defenses. We are built to the appropriate codes, so the building has a good record with these storms. Wish us luck! Irma is a mean storm, and she is getting worse as far as Naples is concerned.

Ken

 

Hope you are above storm surge waters. Stay safe my friend.

 

Please keep us posted Ken, keep safe!!

 

Holy cow! I'll echo Tom's concerns. Keep us posted.

 

Fear not, we will ride out the storm in our condo ...... we are on the 15th floor so even the predicted record storm surge will not touch us. The building has an excellent hurricane rating, has been through several hurricanes before, and has always been dry. (Hope that doesn't jinx it!) We are a half mile from the beach, behind a mangrove forest, and are several feet higher than the beach, but we still might get some water in the garage, which is at building ground level. We'll see.
Wish us luck.
K

ps - We took a ride around Naples an hour ago and the place is a ghost town. I did not see a single business open. We stopped by the Naples City beach and the Gulf was showing some nice looking surf with white caps. The winds are increasing as the outer bands of Irma are not far away. They have delayed predicted landfall for Irma to tomorrow around mid-day. No rain yet.

 

Bon chance Ken!

 

The game is on! Irma is impacting the Keys right now, so it is not far from us and heading our way. Key West is directly south of Naples. We are having high winds, 40-50MPH, and continual rain, some very heavy.
K

 

Irma's eye is about two hours south of us. We are well within the spin of Irma. Winds from the northeast, gusting well up over 100mph. Our power and water still on, amazing, good job FPL. The winds are blowing water out to sea. The Naples and Ft Myers Beach piers, both of which go way out into the Gulf, are high out of water on the bottom clear to the end. Saw them on TV. That water, and more, will all come back in tonight. We are going to have some severe storm surge. Irma is wobbling a bit - hope she heads a bit more to the east. It looks now like she will go over Marco and make landfall between Everglades City on the east and Naples on the west. We'll see.
Building doing fine so far.
Sherrel - spectacular view from the 15th floor, and we don't have to worry about storm surge! Wish I could look out over the Gulf and see what it looks like, but the storm shutters are all down. All our other windows look to the east.
We'd like this to be over with. Fascinating to experience the storm, but scary too. Mother Nature certainly has her mean streaks!
K