A Sunday Drive

We had some fairly heavy thunderstorms in the area yesterday. I've seen worse, even setting aside actual hurricanes, but enough rain that it seemed like a good idea to drive out to the new house (closing is in early November unless something goes south) and see how it fares in inclement weather.

The narrow paved "tunnel of trees" road approaching it had a little tree debris, but not much. There were two significant areas of standing water, but it didn't completely cover the road.

Turning onto the cow path, game trail, or whatever you want to call our "street" was a somewhat different story. In the 200 yards or so from the turnoff to the house's driveway there were two areas of standing water, all the way across the road, 30-50 feet long ... but not terribly deep. We didn't go past the house, but I suspect it gets a lot worse after it curves and becomes all deep ruts and sugar sand. No reason for us to go down that way, ever, unless we are visiting a neighbor, though.

The house/lot were in fine shape. The lot has a mild slope, with the house toward the top of it. I don't see any likely situation in which we'd have flooding (and our floors are four feet or more about the ground anyway). While there are lots of tall trees, none are within falling distance of the house. I suspect there used to be some, and that that's why the roof is only a few years old.

There are parts of north central Florida where I suspect anyone without a four-wheel-drive truck might be stuck for a few days after a major storm. Our place has two decent routes of egress once you get off the cowpath -- maybe 3/4 of a mile to a fairly major road, only 1/4 mile to a county road that's not great but that a right turn on will get you into the town of Archer (which has a supermarket and a couple of c-stores) after maybe a mile. So, walkable if need be.

My main weather worry about the place would be that power/cable outages are likely to last longer since it's further away from a main drag than our current place, with lines that serve fewer customers, making them lower priority, and that run through thick forest/jungle instead of through nicely cleared rights of way.

So, a generator will be on my shopping list, and I'm also leaning toward Starlink instead of cable, even if our local cable provider is out there by the time we move in (their estimated arrival is the end of October).