I know that Jacksonville and Orlando area got a big hit yesterday from the gale force winds, they showed a lot of damage on the TV. We escaped that but it still made a mess with branches down and all that. Today looks like it is going to be absolutely gorgeous.
The visible flooding on our property only generally stays for about a day or 2. (although the water table is at the surface) We live on a 5 acre property that has a creek running through it, The creek is in the back and the property slopes down to it so everything eventually drains to the creek, which then runs through the State Nature Preserve and meets up with a complex network of creeks that all eventually drain into the Prairie. All of our storm drains in Gainesville also eventually drain there and there has always been a huge push to keep garbage, grass clippings and the like out of the drainage pathways because it will go right out to the Prairie. This is also why I never use any outdoor fertilizer or herbicides or anything like that in my yard. It ends up in the creek, or in my well, and travels far away from my property.
The Prairie is a pretty fascinating place. When we first moved here in 1992, the Prairie was DRY. There were isolated pockets of small natural lakes, but for the most part, Gainesville was in a flux of climate change at that time...we had several years of relatively intense drought here, the Santa Fe River dropped to levels so low it couldn't be navigated by boat, local fishing lakes like Newnan's and Little Lake Santa Fe were drying up, the beautiful area springs were drying up, the aquifer was being depleted, alligators were coming up into people's pools looking for water, there was a plague of rats in our old neighborhood because they were coming into people's houses looking for water. It was all because the weather pattern changed and we did not get the daily convergence thunderstorms that were customary, Old timers said that in summer you could set your watch by the afternoon thunderstorms. But for a period of years they stopped, we had a lot of wildfires, all the stuff that comes with drought. All that is OVER now, the Prairie has been fully submerged now for a few years. Last time we were out to hike the La Chua trail, last year, the herd of wild horses made a rare appearance up around the boardwalk and they were standing in 2-3 inches of water. I know there are some dry hammocks in there somewhere or they (and the herd of bison and all the other land mammals) wouldn't be able to stay in there. Years and years ago the last time the prairie was submerged they used to run paddleboats on it for tourists.
