70% of my area is without power but somehow I still have it. Likely people will be without power for multiple days. Add to that, many people I know are “trapped” in their neighborhoods (unless you have a giant lifted truck) due to high levels of standing water in the roads that has not yet receded. I don’t live in an area with storm surge flooding, so the flooding in this area is due to the torrential rains. Thankfully my neighborhood does not flood. Weird that for me everything is as normal basically but other people are having a bit of an ordeal.

At least in my area, we didn’t get large trees downed, only small ones, so I don’t know anyone with trees falling through their roofs or anything thank goodness. At least everyone I know is safe even if they are without power and can’t physically get out.

Tornadoes touched down very close to some people I know across the state as well, but thankfully no one was hurt either. One even had a tornado in their same neighborhood.

I live a bit north of where the eye made landfall, so our winds and storm surge were not quite as high as in Sarasota/Bradenton, but we had some of the heaviest rainfall in a very long while for the area.

I’m curious ( I’m not in FL )

So it rapidly decreased in intensity a hour or so before landfall? I know someone near Tampa that they lost their car and home, but overall damage is significantly less than what happened in the Carolina mountains from Helene, is that correct?

Any ideas why it deintensified so? Is it worse than I understand? Pretty much everywhere reads like this ended up being far less destructive than anticipated, but that the anticipated storm and destruction would have been record setting.