SUMTER COUNTY
Amateur Radio Emergency Services Association (ARES)

 Sumter County, Florida

Hurricane Preparation

Hurricane Preparation
The hurricane preparation content listed on the three web pages below comes from a number of years of experiences.  Below those listing is more information on hurricanes in general.
 
 
 
Hurricane Facts
The annual "Hurricane Season" begins on June 1 and ends on November 30, although hurricanes can, and have, occurred outside of this time frame. The National Hurricane Center (NOAA) predicts and tracks these massive storm systems, which occur, on average, 12 times a year in the Atlantic basin.
A hurricane is a tropical cyclone located in the northern hemisphere with winds of 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour or greater that occurs especially in the western Atlantic and is usually accompanied by bands of rain, thunder, and lightning and sometimes tornadoes.  Most hurricanes carry with them individual super cells, which are rotating, well-organized thunderstorms. These are typically the storms that spin up monster twisters in the Mid-West.
The Northeast quadrant of the storm is the most powerful and can have bands of winds and rain reaching out more than 100 miles ahead of the eye of the storm.  The winds move in bands around a counter circle pattern; so if the eye were to pass close to you the winds will reverse direction. 
Severe damage is usually the result when the eye wall of a hurricane crosses the coast line and creates a storm surge that pushes inland.  Factors affecting the height of the flooding are timing of the tides, flatness of the land (marshes) near the coast, and the intensity of the storm.

Of the 600 people who died in hurricanes, tropical storms and tropical depressions during the hurricane center study's 30-year time frame, 354, or 59 percent drowned or were killed from some other trauma as a result of flood

 
What was Hurricane Irma like in Sumter County?
 

Citrus County is to our west and has the Gulf Coast for its western border; so we did not experience any storm surge.  Along the border we share with Citrus County is the Withlacoochee River that flows from the Green Swamp in the southern end of Sumter County.  For people living along the River and a few other places, it was a flooding event.  For those outside The Villages, it was downed trees, loss of power, winds, and rain.  For those in The Villages the power stayed on (underground lines, except for a few houses here and there) so it was a wind and rain event as the eye wall traveled across Citrus County.  There was some street flooding in The Village of Charlotte and Orange Blossom and even though storm water got close to some  houses.  In the older sections of The Villages there were tree limbs down.  More generally, there a few shingles blown off and some bushes and trees partially uprooted.    

 

 

 Last Update:  07/13/2018    © Copyright Sumter County ARES. All Rights Reserved.