HURRICANE IAN: SURGE, WIND, RECORD RAINFALL AND FLOODING
Hurricane Ian is the 5th-strongest storm to hit the US mainland in recorded history. With losses in Florida estimated at between $47B and $256B, Ian is the most expensive storm to hit Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which caused $27B in damage. Nearly 900,000 Florida homes were exposed to wind, storm surge and flooding from Hurricane Ian, which knocked out power to 2.7 million homes and killed 94 people in Florida as of 10/3/2022. All this damage in just 20 hours.
Hurricane Ian slammed into the Florida coast just after 3:00 pm on Wednesday, September 26th with sustained winds of 155 MPH winds at Cayo Costa, an eight-mile-long barrier island 12 miles west of Cape Coral in Lee County. This is the is the exact same location where Hurricane Charley made landfall in 2004.
Ian took a northeast heading moving at a lazy pace of 8 MPH, weakened into a tropical storm with 65 MPH winds and dumped 15 to 18 inches of rain an hour on its156-mile course through eight counties to Cape Canaveral. It entered the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, September 27 at approximately 11 am, strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane and made for the South Carolina coast. Many more Florida counties were flooded by the inner and outer rain bands of this 500-mile-wide storm. On Sunday, October 2nd the St. Johns River was flooding a record 30 feet above normal and still rising. In August the St. Johns River was almost three feet below its 60-year normal.
INFLATION, GDP AND PRINTING MONEY
When Paul Volcker fought the inflation of the 1970s debt was 34% of GDP. Now it’s 127%. For 35 years since Volcker retired as Fed Chairman, the federal government has been printing dollars and borrowing money it can’t pay back. It simply refinances its debt.
COVID PAYCHECK PROTECTION PROGRAM
We are now seeing the inflationary consequences of printing and giving away trillions of dollars to help people consume without producing anything.
Milton Friedman: “Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It is the result of too much money, of a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. Government controls the quantity of money. Inflation in the United States is made in Washington DC and nowhere else.“
MORTGAGE RATES HIGHEST SINCE 2007
Mortgage rates of around seven percent are the highest since July 2007, just before the crash that triggered the great recession.
On September 27th the Federal Reserve raised the Fed Funds rate by another 0.75 percent, its fifth increase this year and third consecutive 0.75 percent increase. Fed officials forecast that they will raise the Fed Funds rate to 4.4% by the end of 2022. The Fed Funds rate is the interest rate banks pay when they borrow from the Federal Reserve.
THE GOOD NEWS
Our developments in Ocala and Melbourne weathered the storm well because the track of Tropical Storm Ian was southeast of Ocala and north of Palm Bay.
OCALA
Few people in Ocala lost power, peak wind gusts were lighter than expected and rainfall was less than predicted.
As of 5 a.m., 6,762 out of 208,049 Ocala customers with five power companies were without power. That means 96.75% of all customers had power at 5 a.m. Thursday, September 29th. Peak wind gusts were 30 to 40 mph, which brought down a few large trees. Thursday morning, National Weather Service meteorologist Will Corless said rainfall for Ocala within the past 36 hours has been less than predicted. Corless said the eastern portion of the county recorded 3.46 inches. In Candler, the reading was 2.55 inches. The Villages reported 1.88 inches and in Dunnellon it was 0.64 inches.
PALM BAY
Most of the heavy rains and winds were on the north side of the storm, decreasing its impacts on central and south Brevard. Rain totals from Ian were 8 to 14 inches in north Brevard, and 6 to 8 inches in south Brevard. Palm Bay experienced maximum winds of 65 MPH, some street and yard flooding, fallen trees, power lines and traffic lights and scattered residential building damage.
After removing fallen trees, pumping out flooded streets and reconnecting power, the neighborhoods of our developments in Ocala and Palm Bay should be open for business by the end of this week.
SUMMARY
We were lucky Ocala and Palm Bay weren’t in the path of Tropical Storm Ian. The hurricane destroyed entire Gulf Coast neighborhoods and the tropical storm dumped enormous quantities of rain that caused flooding across the state that communities are still dealing with today, four days after the storm left our state.
Hurricane season ends November 30th. Let’s hope we never see another storm like Ian.
