Lisha Yost

We're all back to normal now (except our phones seems to be having some minor issues, so I'm not sure if that's hurricane related or not... probably a bit). We got internet last night. Too tired to post anything. We finished the majority of our yard work and outside work yesterday, in the heat of the sun. We lost power for only 22 hours (5:30pm Sunday to 3:30pm Monday), so that was nice 😊 Water has been working the entire time, but it may not be safe to drink, which is fine. We still have tons of water, and we have a really good water filter and we can also boil water if we need to. We were lucky. Some really crazy things happened, including a tornado in Palm Bay ( and a few in other areas). Bad flooding in some areas, but the areas we've driven around in Palm Bay seem fine. Melbourne has more flooding. I think the very worst damage was actually caused by tornadoes. Old gas stations seemed to get very bad damage. New gas stations are all fancy so they...

Our internet seems to be officially not working anymore. Our power keeps going off and on. It's not likely we'll have power much longer. I'm now posting via my phone using data. Updates will be short from now on. We're still safe at home. Love and peace, Lisha and Kyle

Our power turned off for about 7-8 seconds at about 4:30pm. We thought that was it for us, but then it turned back on. I turned our fridge and freezer to our coldest setting. Our power turned off again for a few seconds a few minutes ago (5:30pm), just as I was loading up the blog to post another update (just in case our power goes out for good). A friend in Melbourne lost power and it hasn't come back on. The wind is getting much stronger. I'm not worried, but it is a little nerve wracking. I'd say at this point I have not experienced a stronger storm since moving to Florida (mind you we were gone for Hurricane Matthew). There is not a whole lot of debris yet. Some very small branches have come off trees, and also a few dead palm fronds have come down. If our power is still on, I'll post another update tonight before going to bed. Love and peace, Lisha and Kyle

Our power is now flickering some of the time. It is very dark, so we have our lights on and the lights were flickering when the strong winds came. Our power held up... for now. So it's very likely we will lose power at some point. We sometimes lose power in normal storms, so I would not be surprised if we lost power in this storm. Here's some footage I took at about 11:40am (at about 0:44 seconds I have to move back from the screen because a large gust of wind came blowing in a bunch of rain, etc): And another video about a minute later: Very windy gusts, misty rain flying everywhere (as I said before, videos don't really do it justice). Our backyard has a nice lake in it now (which we've experienced before). The weather feels very cool, colder outside than inside (usually it's cooler inside because air conditioning). It has calmed down now. The conditions change moment by moment. Here's another video I took at 12:00pm in our front yard: ...

Power still on. It was very windy all night. Light rain constantly. I heard a few sirens coming from the closest main street, so the winds are obviously not too high yet because emergency personnel stop responding when the wind gets about 40 mph. As of Google Weather's current prediction, it shows 39 mph hour winds at 10am today. It's 9:43am right now and it doesn't seem to be that strong. The gusts might be that strong. But I'd say the current average wind is more like 15-20 mph. It does say current wind is 24 mph, which is close to my estimation. It shows we will reach a top wind speed of 65 mph at about 10pm tonight. Google's not always correct, but it would at least give us an idea. Wind: It shows 100% chance of rain until about 11pm. That's probably pretty close to correct. Rain: Mynews13.com future radar shows no more rain once Monday morning comes, through Tuesday. It is expected that by 2pm Monday, there won't be a rain drop fa...

Today has been a rainy windy day. Rain off and on, wind off and on. The last 2-3 hours (6-8:30pm) has been pretty consistently windy (less rain). We are starting to get the effects of Hurricane Irma. Here's a video I took at about noon today (our backyard): This was really not much, but I will say that videos and photos don't really do justice for extreme weather. Whenever I capture a storm on a video, it looks like nothing compared to reality. This afternoon Kyle and I took a drive to check things out (don't worry, it was still very safe--today is not anything we haven't already experienced--we've experienced worse). We wanted to see how many people were on the roads, if any businesses were open. Mostly only a few mom-and-pop shops were open. A cigar shop was open. There was an Arby's that was open til 2:00pm. As we drove by, it was 2:05 and there were a lot of cars in the parking lot (because it was one of the only places open to serve food), and the...

It's been raining pretty much all morning. Some winds some of the time. Irma's been getting Cuba a lot more than they thought. The spaghetti plots have shifted to the west even more now. The east side of the storm is the bad side though, so it doesn't mean we're free and clear, and obviously the storm's diameter is ginormous. However, we're far enough from bodies of water that we should not experience storm surge like the beach areas. We are right under where it says "Mon 2:00 AM" just to the east of the orange line which is the I-95. Side note: People here don't say "The" before a freeway. They just say "95" not "The 95". Weird. We say, "Take the 95" and they would just say "Take 95". End side note. The future forecast currently shows that we won't get anything really bad until Sunday afternoon. The radar is also showing it as if the hurricane is more to the east, so it may not be...

Got some sporadic rain and wind today (not from the hurricane, just usual summer weather here). Now it's just dreary. We've been doing prepping. Mostly water stuff. Kyle's been dealing with the outside stuff, and I've been working on mostly inside stuff, food and water, packing evacuation kit, etc. It seems we are going to have very bad weather from saturday night to monday morning or night. Worst on Sunday. It will pretty much be raining almost non-stop from Saturday afternoon until monday night or later. Sunday shows red rain (in the radar thing) which usually we only get green. It's possible our power could go out as early as tomorrow, but hopefully not til sunday. Quite frankly the thing I'm worried about most with no power is not having air conditioning because it's so humid here (and kind of hot), it is really just so miserable without A/C. When the hurricane is bad we will be in the hallway and hall bathroom which is in the middle of our house. We...

Brevard County Evacuation Shelters were announced yesterday. They will be open at 3pm Friday (today). We are not in an evacuation or flood zone. The spaghetti plots show that Irma is heading more west again. Those poor people on the west coast thought they were going to miss it two days ago. Then yesterday there was a slight shift westward, and this morning they have their predictions shifted even more west (to go straight up the center of Florida). Who knows where it will actually go. Hurricane Irma has also downgraded to category 4 at this point. It is expected to be a category 3 or even possibly 2 by the time it gets to us. Hurricane Matthew was a category 3 when it strolled on by. We are still prepping for it, of course. It rained last night (irrelevant to the hurricane). Woke up this morning to beautiful sunshine. I'm sure that won't last long. We are expected to have tropical storm effects by tomorrow afternoon. That's it for now. I will try to post anot...

This is one place I will be posting my updates. If we lose power, there is a chance we may not have a way to contact people by phone or text etc. And if for some reason I'm unable to use internet/data, don't worry if you don't hear from us. It is most likely just going to be because of power outage. I want to calm everyone's nerves. As most of you know, the news is all about ratings. I'm sure the journalists also care about people's lives. But they also love to hype things up. Yes, Hurricane Irma is one of the strongest hurricanes in history. And yes, it is causing destruction on the islands in the Caribbean. But I also know that we are not in a flood plain, we are not in an official evacuation zone (like the coastal areas), and the location of our county in Florida actually causes the hurricanes to lose power by the time it gets to our area. The way the hurricane is predicted to go (and is likely to go), straight up the coast, or off the coast, will ...