Hurricane Helene has come and gone, and boy was she something. Her path was really similar to Debby, the last one that came through Florida in August. Other than that though, those two storms couldn’t have been more different. And honestly, for Ocala, Helene was probably a bit easier as far as lingering effects go.

We ended up on the east side of both storms, which is the worse side to be on. It gets all the rain, wind, and tornadoes. Debby and Helene were both big storms, with Helene the stronger of the two, but Helene was fast, whereas Debby was slow. For us here in Ocala, that meant Helene was much more violent, but she dropped considerably less rain because she came and went so quickly. Debby lingered, raining for almost 24 hours straight, dropping way more water. So while Helene dropped some trees and downed some power lines, she didn’t cause any kind of lasting flooding around here.

The same can’t be said of states north of us though, which definitely got hit much worse by Helene than we did. Even Aiken took a much bigger hit than Ocala, despite the fact that the eye was only like 90 miles from us when she made landfall. Helene marched north with spectacular rage, and it’s just devastating to see the absolute destruction she left in her wake. If you were in her path, I hope you and your horses and your farms are ok. Seeing some of these places in North Carolina and Tennessee that were literally just wiped off the face of the earth (and in some cases, the earth was wiped away along with it) is absolutely gutting. Mindboggling that a hurricane could do so much damage even that far inland. We absolutely got lucky here in Ocala.

I spent last Wednesday prepping for the storm, which mostly includes deciding which horses are gonna go where, putting away or securing anything that might blow away (stuff in the crossties, anything in the aisles, jumps, dressage arena letters, trash cans, etc), and hoarding water. Like most farms, we’re on a well, so if the power goes out the pump doesn’t work, which means we don’t have water. That’s a problem when you’ve got 25 horses.

On Thursday I did slightly change my plan of what horses were going where, when I saw exactly what direction the worst of the winds would be coming from. It was slightly different from Debby, and the wind speed was expected to be considerably higher. They were forecasting 50-60mph sustained with gusts potentially up to 90mph. The pasture horses stay out in the pastures during these storms, but I decided to bring the stall horses all up to the main cinderblock barn and put them in stalls that had fully enclosed doors. With winds that high, I wasn’t sure how the wood barns would fare, and I didn’t want them in stalls that had open top doors in case there was any flying debris.

So Thursday morning I prepped all those stalls with bedding, several water buckets, and two hay nets each. Helene was set to hit us overnight, so I wanted to make sure they had plenty of hay and water just in case something prevented me from getting up to the barn first thing in the morning. Andy and Rhett are also up at the top barn right now because Andy has a summer sore that requires 1) daily care and bandaging 2) turnout that involves no standing water. Those two kids got put in another giant foaling stall and I just gave them a whole bale of hay. They were delighted. Luxury hurricane suite.

I ended up bringing everyone in around dinner time on Thursday right as the first outer bands were starting to arrive. They weren’t most pleased about not being able to see each other (especially Hillary’s mares) but at least they were safe. I bid them all the best of luck, did one last pass around the farm, and then went to hunker down in my house.

Right around 8pm is when the wind went from breezy to rough, and that’s exactly when we lost power. I was kinda hoping we’d make it a little further into the storm than that, but nope. I basically sat there all night sweating (Helene was hot and humid) and listening to the metal roof rattle in a moderately concerning way while things pinged off the front of the house. I don’t think many of us got much sleep. Our tornado risk was quite high so I was mega paranoid about that too.

Honestly I think we got a little bit lucky with direction the wind came from. The weaker structures on the farm had a bit of a wind block from other things, and the house had the benefit of being a bit down and behind a tree line that helped block some. I mean, we did get smacked with lots of little branches from said trees, but that’s alright. And the biggest trees near our house that would be a problem if they fell, those are all behind it or on the other side.

In the end the farm ended up losing two trees and having a couple spots of damaged fence, along with LOTS of branches and limbs down, but overall it’s much less damage than I expected. Most importantly, the horses were all happy and safe, and I was able to turn them back out the next morning.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get power back… I was prepared for up to a week. But we also got lucky in that the major cities nearby (Ocala and Gainesville) didn’t have any widespread power issues, so all the linemen that had gathered nearby were able to get out to us in the rural areas a lot faster. And one side of the farm goes along a bigger road that connects the interstate to a nearby town, so we seem to have gotten some priority. There were 5-6 trees down on the lines between us and that town, but they still managed to get our power back on by dinnertime on Friday, so it wasn’t even out for 24 hours. Other people nearby got theirs back as late as Sunday or Monday, so I was happy to be among the first. It’s too dang hot to not have AC, and it stresses me the heck out when we don’t have water for the farm.

I also lost cell service until late on Friday, which was annoying because I could see that people were texting and messaging me, but I couldn’t actually open any of it. I ended up driving into town in the afternoon to let people know we were alright.

Overall we definitely escaped Helene much more lightly than most of the others in her path, which I’m thankful for. Still though, of the hurricanes that have come through since I’ve lived here (I think we’re on 4 or 5 now?) she was definitely the angriest. Normally this far inland we just get some wind and rain, but this one was more wind than we’ve had so far. Did not love. Especially overnight when I couldn’t see what all the thumps and bumps were.

But Helene only dropped like 1.5″ of rain, compared to 8″+ from Debby. There was standing water for a month. Heck, there’s still standing water from Debby in the front corner where everything drains. At least Helene didn’t give us more of that.

We’ve still got a ton of sticks and branches and Spanish moss to pick up, and some fence that needs to be repaired, but compared to the footage I’ve seen from elsewhere, it feels like we got off pretty scot free with this one. I would really love it if no more hurricanes would come this way for the rest of the year tho. I do believe two in 6 weeks was enough for me, thank you so very much global warming.