I was woken up at 2am by a horrible thunderstorm with lightning that
was right on top of us... I turned on the tv and watched for awhile
while John slept, then I went back to sleep, only to be woken up again
at 4am by another one (or the same one coming back again...) The rain
was torrential, and when we woke up this morning John looked out the
front door to see what it was like - and the lake flooded!
So much for their extensive drainage project... there was far more
rain than it could handle. I wandered outside with the camera to
survey the damage. The lake extends into the carpark and almost all
the way across to our building... The water level comes right up to
the balconies on the villas, but fortunately it stopped about half an
inch below the doors so they shouldn't have flooded.
I've never seen this much water since I got here so I have no idea how
long it'll take to drain away. It's obviously gone down about an inch
since its highest level, but there's still a lot of it there. At the
moment we're stuck in the carpark because the main entrance is a lake,
and while the other entrance road is dry, the street outside is an
ocean! A car got stuck in the intersection during the night - it looks
like they drove straight into the deepest part (at the corner) without
realising until it was too late. That street is flooded all the way
down to the next intersection as far as I can tell. There's a police
car parked down at the other end with its flashers on, and some of the
residents of the houses in between were wading out into the street to
survey the damage.
At least we're in an upstairs apartment so our feet are dry! But it
looks like the whole building was fine, by a small margin.
I don't know if this storm was associated with Hurricane Wilma, but
even Katrina didn't dump that much water on us! I just hope that it
gets to drain away before any more wet stuff comes out of the sky...
otherwise we could have a big problem! In the meantime we're fine, if
stuck because we only have a regular car and not a truck or SUV. I
bought hurricane supplies yesterday, only ironically NOT our regular
groceries, because we were going to get them this morning. I guess
we'll be eating them a bit ahead of schedule...
We were VERY lucky in one way - I'm just watching the news and in a
lot of parts of Fort Lauderdale the people weren't just woken by rain
on their roof, but by water flooding into their bedrooms and living
rooms! This confirms that we were lucky to get an upstairs apartment.
I may hate lugging our laundry and groceries up the stairs, but I'm
not going to have to deal with that... if all I have to complain about
is that we can't leave the building, we're really very lucky.

PS. the news reporter on the tv says that yes, we can thank Wilma for
our new lakeside view... I'm just hoping that the lake doesn't turn
into an ocean or damage our car!