Leon Ain't Got Nothing On Us

(Please forgive the poor grammar in the title ;))

The palm tree in our front yard covered in ice. And say hello to our OSU lawn gnome, lol.

I have to laugh at the extreme irony that the first named storm we had to deal with since moving to Florida was a winter storm. I mean, seriously?!?!

Leon brought our part of Florida a sheet of ice over the roadways and especially the bridges. You need to understand the amount of bridges around here. Like I said in my other post, the Mister crosses four just to get to work. During the course of the storm, every major bridge in the three counties of northwest Florida closed. The bridge that leads to the main gate of NAS Pensacola (where the Mister works) was closed. At one point, the only way he could have gotten to work was either by air or boat.

Something else you need to understand is that Florida isn't equipped to deal with winter weather. At all. Northern states have machines that salt and sand the roads. We had to wait for the ice to melt. I even saw on the news, workers who were chipping away at the ice covered bridges with shovels. I also think that it's ironic that whenever northern states experience widespread power failures that Florida sends up power trucks to help out. Where were salt truck to help us out?

My girls had three days off of school and the Mister had two and a half days off of work. And you know what? I really enjoyed having my family home while not being able to go anywhere. We didn't lose power, unlike the almost 50,000 other people in our area who did, and our pantry was full. It was nice being home, warm, fed, and together for those days. For the Mister, it was like free days of leave. However, Florida doesn't build inclement weather days into the school year so they have to make them up. Our county has applied to not have to make up those days, but so far and until and unless that gets approved, they are taking two days off of their Spring Break. We had planned on taking a family vacation during that time and now we don't know what we're going to do.

Overall, we made out pretty good during Leon's wrath. Some of the plants in the backyard are probably going to have to be pulled up in the Spring, but I've seen a lot more plant damage in my neighbors' yards. I didn't cover any of the shrubs or bushes up. What can I say? This is a rental and I think the shrubs in this yard are ugly, lol.

Did Leon visit your town? How did you fair?