Long story short, we were hit HARD by Sally. No body saw it coming this hard for our area until it was too late.
I live in a two story apartment on a Bayou outside of Pensacola. We woke up at 4 am and moved all our belongings upstairs... Peak storm surge was around 10am. We also own a lot of land with a shed and (70% complete) garden house (IG @homeonstilts). We plan to build a home on pilings on the lot very soon.
The apartment took on 14 inches of water, the shed 16 inches, and the new garden house had 3 ft of water in it.
The garden house is still under construction, but I've built it as sturdy as I could with mostly 4 x 4 lumber. It framing stood up well structurally, but the doors ripped off in the storm surge (like most people's ground level garage doors in the area) and all the plants on the ground level and 1st level shelf dissappeared with the surge.
Lost:
Half a dozen citrus trees in planters (tangerines, lemon, red navals)
Half a dozen citrus rootstock seedlings
Two young Pecan trees
Two young Persimmon trees
Two young Avacado trees
One young lychee tree
1 small banana tree
~100 air-layered propogated muscadine vines (have about 25 that survived).
12 jackfruit seedlings
6 citrus rootstock seedlings
12 lychee seedlings
6 avacado seedlings
various pots, trays, gardening supplies... in all 80% of the plants in the garden house were pretty much lost.
Survivors: Recovered 2 heavily damaged 7 gal citrus trees (one was half a mile down the street!) and a 10 gal joey avacado.
Many damaged trees that will hopefully recover (several citrus, joey avacado, plum, apples, pears, figs, guavas, blueberries, blackberries, pecan)
In-ground muscadine vines largely OK.
Other items lost: various power tools, electric mower, and trimmer that were low in the shed. and our 5 year old Hyundai Santa Fe got flooded.
All in all, we didn't lose a ton. All of it is replaceable. Many neighbors faired worse. One positive is that we discovered our gardenhouse is structurally (cat 2) hurricane resistant. but anything left on ground level is fairgame as hurricane fodder.
IMAGES:
BEFORE
This was a few days before it hit. We were working on it as normal. Moving dirt around the base.
Inside after we finished the brick floor a few weeks ago.
DURING
Outside of my apartment
You can see 3 ft of water in the greenhouse in the distance
AFTER
Most plants gone. Plants on the second shelf survived (mostly air-layered muscadines). Joey avacodo tree didn't move far and had already been moved back inside.
found my potting table in the woods about 1/3 mile away
in front of my apartment