Wind sends heavy tarp flying into the sky in Fort Myers

Mother Nature gave us a small taste of her power when a steel chain-lined tarp went flying into the sky in Fort Myers.

The WINK News viewer who sent the video said the tarp weighs over 100 pounds. A strong wind blew the tarp into a tree on Saturday, and a neighbor helped get it down, but he still couldn’t believe his eyes.

It was a typical Saturday evening on Charles Road in Fort Myers. No signs of extreme weather.

“Casual breeze, I would say,” homeowner Alan James said.

But just before 4:15 p.m., James was glancing out of his window and saw the chains holding down a tarp in the Bishop Verot Catholic High School baseball stadium flying away, and then an entire tarp flying around in the air.

“And I hear like aluminum banging all over the place and see sheets of aluminum flowing over my neighbor’s roof. And then this top took off, which looked like the size of a car cover. But when you see what landed, it took off it circled around,” James said.

It eventually landed in his neighbor’s tree and left a mess in the baseball stadium.

He has lived here since 2013, and the only times he has seen wind do something like this
was during hurricanes Irma and Ian.

“No, I mean, weighs so heavy. I can’t imagine what kind of wind would it would take to lift up. He’s hundreds of pounds that thing we were we were exhausted trying to stretch the thing out,” James said.

He said that living across the street from the baseball field is a plus side to his property.

“My grandson come watch him pitching and stuff. Yeah, throw the balls back for them and stuff,” James said.

And as cool as this sight was, he is thankful nothing was damaged and no one was hurt.

“I thought it was going over my roof but it landed on the tree instead thankfully no cars yeah, he heard his dogs went crazy herd thought his dogs were doing something but there’s aluminum in his tree that was aluminum over here and the top just missed everybody’s housing cars. I don’t know how, but it would have would have totaled the car,” James said.

He says this is a reminder as we are in the middle of hurricane season. This kind of thing happened within seconds on his road with no warning, no thunder, so he is going to stay on high alert and has his shutters up.