Eye on the Tropics

‘We've watched everything disappear,' resident says as Lake Jesup continues to rise

Residents who live along Lake Jesup in Seminole County continue to grow anxious as the floodwaters rise.
All bodies of water along St. Johns River have been flooded since Hurricane Irma hit Central Florida last Sunday into Monday.
By the end of the week, the waters are expected to recede, but that’s still not sitting well for residents along Spring Road.
"It's just steady changing. We've watched everything disappear," said resident Allison Gray.
The 10-foot seawall is underwater, but thankfully the water has not made it inside Gray’s parents home yet.
Gray told Channel 9’s Jeff Levkulich the local wildlife has also started to creep in.  She took a picture Monday night of a very large gator they have named Fred.
"They had said a gator grabbed a dog on Nancy drive and we are not that far. Seeing the big one out here last night was really scary,” Gray said.
Seminole County officials told Eyewitness News that barring heavy rainstorms in the next week, those waters are expected to start going down by next week.
"It's not to the historical levels that we saw during Tropical Storm Fay in 2008, so that's a good sign of that,” said Bill Litton, operations manager with Seminole County Emergency Management.
While officials have better devices to accurately measure to see when the water crests at places like Lake Harney and Lake Monroe, Lake Jesup is more difficult to predict but they believe it could crest here later Tuesday night.