Street signs and newly planted trees were the early casualties in Meadow Pointe shortly after 11 a.m. Wooden supports weren't enough to keep decorative shrubs in the ground. Many bent and tumbled in the wind.
Wobbly street signs broke loose, including one on Bent Tree Drive. As Frances' eye approached, the fully staffed fire station was calm. Firefighters watched the horizontal, pelting rain from their engine bay.
With most residents tucked safely in their homes, animals took the worst brunt. A water-logged raccoon trying to scurry across County Line Road was hit by a car.
Apparently sandhill cranes took it in stride. They blithely crossed Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in front of the few cars on the road to get at insects in the grass in front of Meadow Pointe's entrance.
Stagecoach
An area of concern is the village green, with many oak trees in the Stagecoach neighborhood on State Road 54 between Land O'Lakes and Wesley Chapel.
But as Frances' eye crawled closer, the grand oaks had shed much of their Spanish moss and weaker twigs. But the limbs, which towered over the neighborhood's clubhouse, hadn't budged.
The American flag fluttering on a pole at the community's gate fared worse. The wind reduced it to little more than red, white and blue shreds.
Cypress Creek area
One trouble spot is the homes along Cypress Creek as it crosses State Road 54. At 61/2 feet, the creek was well shy of flood stage, but if the worst of Frances' heavy rain materialized, homes perched above its bank in Land O'Lakes faced flooding.
Arbor Oaks mobile home park, Zephyrhills
Jean Pinelli heard the warnings on television of 40 to 65 mph wind gusts and decided to take her chances.
"We can get that much in a thunderstorm," said Pinelli, as she smoked a cigarette Sunday morning on her porch in Arbor Oaks mobile home park.
Pasco County officials ordered evacuations for all mobile home residents, but, as in every storm, there were holdouts.
Pinelli, who said she didn't want to leave her four cats, took in her porch furniture and plants and went about her day like it was any other.
"I'm just doing it like I normally do - clean house, do dishes," she said. "So far, so good."
Outside, the neighborhood was quiet. A few tree branches littered the streets. Many of the park's 150 mobile homes are empty anyway, their owners up north for the summer.
Pinelli has a daughter who lives in nearby Silver Oaks Golf and Country Club, so she could go there in an emergency.
"She's called me three times to see if I changed my mind."
Betmar Acres, Zephyrhills
Clubhouse Three in Betmar Acres often is the site of card games, community dinners and sing-alongs.
Sunday was no different, save for the mattresses and sleeping bags spread across the floor.
Nearly 60 people from the sprawling 1,700-home mobile home park packed into the clubhouse to ride out the storm.
"This is a real tight community," said Bob Landry, 67. "Everybody's ready to help anybody."
Saturday night was a party. Ralph Knotts, 75, sat down at the keyboard and filled the room with tunes like Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain and Have You Ever Been Lonely?
Ninety-year-old Helen Odgen danced with Landry.
"I asked him," she said. "He didn't ask me."
On Sunday, a half-dozen card games helped the afternoon go by. The smell of spaghetti sauce being cooked for lunch filled the room. Knotts said he might fire up the organ again.
"We're making the best of a bad situation," Eleanor Withers said between hands of bridge.
Trinity Oaks
At midmorning, many of the new community's pale pink homes were shuttered from top to bottom with aluminum and plywood.
Even as the rain pelted down, soaking the grass and turning retention ponds into lakes, a lone house had its sprinklers on.
"I forgot they were on," the home's owner said with a sheepish smile - asking not to be identified.
"It's my first hurricane here," she said.
Trinity
In the Bellerive neighborhood, Jack Bushofsky went for a walk Sunday morning, even as trees swayed in the wind.
"I can't sit in that house anymore," he said, his T-shirt and shorts dripping on the deserted sidewalk.
"I just walked down to the golf course and back," he said, noting overturned portable basketball hoops as he went.
"There's a couple houses boarded up," he said. But not his.
"We've been here for 25 years," he explained.
Longleaf
Just past the signs declaring "new homes from the $180,000s to the 700s," residents finished their preparations for Frances on Sunday morning.
"We're kind of taking advantage of the lull in the storm to give our dog (Coco) a little exercise," said Steve Page, 44. "Everybody's got a little cabin fever."
Page moved his wife and two children - Samantha, 9, and Swayze, 10 - into the traditional-themed neighborhood four years ago. Part of its attraction: sprawling front porches and a small-town feel.
But with Frances bearing down Sunday, all of the scenic porches and back patios had been cleared. Porch swings were taken down, and anything deemed debris was packed into a garage.
Even so, there were worries.
"We're a bit concerned about the winds," said Carrie Page, 42, a geography teacher at Gulf Middle School. "This is a new neighborhood, and a lot of the plantings are still young," she said, adding that saplings next door blew down during Hurricane Charley.
The Pages, who live in a red-shuttered home with a white picket fence, had another concern: street flooding.
"The whole road was about 8 to 10 inches under water" with Charley, said Steve Page, who teaches at Mitchell High School.
But at least there was an upside to the storms, said the couple's son, Swayze:
"It's a good opportunity to get out of school."
The Oaks in River Ridge
In River Ridge, a 60-foot pine tree began to lean toward Kirklan d Drive about 9:30 a.m. Sunday. It groaned with each gust until about noon, then snapped with a sound like fireworks and crashed into the road.
"It's going to be a mess," said Elizabeth Kurtz, watching the other large pines sway as county workers arrived with a chain saw. The wind carried the smell of pine sap.
Kurtz came from Orlando to stay at her brother's house with her two sons. As she watched her brother's street get littered with limbs, she pictured her own neighborhood back home.
"If you have to ride out something like this, it's better to be with your family than by yourself," she said. "We decided we would just ride through it together."
Park Lake Estates/New Port Richey
John Wildermuth, 59, sat on the bumper of a car inside his garage and watched the oak trees across the street. Each passing wind gust seemed to push the trees closer to the brink.
"It makes you wonder, why did I move to Florida?" Wildermuth asked. "Just the thought of the roof coming off scares me."
He did not sleep at all Saturday night, spending the long, uncertain hours alternating between the news channels and movies. "I can't sit still," Wildermuth said. "But what else can I do? If it's going to happen, it's going to happen."
Gulf Harbors
A red dog leash was wrapped tightly in Rob Sosnowski's fist as he stood with his back to the wind about 10:30 a.m. He'd rather be inside, playing Crazy Eights with the kids, but Emma, a pit bullterrier mix, had other plans. The 40-year-old computer programmer arrived in Pasco on Thursday with his wife and two daughters after fleeing West Palm Beach. "We thought it would blow through in 12 hours, but now we don't know when we'll drive back. (Frances) is moving so slow. It's going to cause a mess. Just a mess."
Lincoln Street, New Port Richey
Does Murphy have a law for computers?
Aaron Gullery, 30, sat down at the computer about 10 a.m. to back up files for his Internet-based company when he heard a loud bang. Then the power went out. Gullery went outside and saw a tree covering his Mitsubishi Eclipse. The tree took the top corner of his apartment, too. A live power line lay on the ground. Gullery kept a safe distance and an easy spirit. "It's nature," he said. "This is why we have insurance."
Martha's Vineyard, Port Richey
During the wee hours of Hurricane Charley, Mike Dearsman was safely ensconced in his home on Bay Boulevard, the windows covered with plywood that said, "Sorry Charley." If he put them up for Frances, the windows might have said, "Bring it on."
"This is nothing," said Dearsman, 38. "This is just a good day to fly a kite."
And that's exactly what he was doing at 11 a.m.
Hudson
Barry Hicks, 30, was at a friend's house Sunday afternoon having a hurricane party when he got a phone call that the roof of his house had just flown off.
The party was over.
"I rushed home and sure enough it was flapping in the wind," he said. The whole back roof, covering a sunroom and his fireplace, was folded over on the wet grass.
"It was an act of God," he said.
Friends and neighbors rushed over, threw up a ladder and climbed atop the weakened roof to cover the hole with a tarp. Hicks prepared to spend the rest of Sunday damp and indoors. And today: "I'll be at Home Depot."
Hudson Beach
It looked like Donald Kline was kissing his girlfriend under the pavilion at Hudson Beach - an incongruous moment amid the storm's fury.
When the 19-year-old pulled away, a puff of smoke rose up, then darted away with Frances. Jessica Sheppard had lit his cigarette. The couple came Sunday morning to witness the storm's power and saw plenty of white-crested waves crashing ashore.
"Twenty minutes ago, it wasn't anything like this," Kline said, struggling to maintain solid footing. "This is awesome."
Sea Ranch, Hudson
"Come on," Kirk Crawford called out. "Come on." He yanked the rip cord on the generator again. Still nothing. His family had been without power since 10 a.m. The winds were gaining, and food in the refrigerator was starting to get warm. The shingles on a roof across the street lifted off, but Crawford, 38, kept his eye on the generator. "Come on."
Chapel Pines
After several hours cooped up in the house, three young men at the Chapel Pines community had to get out. Rain or no rain, it was time for football.
About 6:30 Sunday evening, after the rain and wind died down a bit, Adam Glassman, 25, John Chung, 20, and Kevin Chung, 19, went outside to toss the pigskin. The three were soaked through and through, and it was still raining steadily. But they enjoyed the break.
"We've been cooped up for days," Glassman said. Like lots of people, they spent much of the day Sunday watching television and monitoring the storm.
Staff writers Melia Bowie, Rebecca Catalanello, Alex Leary and Steve Thompson contributed to this report.
Moon Lake
Eleven-year-old Sherice Blessing cracked the front door of her family's green-and-white house and peered out Sunday morning. Her brown eyes searched the soggy landscape for Misty, one of the family's six house cats.
Misty had been missing since Saturday. Safe and dry inside were J.D. (for Johnny Depp), Nappy, Squeekers, Tigger and Princess. It's not that Sherice thought Misty would be hurt. She just wanted to make sure she kept an eye out for her in case the cat returned.
"They're pretty smart animals," said Robyn Blessing, Sherice's mother.
Of course, neither Blessing seemed too concerned for their own safety in the midst of the storm, either.
It was a lazy Sunday like most. Sherice was up at 10:30 to watch Power Rangers. Robyn flipped the TV to the weather forecasters, but was quickly turned off when she heard what they had to tell her: "I guess we're 80 miles from the eye of the storm," she said with a chuckle. "What does that mean?"
* * *
The whirl and ching of the cash register didn't stop at Discount Beer and Cigarettes, where one customer after another dashed through the downpour Sunday morning an into the store for storm essentials.
"Gotta have my beer," 32-year-old Mike Eggerline of Golden Acres said, cradling a case of brew and two ice cream bars for his kids. Eggerline had tried his local 7-Eleven and Publix that morning, but the independently owned grocer was the only place that was still open.
Store clerk Reatha Jones barely looked up amid all the business.
"We'll be here till the lights go off or we get really bad weather," she said.
