Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Irma a wash-out


From the St. Augustine Record -  Castillo de San Marcos


If I hadn't known that a tropical storm was passing by last night, I would not have guessed it.  I knew all of the excitement would be on the east side of the storm, but after sunset we received absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. A little wind, scattered showers...our ordinary low-pressure systems are more exciting.  Bizarrely, we experienced more wind and driving rain when the hurricane was near the Florida-Georgia-Alabama borders than we did when it was approaching us. The greatest effect was a dive in temperatures, and the fact that the rain smelled like seawater; our electrical service never blinked.  The city closed a lot of its services (schools, libraries, etc) yesterday, so I spent it reading either Michael Connelly's Black Ice, or Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape.

All's well that end's well, at least for the deep south. Florida and Cuba's Irma experience was altogether different!

10 comments:

  1. Well, that's good to hear, and sounds like you had a pleasant day off.

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  2. Yes, Stephen, we had some good kite flying weather here. Terrible!

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  3. i'm glad you all didn't get wiped out... must have been a bit of a disappointment, tho... no?

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  4. @Ruth: It was a good day for sitting inside with a good book or two and listening to the rain!

    @R.T: Glad to hear things were just as calm closer to the Gulf!

    @Mudpuddle: Only slightly...I'm glad a tree didn't fall on me and that I'm still turning on lights, but a little more wind would have provided a little thrill of danger...as it was, one had to watch TV and believe in the newscasters' constant hype to be anxious at all.

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  5. Good to see you dodged any potential bullets there....! Or at least flying debris.

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  6. It is good to hear that you missed the worst of it. Even if the really bad stuff does not happen, I lived through two weeks of no electricity twice in my life due to hurricanes. The novelty of that wears out fast.

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    Replies
    1. Brian: isn't that the truth... happens to us at least once every winter... Mrs. M is threatening manslaughter if i don't invest in a generator before this winter...

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    2. Mudpuddle, that sounds like premeditated murder rather than manslaughter. Be careful. Buy that generator soon.

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    3. @Brian: One week without power was enough for me! I can still remember driving around town with trash bags full of stuff from my freezer, trying to disperse the cold stuff among friends..

      @Mudpuddle: They can be nice things...when I was housesitting, the home lost power but a gas generator kicked on after 30 seconds. I could just sit there in admiration for it.

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    4. Stephen: maintenance can be a problem, tho... and gas storage... if there's 3 feet of snow we won't be able to go get more gas for the generator... etc. etc....

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