Well…we’ve successfully dodged the bullet that was Hurricane Matthew…

As ya’ll already know…it started over near Africa where these things normally start and tracked westward through the Windward islands, across the Caribbean and then took a sharp northward turn…crossed Haiti and Cuba and then continued on up the east coast of Florida and parts farther north.

We were keeping a weather eye on it…that’s a Naval term ya know…and had given ourselves three options…stay in place which we would do unless the winds here in SW FL were forecast for over 45 knots…seal up the house and take ourselves north out of danger if the winds were going to be up to 55 knots or so…and hitch up and go to protect our home from damage should the winds be beyond that. We figured that a 450 or so mile trip north and then either west of Tallahassee or east of Atlanta depending on the forecast track would be sufficient and that we could do that in one day.

We were checking the storm updates every few hours and knew that Wednesday afternoon would be decision time…Neil went ahead and stowed the flag, awning, grill, chairs and other outside stuff so on Tuesday afternoon that we could leave on a couple hours notice.

By Wednesday evening…it was clear that the storm would remain on the east coast and most likely not make landfall until well north of Daytona at least…it actually ended up with landfall up in northern SC. The forecast for over night Thursday when it would be closest to us was for 20-30 knot winds and 1-2 inches of rain here in the Fort Myers area. With that in mind…and seeing as how the trees surrounding Seminole campground usually knock most of the breeze down anyway…we decided to stay in place.

Sure enough…we might have seen 20 knots of wind overnight and just a few passing showers…nothing to really worry about. By Friday morning we were in clear blue skies with some wind but that was about it. We did have some partly cloudy weather later on Friday afternoon as the cloud bands on the SW side of the storm passed overhead but nothing beyond that. We did continue to track the storm though…as up until Saturday evening the weather guessers were calling for it to make a turn east, then back to the southwest as it weakened into a tropical storm and then a tropical depression with a second pass over the Bahamas and Cuba. We figured that we would continue watching and take the same 3 options as above if/when it was necessary. By late Saturday the projected track had changed and what remains of the storm headed almost due east into the Atlantic…where hurricanes go to die.

The east coast of the state from Daytona up to Jacksonville got slammed pretty hard mostly with storm surge…winds were relatively light mostly in the ‘barely hurricane force’ range over the state with a bunch of rain and storm surges up to 9 or 10 feet above normal high tide…I’m quite sure that our favorite military campground Pelican Roost RV on the Mayport Naval Station was under water…the park might be 5 or 6 feet above the river and it’s right at the mouth of the St. John’s on the Atlantic.

The other storm Nicole turned north and passed Bermuda well before it got anywhere near the US and there are no storms left to worry about at this time…and none even on the radar all the way to Africa. Hopefully since we’re now well into October and the ocean is cooling we’ve seen the last of the storms.

Our friends Ray and Janet stayed at their home over in the Fort Pierce area…the water there never came out of the canal they live on and their New Horizons was tied down in the back yard…they only had some tree damage. Seminole pretty much filled up Thursday afternoon…it looked like January around here for a couple of days as a lot of folks over on the east coast got out of Dodge with their RVs and came over this way once it was clear that western FL would be pretty much unaffected.

Enough storm stuff already…on the eye front Connie continues to improve…we haven’t been back to the doctor again but she’s seeing more and more on both the TV (she’s gradually been able to read the football score, then the time remaining and can now even read the yellow ‘Flag’ icon that comes up for penalties…still no good with the play clock though).

God’s team Alabama continued to impress this weekend…downing Arkansas with Tennessee and A&M in the next two weeks. Things are looking good for a successful season for the Tide.

On to Interesting Things of the Week…we didn’t do anything except watch Matthew’s progress since my last post.

These two were provided by Neil’s baby sis MJ.

How to tell twins apart…I guess this works.

Since the election is going on…here is a truckload of political promises.

Art has come a long way

A milk truck crashed and moments later the looters showed up.

If you remember the lifeguard at the Olympic swimming venue in Rio…how about being the lifeguard at the World Lifesaving Championships…is this the most useless job evah?

Darth Vader’s rarely seen wife.

And finally…a couple of sample bathroom signs…warning some of these are probably politically incorrect but them I’m a politically incorrect kinda bear ya know.

That’s it for now.

Cyas.