Yeah…according to the news the past couple of days…FL was in for…”a catastrophic storm”…”a once in a lifetime storm”…”an unprecedented 15 feet of storm surge”…and assorted other hype and click generating headlines.
Tropical storm Idalia which formed down off the coast of Yucatan and turned into a hurricane as it moved due north west of the end of Cuba and Key West…and passed North Fort Myers about 125 miles out in the Gulf…eventually made landfall up northwest of Cedar Key near Fish Creek up in the Big Bend area…it’s southeast of Tallahassee about 40 miles an in a pretty unpopulated area…and while there was some storm surge, winds at cat 3 hurricane level and localized flooding…it doesn’t appear nearly as bad as Ina was last year down in the Naples/Fort Myers area…and in fact here in North Fort Myers it was pretty much a nothing burger…we’ve had regular old summer thunderstorms with more rain, wind, and lightning than we had yesterday. As I type this it’s still overcast and some drizzling off and on but really…despite whatever sensationalized news reports you see about the devastation down in FL…it’s really a non issue…at least where we are, can’t say about up near landfall.
The storm will proceed up through GA and across Savannah and Charleston as a Tropical Storm as of the time I’m typing this then out to sea, veer a bit to the ESE, then back to NE and out into the Atlantic to die…looks like it may pass near Bermuda but only as a storm at that point.
So…don’t panic…and really I wish that the state, county, city, and local news media would quit trying to overhype storms. Yes…sometimes it’s gonna be bad and sometimes people are going to need to really evacuate and there will be damage…but the hype machine has been going on for years at fever pitch intensity and people just eventually tune the warnings out…that’s a big reason why so many people did not leave Fort Myers Beach and the barrier islands last year during Ina which was a much worse storm and hit a pretty heavily populated area.
Let’s see…what else is in the news…unfortunately beyond the normal political hate and discontent not really much going on. We did get a letter today from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society asking us to donate to the relief efforts in the PRC after their flooding…but again…they had a tropical storm less intense than just went past here…and while it did rain…it’s the PRC and as far as we are concerned that whole state sliding into the Pacific can’t come soon enough.
College football starts up this weekend with our fave the Crimson Tide playing at home against Middle Tennessee…they play Texas (who will be in the SEC in 2025) the next week then their SEC schedule starts up. Once again…the Tide and LSU are picked to win the west and Georgia to win the east…and after this year there’s gonna be a whole bunch of changes in the sport. First up is the beginning of the 12 team playoff which will be way better than the 4 we have now…previously there was some argument as to whether #5 might actually be better than #4 and depending on strength of schedule and who you lose to that’s a valid argument…but with the major conference champs and a bunch of at large berths…I’m pretty sure that the top 12 will really have all the best teams…and while there will be similar arguments that #13 is better than #12…the thinking that they’re also better than #1-#4 is pretty unlikely. In addition…with the expansion of the major conferences and the death of the Pac 12…the SEC will no longer have an east and west division…each team will play 8 opponents annually and 2 or 3 of them (can’t remember) will be every year as traditional rivals…for the Tide it will be Auburn and Tennessee…and the remaining games will cycle through the rest of the conference…then the two best teams will meet in the championship game instead of the east and west champs. That will be an improvement because in some years the championship game was a mismatch between an undefeated division champ and a 2 or 3 loss team from the other division.
That’s about it…so I’ll go ahead and post this so ya’ll will know we survived.
One interesting thing from the net though…
Well…let’s make it two…especially as I’ve got this one of a fierce dog pack attacking a gator down here in the Sunshine State.
Cyas.
Travels with Gunther and Kara 
There was some question as to whether we were in or out of the storm’s range. Happily we were pretty much “out”. As you also noted we’ve had more wind and rain in a ordinary thunderstorm. In no way is this a complaint of missing the storm, but a little less hype might be a good thing. Although people here were very much aware of the goings on, no one seemed unduly stressed over it. Probably a little different in Charleston area though. We enjoyed the internet pics.
Yeah…the biggest probl