The ABC's of Florida

"A" is for Andrea.  For the past week the weather has been lousy.  A little bit of rain every day and we had been watching a storm system that had been hanging around from Cuba to SW Florida and it just wasn't moving.  The weather guys on TV were downplaying it pretty much as just some rain and a little wind with not much chance of developing into a big storm and certainly not a hurricane.  Whew. 

That changed somewhat Wednesday night.  We were going to get wind and rain and the "moisture" was now Tropical Storm Andrea.  On Thursday the canal behind the house filled up (literally), was moving swiftly and the winds were picking up.  The strongest gust was measured at Punta Gorda Airport at about 58 knots.  We did not experience that at our house, thank heavens.  The area was under a tornado watch until Thursday night.  We got a lot of rain, a little over 4", but we did not experience any flooding in our neighborhood.  In Punta Gorda they did close some streets due to flooding, but I understand that is a common occurrence.   There was no real storm damage and no one was hurt.

In any case, the local paper tells us this was a "dress rehearsal" for the hurricane season.  Stay tuned.

Storm surge covering our neighbor's dock