Monday January 23rd 2017

All of the severe weather watches and warnings were over by 10pm last night. That didn’t mean the wind and rain were over. Every couple of hours through the night and the day a heavy rain band would pass through. The wind has been constantly heavy with occasional periods of very strong gusts. It isn’t forecast to quiet down until mid day tomorrow.

Today’s Flower Picture

One of the things about living in an RV is your awareness of the outside conditions. When it rains you hear the water hitting the roof and the water running off the roof. Strong winds make things outside flap and snap. The sound is transmitted throughout the rig. The only thing you can do is turn up the volume on the TV or radio. At night I treat it like loud white noise to induce sleep.

The storms didn’t do much damage in the immediate area. There were isolated areas with trees down and power outages in the greater area. The campground staff got started picking up the debris around the park early this morning. There were palm fronds and other tree debris all over the area. The crushed shells used as ground cover float onto the paved roads with the heavy run off. The park crew’s choice of clean up tool is high powered air blowers. They are effective but noisy. I didn’t sleep in this morning.

Today was a reading, watching and walking kind of day. The TV was on for watching while I read and researched travel opportunities on the internet. In between rain squalls I walked around the park. The idea of fighting the wind driving around was not appealing. The wind was strong enough that the Sunshine Skyway bridge was closed for awhile.