Saturday September 12th 2020

The weather has settled into a regular pattern. The day starts cloudy followed by breaks in the clouds by mid day. Around four in the afternoon a thunderstorm or two moves through the area. By 5:30 or 6PM the sky is starting to clear again. The pattern developed on Wednesday and has continued since. A new tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico may put an end to the pattern.

When I decided to be in Florida during September and October, I knew I’d have to be in tropical storm and hurricane awareness mode. Today a tropical disturbance over the Bahamas yesterday became a named tropical storm in the gulf off the coast of Fort Meyers called Sally. As of tonight the cone of uncertainty around the track has my current location on the very eastern edge late Wednesday or early Thursday. It would have tropical storm level winds near 40mph at that time. The bigger concern is the rain will start Tuesday and continue through late Thursday.

I’m watching the forecast closely. I’ll need to make a decision to stay or run by Monday morning. It is a slow moving storm. Right now, I’m incline to stay. I think I’m in an OK location, but will try to verify that with the campground hosts tomorrow. If I were to run, I’d go east away from the storms path. It is still going to be a very wet few days anywhere in Florida or Georgia I might end up. The best case scenario would be for the storms path to continue to move west.

Besides watching the weather, I watched a little college football on TV. The thing that caught my attention, more so than the game, was the discussion of COVID related issues by the commentators. Most of the down time between plays seem to be dedicated to convincing the audience and maybe themselves that it was OK for college kids to be playing football during a pandemic. Tomorrow the NFL is back with a full Sunday schedule. I wonder if a similar litany will be delivered.