Saturday June 18th 2022

I woke up this morning shortly after 7AM to the sound of thunder. This is exactly the opposite of what I expected based on the weather forecast. I was expecting a bright sunny morning to heat the air into the upper nineties followed by severe thunderstorms during the afternoon. Instead we got something different.

A line of thunderstorms approached the area from the north this morning. The storms were severe in southern Georgia, but by the time they got to the Jacksonville area they had lost much of their strength. It rained from shortly after 8AM until noon. Occasionally it was heavy rain. In the early afternoon the rain gave way to slowly clearing cloud cover. By late afternoon the sun was out increasing the temperature to the advertised high for the day in the upper nineties.

The rain prevented me from opening the windows, raising the vents and turning on the fans. I had to run the AC all day. On a nice day I try to keep the AC off until evening. There is nothing wrong with being comfortable inside. The down side is when I go outside. The change in humidity and temperature hits you like running into a brick wall.

During the bad weather portion of the day the RV resort was more active than I’ve seen it since I got here almost two weeks ago. New residents arrived to occupy three of the empty sites near me. Later in the day on my walk around the resort I spotted several other new arrivals. I wonder what was so special about today.

Late in the day I made a trip to Walmart for groceries. I have gradually gotten back into a habit of grocery shopping more frequently. For the last two plus years a combination of social distancing concerns and being located long distances from stores have lengthened my average time between grocery visits to two weeks or more. I make heavier use of my freezer than in the past. Since I got back to civilization after my stay in the Everglades in March, I’ve been grocery shopping every six to nine days. Considering that I consciously differed purchases today until my next trip, it may be shopping again sooner than a week this time.