Before Tropical Storm Karen-After a little rain

Saturday

People have been concerned about TS Karen all week. Working at a vacation rental company, we get the panic calls. It's hard not to sound calloused about storms. You are sympathetic to their fear but you know things non-Floridians don't know. Having lived in Florida most of my life you keep an eye on any storm as soon as you hear about one forming because you've endured power outages and evacuations from one storm or another in the past. And you probably know someone who lived through Andrew or Opal or Katrina so you know enough to have a healthy respect for any named storm. But you also know the weather people can go on and on about things and in your heart you know you really can't get a feel where a storm is going to hit until maybe 48 hours out. You watch their progress but it's a crap shoot where they will land and with what force. So you can cancel your vacation and loose money and time for no reason at all. And it's hard to advise someone as to what they should do.

This morning the beach was really beautiful. If anyone cancelled their plans to vacation here this week it would be too bad. We may get rain tomorrow but I can't smell anything bad in the air so I will be surprised if it's much more than some rain. I'm sorry they cancelled the seafood festival in Apalach. I know they have to err on the side of caution but it's too bad.

This week so far has had some of the best mornings of the year. Nice flowers, photogenic birds and absolutely gorgeous sunrises. Found some nice shells this morning on freshly soaked, easy to walk on, very flat sand. Scottish Bonnets they are called. It looked like the gulf tossed them up on the beach just for me. I said thank you.

Sunday Morning

Here's what Sunday morning looked like. It started raining at about 8:30am. Rained on and off all day.

Very early morning on Monday.

 It is a little cool, a little cloudy and there is a little wind.

And I bet the sun comes out a little later today.