TS Alberto: Local Report

Blogger's not behaving itself but here goes.

It was darker than it should have been when I woke up this morning. Oh, that's right! I thought foggily. Alberto's coming.

When I flipped on the radio I discovered that Alberto — that despite the predictions by many forecasters that the storm would probably deteriorate — had gotten stronger. It wasn't hurricane force, yet, but close and might be before it makes landfall. It's path had also changed.

Instead of coming straight over me, Alberto would pass to the west of me, then curve so that it was northwest and finally somewhere north. When I took Starbuck out for the first time this morning it was overcast and the air was still. That feeling of a storm coming in and the atmosphere is just holding its breathe waiting to exhale.

The overcast increased during the day, then the clouds started layering in beneath it. I took these shots around 3 this afternoon. The first is to the southeast; the second, the southwest where Alberto's churning off the other coast.

An hour later when Starbuck "said," Out!, the sky had grown darker with clouds. Fifteen minutes later the first rain began falling.

We're now under a Tropical Storm warning and will be probably through sometime tomorrow. The only thing I'm worried about is the possibility of Alberto-spawned tornadoes, and there's not a darned thing I can do about that.

I'm in Northeast Florida and, as always, there are other bloggers in the state reporting on Alberto and conditions local to them. If you're interested in seeing what they have to say, this map done by Boudicca last year (scroll down, then click to enlarge) will help you identify some of them. Many of them are linked to in my sidebar.