As a new day dawns, it appears we have successfully endured the first hurricane landfall of this season. Hurricane Isaias came ashore in the northern Gulf of Mexico near Navarre, Florida as a Category 2 storm last evening. Through the night, here at home I have observed steady rain, sometimes quite heavy. There have been brief periods of gusty winds, but nothing too severe at my location. The remnants of the storm is projected to pass practically directly over my house in the next hour or two. Rain is already slackening, and the wind gusts are slowly decreasing to moderately breezy conditions. Power stayed on through the night without a flicker, though outages closer to the coast are numerous. Indeed, as I drove to work yesterday morning, I saw large convoys of power crew trucks headed south to be on hand to begin the recovery process. I've already made my daily report of rainfall to CoCoRaHS, the network of volunteer observers who contribute to national hydrological data. At my normal report time of 6:00 am, I had collected 2.57" of rain from the storm. (See "Current Helena conditions" on the adjacent toolbar for the latest readings of my home weather station.) Light rain continues to fall, so that will increase slightly. Even at this early hour, things appear to be clearing, raising the question of whether all the numerous event cancellations for today were necessary. Sadly, today's Buck Creek Festival was cancelled altogether, when with hindsight it probably could have gone on. But I don't mean any criticism of the organizers- always better safe than sorry; things could have turned out much worse. I'm very glad we seem to have dodged this bullet. And now I look forward to real Fall-like weather, which has not yet arrived in central Alabama.
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| Barometer, when a tropical storm passes over your head. |
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