Tropical Storm Ophelia is hanging out nearby in the Atlantic. I just looked at the forecast from the National Weather Service.

The “Forecast at a Glance” reads like this:

  • Tonight - Occasional Showers
  • Thursday - Scattered Showers
  • Thursday Night - Scattered Showers
  • Friday - Chance of Showers
  • Friday Night - Chance of Showers
  • Saturday - Scattered Showers T-Storms
  • Saturday Night - Scattered Showers T-Storms
  • Sunday - Scattered Showers T-Storms
  • Sunday Night - Scattered Showers T-Storms

Welcome to the freakin’ Sunshine State! Still, while flooding is already an issue in the coastal counties, we won’t have it nearly as bad as the Gulf coast areas hit by Katrina. In fact, I’ve been thinking that we didn’t know how good we had it last year when we got hit by an unprecedented four hurricanes in August and September. I’m sure that’s little comfort to those that did lose their homes and more. But, even though Florida isn’t exactly mountainous it is mostly ABOVE sea level. (Two of the five highest peaks in the state are Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain at Disney.) My home is at a nearly staggering 98 feet above sea level. No wonder I feel light-headed when I stand up too fast.

The outer bands of what was then a Tropical Depression started hitting us on Monday. The high temperature in the Orlando area only got up to 88 degrees (F) that day ending a streak of 56 consecutive days of 90+ temperatures. One might expect that it’s not unusual for the Central Florida area to be above 90 degrees every day through the summer, but in fact the previous record was 49 days in a row. This year, every day from 11 July to 4 September reached 90 or above.

What really gets to me though is the heat of the night. The average LOW temperature for the month of August was 76.2 degrees, another record. Some nights it didn’t dip below 80. Ugh! The humidity clings to you like hmmmm… sorry, I’m just too tired to think of a good simile for such a hot, muggy, sticky, sweaty, stifling, depressing experience.

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Posted by tvansant