Barry Is Not Making This Up

Happy June the First 2007! It's the official start of Hurricane Season, the start of Tax Free shopping on Hurricane Supplies and to bring it all home is Tropical Storm Barry!! We did have Andrea a few weeks ago, but it was a depression that didn't make landfall. There were some awesome waves on Satellite Beach though! Every surfer on the planet seemed to be out there that weekend.

Right now we're not getting much wind though it's breezy. It is raining big floppy drops right now and I got a chance to utilize my Helly jacket as the Nordics intended. I splish-splashed through Downtown all zippered and tucked into my lovely, breathable and impenetrable rain jacket. The only thing that got wet were my flip-flopped feet. So it was a successful real-life application of a swell rain jacket. No more umbrellas or "wonchos" for me! It has withstood BARRY!

Enough about my rain gear... We need the rain badly (my lawn sorely needs it). Tomorrow I will probably be home all day, hunkering down (or at least bunkering) as I'm not keen on doing another Helly jacket test. Everyone sounds like they are doing the same - take advantage of the poor weather to spend valuable time sorting out the indoors. If anything interesting develops of Barry I'll post again but don't see much point. 50 mph winds right now - need 20mph more to make it a measly Cat 1 and it's so close to Tampa now and the water isn't very warm.. So, I reckon this is just a welcome mat for the season.

Interesting Link RE Katrina Before She Was A Disaster: http://aksweather.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_archive.html

Today's Update From WFTV.com:

"We're not looking for a hurricane," said Dave Roberts, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. The storm was centered about 270 miles southwest of Tampa and about 195 miles west of Key West at about 11 p.m. It had sustained winds near 50 mph and was moving north northeast near 9 mph. Forecasters expected Barry to continue the same path and increase speed over the next day, but a slight decrease in strength was anticipated before the storm's possible landfall. Word of the storm's development came on the first official day of a hurricane season forecasters have said they expect to be busier than normal. The National Weather Service said it expects 13 to 17 tropical storms, with seven to 10 of them becoming hurricanes and three to five of them in the strong category. Roberts said it was "coincidence, maybe" that the storm formed on the first day of the season. Forecasters issued a tropical storm warning, which means tropical storm conditions are expected in the next day, for the Gulf Coast from Bonita Beach to Keaton Beach. A less severe tropical storm watch, meaning such conditions were expected within 36 hours, was issued from north of Keaton Beach to St. Marks. The hurricane center said it threatened to bring dangerous battering waves, coastal flooding of up to 5 feet and rainfall of three to six inches in the Florida Keys up through southeast Georgia. Tropical storm force winds extended outward up to 90 miles, forecasters said. "The rainfall already began," said Lixion Avila, a hurricane specialist. "It's part of the system... The strongest bands are over the Keys, western Cuba and the over the Gulf of Mexico." Tropical Storm Barry formed more than three weeks after the first named storm of the year -- Subtropical Storm Andrea -- developed about 150 miles northeast of Daytona Beach. Andrea skirted the southern Atlantic coast but caused minimal damage. Florida is facing one of its worst droughts on record, but the tropical weather wasn't expected to ease conditions much. "It'll help a little bit, but everyone is so far below rainfall that we're still going to be under drought conditions," said Kim Brabander, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "To really alleviate the drought conditions we're going to need anywhere from 30 to 40 inches of rain."