Tropical Storm Andrea

I thought it was a joke when someone mentioned a tropical storm coming our way last week. After all, didn’t hurricane season just start on the 1st? How could have have a TS already, by the 3rd? Go home, Mother Nature! You’re drunk!

True enough, though, we did have one, and it was coming straight for us. “Coming straight for us” isn’t the doom-and-gloom, flooding and boats in your yard, Jim Santore kind of weather, though. Gainesville is pretty much smack in the middle of the state, so even the really big storms tend to burn themselves out a bit before they get to us. I’m not saying it can’t be dangerous — that one year we got four right after each other, every weekend for a month….? That was tiring, and dangerous since we hadn’t had a big storm in years; many trees came down all over town the first week, and it seemed like as soon as GRU was done cleaning up, we’d get another storm, and everything that was loosened the week before would topple over.

But for the most part, we can count on rain, wind, wind gusts, more rain, some minor flooding (I’m talking, like, six inches to a foot), and a few trees down all over town. Some people three or four houses down have a dead pine, struck by lightning about six months ago, and I was very surprised that it didn’t come down in the wind. Mostly all we got was rain. Which we always need.