The Sky is Falling

There's a rain shower every day. Sometimes it'll last an hour, sometimes 5 minutes. It really puts a snag in fishing. The boats go out and they come back in. And if the passengers are paying customers in can be a real pain in the butt. But as everyone knows, you can't control the weather. The best showers are the ones that come at night and are gone by morning. The air is so fresh and cool. But more than likely there'll be another on later on in the day. Now if you sleep in a hammock at night like I do the night showers can be a little bothersome. I've got pretty good protection depending on how hard it rains but part of the protection is plastic on the deck above and it makes a hell of a racket. There was a pretty good one that came through last night and the whole sky lit up with lightning. Very cool and very beautiful. More so when it is a good distance away!
   Now if they decide to give one of these showers a name you might be in trouble! Thankfully the island hasn't been hard hit by a hurricane in about 8 years. Hurricane Dennis. And people are still talking about it. Fortunately I missed that one. But no doubt it was a hurricane to be reckoned with. They said there was water where it's never flooded and even some of the locals didn't hesitate to get the hell out of here. If you look at the map you'll see that St. George Island is somewhat protected by the curve in the panhandle so alot of the weather coming from the east hits that curve and continues on out into the gulf instead of going on down the coast. It's amazing to see some of the old houses on the water still standing with very little damage. And some of them aren't even on stilts!
    We did get a hit from Tropical Storm Debbie that came through the end of June. It hit us dead on and my house took on about 5 inches of water! Me and the animals didn't heed to the mandatory evac but we did seek higher ground! I'm one of those sitting right on the water. There's what they call a tidal surge when the water just keeps rising but it hasn't started raining yet. It's very weird but it's fair warning to get it together and put a plan into action. I was more prepared than I would have thought. Batteries, pet food, my weather radio (to see how long this shit's going to last!), some canned goods, and 3 cans of gas for my grill to make coffee in the morning. As long as I have my coffee I can survive anything! So the storm itself lasted about 3 days. It just sat here and didn't move. The weather people didn't know what it was going to do so the weather radio wasn't a big help. It rained, and it rained, and it rained some more. A barge broke free and took out part of the bridge so if you didn't evacuate you weren't leaving for awhile. The power was out for 7 or 8 days. ( I quit counting). And it seemed like it took forever for the water to recede. And then there's the clean-up. Yuk! The crabs and snakes had moved right in! The tourist got a real raw deal. The storm hit Sunday right after they had come in they had to leave and they couldn't come back for about a week. Vacation over. Bummer. And without insurance they were shit out of luck in the money department. But if you had a house on the beach I might have thought about leaving too. The beach was gone. The water came all the way up to the dune fences.

    So I'm glad I was introduced to what can happen with just a tropical storm. Piece of cake. I'm sure a hurricane will be a whole new ballgame. I can wait another 8 years.