October 21st, 2019

If you don't live in this general vicinity, you might not have been aware that Tropical Storm Nestor dropped in for a visit over the weekend.  It formed in the gulf which means it could have made landfall anywhere from Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi to Florida.  It chose Florida to come ashore. Lucky us.

We kept a half an eye on the weather maps and it seemed that the worst of it was going to be far north of us and, as always, while I feel badly for anyone in it's path, I was grateful that is wasn't going to come here.  Or was it?

Friday late afternoon the clouds rolled in and it began to rain.  Not just rain, torrential rain with wind and great exuberance.  And while the SunFest (an annual event held here in Venice which started Friday night) was probably rained out on opening night, the only impact it really  made to us was that Tim had to turn up the volume on the television because the sound of the rain was so incredibly loud.  

The noise went from just the sound of rain to rain and thunder. And lightening. And wind. Even without my hearing aids on I could still detect the noise and well, I couldn't for the life of me sleep. So eventually I gave up trying and went into the family room to watch TV.  I say "watch" TV because I had it on mute.  For two reasons, one: so that I don't wake up Tim who was able to sleep and two: without my hearing aids in, I can't hear it anyway. TV captioning rocks.

Around 2 o'clock  red bands of words  started moving across the top and bottom of the screen talking about severe weather and warning of dangerous things such as flooding and wind damage.  I was annoyed because it was covering the captioning. So inconsiderate.

Around three o'clock the picture on the screen went wonky, then kind of popped and then......nothin'.  The TV Black Screen of death.  Dang.  Did we lose power?  Ratz.  I could still hear the rain coming down, the thunder was louder and longer and closer than ever and while I knew I still wasn't going to be able to sleep, I figured I might as well at least be lying down in my comfy bed while not sleeping.

I had just barely settled in, lying there on my back starring into the darkness trying to think myself to sleep when suddenly the house phone rang. And Tim's cell phone. And my cell phone. And then sound of text messages having arrived on those same cell phones.  It was just nuts.  Cacophony!

Tim can go from completely deeply asleep to totally awake in nano-seconds.  At the very first ting of his cell phone, he was sitting up, awake and processing information.  It was a Red Alert.  Literally that's what it's called.  And this is what it said;

             "3:20 am 10/19 Extreme Alert. Extreme Tornado Warning.
                                   Check your local stations for details"

Obviously, the power was back on because Tim was able to turn on the TV to the local weather channel and it seems as if there was a lot of local tornado activity.  Well, that's exciting.

  The weather guy kept saying, "If you see anything, let us know".  I peeped out the window.  "Nothing to see out there, it's pitch black!"  But I suppose he meant if you are aware of any active tornado touchdowns, do let us know.  Ok. We will do just that.

Long Story Short, while there were indeed 3 tornado touchdowns that we are aware of, none of them were here in Venice.   We got up to yet more wind and rain on Saturday morning. (Well, eventually we got up.)  But by afternoon the rain was gone, the sun came out and while the wind persisted,  the SunFest went into swing for the remainder of the weekend! 

There was a little bit of flooding on the south end of the island but overall, it was just a good thorough and much needed soaking of rain.  The wind shook loose a lot of dead branches and and I had to sweep quite of nice pile of leaves and twigs out of the courtyard but otherwise, no big deal.  

Saturday afternoon Tim and I walked the beach and braved the wind and waves.  I took a lot of photos and by the time we came home, we were both salt encrusted.  Easily resolved.  Got some fun pictures though.  And just in case you want to see them, here are a few:

Just a little bit of weekend excitement :)  Hope your weekend was super!