Spending Today With a Tropical Storm

At this writing it's currently around 2:30 pm here in Gainesville.  I am sitting on the south end of town in a McDonald's near my workplace, having driven eight miles through a tropical storm more commonly known as Hurricane Matthew as it is now battering the northeastern Florida coast from the Daytona Beach area to Jacksonville.  Matthew is currently about as close as it will get to Gainesville, but other than schools and local government offices being closed today, business seems to be going on exactly as before...and the streets are full of traffic.  Looking out the window here, I see the rain falling at a 45 degree angle in waves, while the branches of all the trees are shaking violently.  Yet as far as many of  the people around here are concerned, it's another ho-hum "day in the life".  Well, that's not completely true: there are some people in my locality who have lost their power, and the folks sitting in the next booth over appear to be temporary refugees from the east coast area (this McDonald's is on an I-75 exit).  But at least at this time, we're not in the "everybody clear the streets and hunker down" mode of existence that characterized my home town back in 2004 when Frances and Jeanne were the hurricanes of interest.  Still, if you can stay indoors at home you're probably better off, not to mention that conditions may worsen some later on.  But I'm glad that the ornery ol' hurricane decided to veer off a tad to the east, where its effects here are lessened as well as keeping the wind and storm surge damage down more on the coast.

Yesterday while at work, I was listening to my local talk station 97.3/WSKY "The Sky".  After 6 pm they switched from their usual programming to a continual audio broadcast of The Weather Channel as various meteorologists were spread along the coast, giving live reports as Matthew approached.  I appreciated that about WSKY...much of its normal talk show programming is heavily biased toward one political party, but they do have a sense of community when it comes to something like a threatening tropical storm.  As for me today, I am glad to be going to work on my normal schedule...I don't care for the weather dictating the course of my day and I am relieved that my office is open and running.  By the time I get off from my shift at midnight, the storm should have passed to the north and things should be improving here in Gainesville...