Nasty Nestor Rains on Gainesville

When I walked out the door last night at ten from work, I was dismayed at all the rainfall...but already knew where it was all coming from: Tropical Storm Nestor, its center far off to the west off the Florida panhandle coast just west of Apalachicola.  The Weather Channel says that it's "tropical" in name only since the worst of its associated weather by far has been blasting the Florida peninsula...even 400+ miles away in south Florida...with storms and heavy winds...and even reported tornadoes in the central part of the state.  Today around Gainesville they're predicting rain, rain, and more rain...I'm writing this as today's topic because in the past whenever I wrote about the bad weather it would suddenly clear up as if to spite me: maybe the strategy will work today! Still, the Walk to End Alzheimer's scheduled for this morning has already been postponed and I don't know what they're doing about the Tom Petty birthday celebration across town...the late rock n' roll legend grew up in Gainesville before hitting it big out west.  Nasty Nestor, as I like to call it, has very little precipitation around its center, currently with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.  Its trajectory has it cutting across northern Florida through Tallahassee, where Florida A&M has already changed its home football game from today to tomorrow.  Then it's onward through far-southern Georgia and South Carolina...

I was planning on trying a long neighborhood run today but I'm not very acclimatized to running in the rain and on the slippery roads with their slimy fallen leaves, puddles, water-filled potholes, and oil spots I'd have to avoid...better to wait a couple of days, I guess.  This storm reminds me of Hurricane Juan, from October 1985.  It was much stronger than Nestor and sat on Louisiana for a number of days, thoroughly flooding the state.  But it also sent off distant feeder bands that struck Gainesville with some horrific stormy weather, hundreds of miles distant from its center.  At least Nestor should be out of our way before too long...