If I hadn’t known that a tropical storm was passing by last night, I would not have guessed it. I knew all of the excitement would be on the east side of the storm, but after sunset we received absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. A little wind, scattered showers…our ordinary low-pressure systems are more exciting. Bizarrely, we experienced more wind and driving rain when the hurricane was near the Florida-Georgia-Alabama borders than we did when it was approaching us. The greatest effect was a dive in temperatures, and the fact that the rain smelled like seawater; our electrical service never blinked. The city closed a lot of its services (schools, libraries, etc) yesterday, so I spent it reading either Michael Connelly’s Black Ice, or Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape.
All’s well that end’s well, at least for the deep south. Florida and Cuba’s Irma experience was altogether different!
Reading Freely 
Well, that's good to hear, and sounds like you had a pleasant day off.
Yes, Stephen, we had some good kite flying weather here. Terrible!
i'm glad you all didn't get wiped out… must have been a bit of a disappointment, tho… no?
@Ruth: It was a good day for sitting inside with a good book or two and listening to the rain!@R.T: Glad to hear things were just as calm closer to the Gulf!@Mudpuddle: Only slightly…I'm glad a tree didn't fall on me and that I'm still turning on lights, but a little more wind would have provided a little thrill of danger…as it was, one had to watch TV and believe in the newscasters' constant hype to be anxious at all.
Good to see you dodged any potential bullets there….! Or at least flying debris.
It is good to hear that you missed the worst of it. Even if the really bad stuff does not happen, I lived through two weeks of no electricity twice in my life due to hurricanes. The novelty of that wears out fast.
Brian: isn't that the truth… happens to us at least once every winter… Mrs. M is threatening manslaughter if i don't invest in a generator before this winter…
Mudpuddle, that sounds like premeditated murder rather than manslaughter. Be careful. Buy that generator soon.
@Brian: One week without power was enough for me! I can still remember driving around town with trash bags full of stuff from my freezer, trying to disperse the cold stuff among friends..@Mudpuddle: They can be nice things…when I was housesitting, the home lost power but a gas generator kicked on after 30 seconds. I could just sit there in admiration for it.
Stephen: maintenance can be a problem, tho… and gas storage… if there's 3 feet of snow we won't be able to go get more gas for the generator… etc. etc….