Here it comes...

 

The weather weasels have been telling us that Tuesday night through Thursday afternoon have the potential for severe weather.  As of right now, all our local TV stations have cut in on the network programming to report the weather situation.  We are east of the worst of it right now, with the expectations it will reach us shortly after 11:00.

West of us has been rain as heavy as 7" per hour, strong gusty winds, lightning, hail, and now a tornado warning to the north...

 I got my bicycle ride in, guessing we'll be staying inside the rest of the day.  Now,  just watching the weather march this direction at about 25 to 30 mph.  Impressive that they are predicting it to reach us at 11:17 - that's pretty specific.

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12:30 pm - Yep, an hour of real nasty.  I'm guessing well over 60mph winds (SpaceX reported 63mph), horizontal rain as heavy as I've ever seen.  When I got out of the shower, Joan showed me a photo from our dock security camera - the NNE wind and rain has driven the water in our canal up well over a foot from when I got back from my bike ride.  At that time, I checked a tide chart and set the lines for some slack, anticipating a surge.  It was more than I anticipated... I put on  flip-flops and a rain jacket and went out in that fugly stuff to check lines.  When I slacked the forward breast line, the boat popped up nearly a foot!  Yep, the boat was being held down into the water by that line.  To the aft breast line, that I can't normally reach from the dock - yep, it was holding the boat into the water, as well.  If we weren't here to keep a watch on this, there would have likely been damage to the boat and the dock.  It is less than a foot before the water in the canal comes over the seawall.  High tide is about 40 minutes away.  We are on the highest street on the island; I have no doubt some parts of the village have water over the seawall.

From the security cam...

 

All the local TV channels have interrupted network programming, for over 4 hours now, with non-stop weather updates.  Power went out briefly when there was a nearby crack of lightning/thunder.  It takes about 15 minutes for the cable to come back on... and, of course, during the worst of it.  Checking weather on-line, there are now 15 "weather warnings" for our area - most of them are for flood warnings, several severe thunderstorm warnings, wind warnings, coastal flooding due to storm surge, and a rip tide warning.  But, other than that...  ;-)

Looks like we will be in this for the next 3 to 5 hours.  The temperature dropped from 82º (when I got back from my bike ride) to 66º.  Once things settle downb, we'll go out and do a "once around" on the house to check things out.

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Just saw that we have had 6.9" of rain so far today; that seems suspect.  The rain has let up some, but the wind is still blowing like stink.  Been out on the dock three times now to adjust lines on the boat.  The high water in the canal is receding.  Rufus has been "soothing me" by sitting on my lap when the thunder rumbles.  Because he's a good boy.