Hoping for the Best

I had scheduled a six-mile easy run for this morning, but Hurricane Irma is already making its presence felt in light rain and increasingly-strong breezes that seem tropically warm for September. Although it has been "downgraded" from a hurricane to a mere tropical storm, we are nevertheless expecting up to three inches of rain and wind gusts of up to 50 mph in the next 48 hours.  We are expecting power outages, too; but the main concern is falling trees in the saturated soil and heavy winds, especially that big white pine across the road on our neighbor's property that seems to list to one side a little farther each year.

So instead of running I am in storm preparation mode this morning, battening down the hatches and taking advantage of the power which despite some minor flickering is still with us.  The Mini is safely stowed in Anne's parking place under her condo.  The rain barrel is full, and there is a full bucket of toilet-flushing water in each bathtub.  Batteries, drinking water, gasoline for the generator - check, check, check.  We go down the list, preparing for the worst, hoping for the best. 

The images coming out of Florida are terrible to see:  trailer parks scattered to the winds, flooded buildings, cars flipped on their sides.  I am thankful that our home is 2,650 feet above sea level and is well-constructed, and that this storm is weakening as it makes it way slowly across Georgia, where the Governor has declared a State of Emergency in all 159 counties. 

So running will have to take a back seat for a couple of days until this orange-yellow-green-blue monster pin-wheeling across the Southeast has moved northward.