09 Oct Tuesday

[Last Updated: 2018-10-10 09:45 EDT]

We woke up to the fact that Hurricane Michael has now been upgraded to ca category 2 hurricane. It's still travelling North and will be expected to get to land in the Florida pan-handle (NW of us). Flooding appears to be the biggest worry at the moment as the storm will push water on shore at the same time that it'll be raining heavily. This surge will likely cause rivers to overflow.

We here are not in the direct path, but we will probably get a large amount of rain and some stronger winds probably tomorrow. There's a strong high pressure out in the Atlantic at the moment, this is funneling the hurricane North as opposed to it moving Eastward, so that's good news for us.

Looking outside it's still very warm and humid, despite the breezy wind. The sea is more agitated than yesterday too. As it's likely to be overcase most of the day we're going to drive off to the mall and spend a couple of hours there.

In the end we decided to take a walk along the beach to see what the sea is like. It was certainly more rough than usual and was coming in a lot farther. It was new mood yesterday and also high tide, but it was reaching the sea walls in one place at least.

We were out for about a hour and today was the first confirmed dolphin sighting of the holiday. A small pod swam south past us.

We got back at just after noon, so make lunch and ate it out on the balcony watching the waves creep closer.

We stayed in for the early afternoon then went down for a swim in the pool around 5pm. All the time the noise from the waves was coming over the fence. When we were heading back up to the apartment, I walked down to the edge of the beach. The near side had flooded at high tide, so I had to wade through 8 inches of sea water to get to the main beach. The tide was nearly out when I was there (low tide at 6pm) but it was still high and if anything more ferocious.

Next high tide will be around midnight, so we'll see how far up the beach it gets. I don't think it'll flood anywhere here, but if it did, the car would be the one to suffer as it's on the ground floor. Our apartment is two floors up so that won't be an issue.

Out tonight to the Outback restaurant. Had a very nice steak followed by a too-large cheesecake. Was very nice.

Before retiring for the night, we walked to the edge of the beach. The sea was still rough but it wasn't any higher than what we'd seen during the evening.

We were watching some tv in the evening when the rain started hitting the roof above us. There's a plastic vent in the roof here which always makes a noise when rain falls. It was really coming down hard again. Out to sea, we could see the odd flash of lightning which, we think, was the edge of Hurricane Michael (still cat 3) passing by.