Idalia and Franklin

No, not two new Charlton signings but two Hurricane Category 3’s that in a twist of fate blew by Sarasota and Bermuda this morning.

I have become a little neutralized to storms after being in Bermuda where we rarely escaped a summer without one, and now as a Florida Gulf Coast resident we remain in the cone for any storms that make it towards the north west of the Caribbean and beyond where the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico collide.

We watched Hurricane Idalia move through the Gulf quickly yesterday but thankfully it stayed pretty west and much further north of Tampa, the largest populated city in the region, landing in what they call Big Bend where Florida’s peninsular transitions to the panhandle south and a little east of the state capital Tallahassee.

Idalia made landfall as a Cat 3 on the coast about 75 miles from Tallahassee and although for those beach towns there will be much devastation these are sparsely populated areas and Tampa avoiding a direct hit, just as it did last year, is a very good news.

Here at home in Sarasota we have a lot of rain, and there’s a lot of branches down on the surrounding roads, but escaped lightly, just as Bermuda will today as Cat 2 Hurricane Franklin will move by 120 miles west-northwest of the island with winds of 110mph and gusts up to 130mph causing heavy winds and the regular power outages, but no significant problems.

Okay, back to the transfer window….