So far, it's just an awful lot of rain and gusty wind. This is the first serious storm we've had since we redid the exterior to our house. It's very nice not to have to put up those metal shutters any more, and quite impressive to see the ferocity of the wind, even when it's just bands from the way outside of the edge of the storm.
The schools are closed again tomorrow. The university closed at six p.m. If the forecasts are to be believed, I think the major danger tomorrow will be the roads,1 which is why everything is closing. The hurricane itself looks most likely to make landfall enough north of us that we will miss the worst — and at Category one, the very large majority of structures are designed to weather this intensity of storm.
What's slightly disconcerting, however, is that NOAA is predicting even more hurricanes than it did last month:
The updated outlook calls for an extremely active season, with an expected seasonal total of 18-21 tropical storms (mean is 10), with 9-11 becoming hurricanes (mean is 6), and 5-7 of these becoming major hurricanes (mean is 2-3). The likely range of the ACE index for the season as a whole is 180%-270% of the median.
This is, I gather, in part due to the warmer oceans, which in turn is due to global warming.
1 And restless children.
what kind of shutters do you have now?