While driving down to his place Dave reported the mainland had extensive damage, and the lagoon between the barrier island and mainland was filled with debris and trashed boats, and piers, docks and other structures showed damage. Large sections of town had no power. But his place seemed untouched. Go figure.

Dave called me from his sickbed. Right after he got home, he came down with a severe urinary tract infection.

Still, there is more wind and rain here now, at 10 PM, than there was when the storm made its closest approach to me several hours ago. Hurricanes are very big, constantly changing, asymmetrical, and very complex systems with many moving parts. And they interact with their environment in subtle ways. No two are alike, and no one remains the same for very long.

I haven’t heard Global Warming mentioned even once by the Evil Media or the Statist elites in relation to Matthew. Actually, having spent most of my life in Florida, and been in or near what must be dozens of these storms, I’m not aware of any differences, either in frequency, strength or path that could even be attributed with any certainty to climate change.

As far as I can tell, global warming has had no effect on hurricanes, even if it were possible to derive such a conclusion from the meager data available on historical records. This is, after all, a highly random phenomenon. We now have much better means of monitoring these storms, and of gathering data on them and their effects than we did in the past. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were probably many of these storms in remote areas that were never even noticed by Western geographers. The increased damage they seem to be doing is probably due more to differences in reporting, settlement patterns, land use and population distribution than on the storms themselves.

Although it has been mentioned that global warming should increase hurricane activity, I have yet to hear any climatologists actually claiming it has. The El Nino/La Nina phenomenon has been mentioned in connection to altering cyclone activity, but not AGW.

Drudge and Limbaugh seem to be desperate to rebut an argument no one seems to be making. The fact that the Right is so determined to debunk the AGW concept tells me that this is a lot more about them than it is about science. Its very reminiscent to the way fascists are constantly trying to deny the Holocaust, or explain to us how slavery in the American South really “wasn’t all that bad.”

I wonder how this might diminish the number of Trump voters in Florida?

Hopefully he’ll get lucky like I did. We were expecting to get hit much worse than we did.

I cant imagine what a 7′ storm surge would do there…

http://shoebat.com/2016/10/05/hurricane-matthew-is-the-wrath-of-god-poured-out-on-the-cities-of-orlando-and-savannah-for-supporting-the-evil-sodomites/

S Florida got off easy, winds gusted up to 30 MPH and there was some rain, but we missed the worst of it. I had a bad feeling about this one, but it looks like we’ve dodged the bullet again..

I’m in much better shape, a masonry house 8 miles from the ocean, protected by a barrier island and I-95 and in an area not prone to inland flooding. I have little to fear from storm surge, only high winds present a threat. My house easily survived 80 MPH winds during Wilma, and I’ve done much to upgrade the house’s defenses since; new shutters, gutters, a new flat roof, outside doors and a garage door reinforcing strut. Wilma ripped off my gutters and took out a rear window in my Sentra (the new car is in the garage), but did no other damage. Of course, a slight change in direction or strength on Matthew’s part and all bets are off. A Category 4 storm can have winds up to 150 MPH near the eye wall.

My major worry is the tornadoes sometimes spawned by these hurricanes “spiral arms”. Their effect is very localized, but if you’re hit there is absolutely nothing you can do to protect yourself from them. Andrew took out 900 homes in one neighborhood a couple of decades ago.