I'm still trying to get used to the poor weather reporting up here in Illinois. From what I can see, some area's of Florida have gotten over two FEET of rain!
I know there are several Axiom board members there, and I hope everyone is ok.
Having gone thru a flood (19 inches of rain) in the early 90's when we lived down there, I know it can be rough.

Larry

Doing well in OTown

better than this guy?

http://a11news.com/519/kite-surfer-fay/

Reminds me of a guy I knew back in the day in Banff. We called him sh*t for brains.

I drove down to the beach early yesterday while the wind was blowing 35-40 mph straight out of the west and there were several of these nutcases harnessed to their kites and sailboards, the wind and the rain had knocked all wave action down and the water was flat as far out as I could see, I couldn't help but to wonder if these boys and girls (some of 'em in their 50's and 60's) were going to end up somewhere along the west African coast in a few days.

As of Wednesday afternoon it looks like here in Sebastian we had the highest rainfall with 18.5" posted over the three day period but I'm quite sure by now this is probably over 20" because it has rained all night and is still raining, although not nearly as hard as Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We drove around town yesterday and there were some flooded areas, overall things look pretty good for as much rain as we've had ... which I'm not complaining about.

Fay's rainfall along the Treasure Coast

Rick - off topic, but I just looked at your home theater pics again and wanted to tell you how good it looks. Really a nice setup.

Jason

Weren't you just posting about hijacks?

Yes, I figure now that I'm an admitted hijacker there's little to lose.

Thanks Jason, looks like you have an extremely nice setup in the works...can't wait to see the finished product. I really love the HG finish on your speakers, sure wish that would have been an option whenever I bought ours.

I've been procrastinating a couple of upgrades (3808 + a Blu-Ray player) for the past couple of months but if this rain keeps up it may keep me from spending money on my other hobby (the boat!) and force me into the upgrade.

Thanks Rick. My chairs are supposed to be in within a week... at which point I'll say I'm done upgrading for awhile (not committing to how long)

As an avid weather nut who lives in Illinois, what do you mean? Do you not agree with your local NWS office? I'm just curious why you think the weather reporting is poor here.

No big deal, but....my local (Chicagoland) weather reports seem to be light on national weather information (unlike my local Florida stations were) and far as the Illinois/Chicago forecasts usually go, they try to cover too wide an area....in their segments. Then, there was the "chance of rain today" forecast a few weeks ago, which turned out to be that HUGE , destructive, system as wide as the state.
On a positive note, Weatherbug seems to work well, and I still have the National news weather, and the weather channel.

Tom Skilling on channel 9 (WGN) is about the best weather man in all of Chicagoland. You can bet he is on the mark most of the time.

Folks down here need to have a good national weather report, otherwise nobody here would know what's happening 'back home'.

I remember whenever I was growing up in Orlando, we had Danny Trainer as our local channel 9 weatherman who would be half soused for the 6 o'clock news and would be downright staggering by the time the 11 o'clock report rolled around ... he stuck around for years and years.

I now get all of my weather from the Internet, I miss the good old days.

I'll take our local (New Orleans) weather over the "national" versions, anytime. If you watch The Weather Channel during any given storm, they report 1-2" of rain expected. If you watch the local news they'll tell you that your gonna get 1-2" per hour. Big difference.

Scott

OK, lets all start posting drunk for Rick!

We'll take care of 'ya, buddy!

Um, you weren't before??

Speaking of weather forecasting, a local rock radio station decided that they would pit the professional forecasters against the cows this summer. Just in case this isn't a universally accepted form of forecasting, there is an old saying that if the cows are laying down in the fields that it will rain that day.

Well, in an uncontested victory, the cows are beating the forecasters by a ratio of 3 to 1. This is the last week since it started July 1 so there is no hope for the pros to make a comeback.

Can cows really feel rain coming on? Is it coincidence? Is it perhaps that we have had almost nothing but rain since the middle of July and cows are just inherently lazy?

Not sure, but I'm thinking Peter that you should add a cow to your home weather station.

LOL.....

Straying off topic here....

Not just Chicagoland, Tom Skilling is recognized as one of the best TV weather-people in the whole country. So yeah, he's very good. But he makes mistakes too, because he's only as good as the info he's being given.

If you're passionate about the weather, you can't go with what you see on TV. Not even from WGN or The Weather Channel. Go to the source, the National Weather Service. Don't just gloss over your local forecast, but read the 'Forecast Discussion' for your area. You quickly learn that the real meteorologists sometimes question the forecast that's going out to the weather outlets. They will say things like, 'going w/ a chance of scattered storms but concerned about areas to the southwest where dewpoints will be high and CAPE values are exceeding -blah-blah-blah'. Rarely will TV news pick up on that, and you get the 'just a chance of rain tomorrow' line from the local TV.

Maybe that's where Illinois forecasts differ from Florida ones.

And no, I have no plans to add a cow to my home weather station. I'm pretty sure my town has an ordinance against it.

On the other hand, our cat does know when storms are approaching. I don't know if he can hear/sense the thunder, or if it's just being a weird cat. He's scared of thunder, and always tries to be as close as possible to my wife or me during a storm. But 15-30 minutes before a storm, he'll start sticking really close to one or both of us. On more than one occasion his strange behavior has prompted me to check the weather, only to find out that something significant is on it's way towards us. Sort of interesting, I think.

...and back to topic.

I am glad to hear that our Florida friends are weathering the storm well. Having no desire to live anywhere that's hit by hurricanes, I can only imagine the joy in living through that.

Our Cows could take Tom Skilling any day!!!

Sorry, I'm done.....

Checked my city bylaws. Weathercows are sticktly verboten.