It is slowing again, which is not good, even with the drop in maximum sustained winds. The rain will soften the soil making the trees easier to knock over. Your house should weather about anything, Moi, and you have a fireplace for a fall back position.

There are a lot of utility crews staged to come in on power restoration, but they have to wait until the winds die down before they can use their equipment. A crew from New Jersey hooked my place back into the grid after Hurricane Ivan, so Gulf Power is obligated to help out, and the crews have already left at the end of last week.

Stay safe and warm, and when you venture out for the first time be sure to look up, because these ‘little storms’ have a bad habit of blowing things onto roofs and up into trees that will drop down after the storm leaves.

Looks like AC has taken the worst of it. Funny, though, friends in CT have had a lot worse wind than we have.

The utility crews are already headed North, but they aren’t using I-95. They have had 6 inches of rain and tropical storm force winds for almost an entire day on the Outer Banks.

It is big, it is bad, and it is slow – everything you don’t want in a storm.