If you’ve been watching the national news or the Weather Channel, you might think we’re drowning from Fay’s heavy rains. Not so. The Central Florida declarations in the media refer to the east coast of Central Florida. We’re in the middle of the state and up until this morning have not had much rain at all…probably less than an inch…since Fay attacked Florida.

Apparently, all that’s about to change. Fay is holding still in the Atlantic¹, but is forecast to begin moving WNW back into Floriada any minute. I think it’s started to move because we’re starting to get some winds and rain.

In a previous post, I made a reference to hearing a tornado warning on our weather radio. In Indiana, there were sirens every couple of miles, at least in Indianapolis there were. We could hear them testing the sirens at 11:00 am every Friday. We occasionally heard them during actual warnings.

Florida has no such sirens. If you want to know if severe weather is approaching, you must tune in on radio or TV. If you loose power, you’re out of luck unless you have a battery powered weather radio. Mine also has SAME, which means I can program it to only give me reports for the counties I choose. I’ve chosen the county in which I live and the adjacent ones, too. When a warning (or test) comes on it first give a loud screeching sound², then a sound like data coming across, then the vocal warning.

The NNOA sends out a test at around 11:00 am and 7:00 pm every Wednesday.

Anyway, so far we’re snug as bugs in a rug.

1. Still lashing the east coast [↩]
2. guaranteed to wake you up and get your heart pounding [↩]