Life's a Coast

November 3rd - No sunrise video today, overslept due to Monday nite football and few too many celebratory beers. Going to be another hot one here today, we must admit we are looking forward to slightly cooler weather supposedly headed this way in a day or two. It has been a loooong hot summer here, well into the fall season. No doubt we will be complaining about the cold weather when it gets here, having to put on socks, shoes, multiple layers, sweats -- that will be weird after months of sandals, shorts, and light t-shirts. Time for a "mean season" ending skinny-dip under the waning full moon tonight -- if the sharks don't get us, we will be back tomorrow morning with a sunrise video...

We captured this video from the shelter of a North Beach motel after giving up on other locations where the video guy was unable to hold the camera steady due to consistent gusting of the winds (he didn't do too well there either). He speculated that the winds were about 25 mph likely reaching near tropical storm strength (34 mph). Speaking of tropical storms, Ida just reached hurricane strength and appears headed north for the Gulf Coast -- it is still hurricane season and the gulf waters are warm, and the last three letters in Florida are 'ida'...

November 6th. We have cooler weather but no sunrise video today. The effort to capture a video was attempted, but there was a huge gray wall of solid clouds out over the gulf stream and we continue to have 20 to 30 mph winds, so we turned around and came back to warm covers (lower 70's, but with the wind chill it felt like the 60's, not used to that yet) rather than post a bland sunrise video with wind noise. We hope to fare better tomorrow, even though it is supposed to still be cool and windy, maybe the clouds will cooperate...

The Nor'easter continues to hammer away at the beach with 20 to 30 mph winds, and is predicted to continue for another day or two, at which time we are supposed to get hammered with winds from hopefully fading tropical storm Ida, which is taking the same track as hurricane Wilma in '05 that knocked out electrical power here for weeks and resulted in nightly outdoor post-hurricane parties around bonfires in the pitch black darkness. Ahh, that was a good time, so many stars, so many beers, so many, um, well, it was good...

November 8th. Just like two days ago, the "sunrise", or lack of one, this morning was blocked by a huge solid wall of clouds to the east, and of course the wind was still blowing at 25 to 35 mph, so along with being a little cool we didn't even go outside this morning, and slept in (a tough Saturday night here). Winds were gusting to tropical storm force on this day, with double red flags prohibiting ocean swimming. Sunset was not much better on this day but we did/will post a video over there, altho we are not sure why, as the clouds were still in abundance and it was yet another fade to gray sunset... Take that, Chamber of Commerce.

November 9th. Ditto yesterday, same windy, dark, lackluster sunrise with the sun not "rising" out of the clouds until about mid-morning, so no video again. For anyone unfamiliar with south Florida, for about a week or so around mid November, we encounter "transitional" weather like this with constant strong winds, lots of cloud cover, consequently cool, with a few showers, leading into normal weather for the late fall season of nice warm sunny weather with a few early cold fronts making it down this far from the north. However, this year the winds were notably stronger and longer than ever before -- we sometimes get and inch or two of "sand drifts" on the broadwalk and Surf Road, but we now have sand a foot deep in places, palm fronds, sticks, and tons of sea grape leaves strewn all over the place, looks more like the aftermath of a tropical storm.

Finally, a fairly normal sunrise, but still having strong winds, with some unavoidable wind noise. The winds are shifting though, from the northeast to a more easterly direction, a good indication that the high pressure system that these winds are circling around is finally moving, should see some changes in a day or two...

Finally getting back to normal here, still windy but the strong breeze is now directly out of the south, supposed to swing around to the northwest soon, at which point it should look like a normal mid November by then, altho we are in for a cool down this weekend, dropping from the mid 80's for highs down into the upper 50's for overnight lows. Now if they can just remove the debris from the week long no-name tropical storm off of the broadwalk and Surf Road...