Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, August 27, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the Second (Trouble in the Tropics Edition)

Mid- to Late Morning, Sunday, August 27, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hey, everyone.

Wow. So, it’s the last Sunday in August 2023. It’s also the last Sunday of the Summer of ’23 – meteorological summer, anyway. And since I live in the Sunshine State, naturally it’s hellishly hot, humid, and not very inviting if you – like me – want to go out for a walk, even a brief one, to get fresh air and a bit of sunshine.

Currently, the temperature – as I begin this post at 9:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time – is 82°F/28°C under sunny skies. With humidity at a whopping 73% and a northeasterly breeze blowing at 3 MPH/4 KMH, the heat index is 87°F/31°C. Today’s forecast is almost a repeat of yesterday’s: Mostly sunny skies, and a high of 94°F/37°C, with only a 17% chance of rain.

Unfortunately, we are – as I’ve mentioned in many recent posts – in the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, and a new tropical system – Tropical Depression 10 – out in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to develop into a tropical storm and make landfall somewhere in Florida as a hurricane sometime this week. I’m not surprised; this summer has seen record-setting high temperatures all over the globe, and the Atlantic Ocean waters are warmer and thus spawning lots and lots of tropical waves that develop into cyclones of varying strengths.

And since Florida juts southward right smack into “Hurricane Alley,” it’s not a matter of “if” a storm hits somewhere in the state, but rather “when.” And since the Atlantic hurricane season has suddenly gotten a giant kickstart thanks to increased ocean temperatures, it truly does not surprise me that TD 10 apparently is on track to land somewhere on “my” side of the state, though the “Cone of Probability” does not indicate that the Tampa Bay area is the most likely target of the storm.

Edited to add: Oh, the storm has been named. TD 10 is now Tropical Storm Idalia.

Oy. If I do get an opportunity to move out of Florida, I’ll gladly take it!

Plans for Sunday

As for what my plans for today are….

I don’t, as of this writing, have any set plans for today. I have options, but this early in the day, I have not decided.

Obviously, the merciless heat precludes going out for a walk, and I don’t have a Tampa Bay area “social network” to make plans with even if the temperature were lower, so…no trips to the movies, the mall, or any restaurant whatsoever. So, any leisure activity I choose must be done alone and in the house.

Thus, I can:

• Read a book (I have quite a few of those)
• Watch a movie or TV show (again, I have access to two TVs, one with cable, one without, and literally hundreds of movies or season sets of TV shows on physical media – DVDs, HD Blu-rays, and 4K UHD Blu-rays)
• Listen to music
• Play computer games
• Interact with others on social media
• Work on my manuscript, even if it’s just for an hour or so

Oddly enough, none of those choices seems appealing to me at press time. But…I don’t take naps, and I can’t hang out with anyone, so I’ll have to pick one of them at some point during the day.

As the old commercial for Polaroid cameras used to say, “We’ll see what develops.”