Ernesto barely worth thinking about

As I write this Tropical Storm Ernesto is about to come ashore somewhere between Cape Fear and Oak Island on the south-eastern North Carolina coast. We've been getting rain here in Reidsville throughout the evening but we'll probably only really start getting the outer bands of Ernesto in the next little while. The Weather Channel and all the local news outlets are on the coast covering this thing... but this is certainly one of the most underwhelming weather stories I've ever lived through. A lot of rain and some wind gusts - nothing really sustained - is all we're really going to get. At most, this is going to be a medium-sized nuisance over the next day or so. Hurricane Bob in 1985 was a lot worse than this. Ernesto really pales in comparison to Fran.

But all the same, we are going to be getting some much-needed rain from this system. Although I will admit that deep down, part of me is wanting the adrenaline rush that comes with riding out a major hurricane. This season we've been very lucky. And don't get me wrong, hurricanes are something that cause a lot of devastation...

...but there's no feeling in the world quite like being someplace in the projected path of an oncoming hurricane: the hydro-thermal engine from Hell. Waiting out the really big storms is like looking down the barrel of God's shotgun.

It'll be ten years ago next week that we got hit by Fran. I'm gonna try to do a write-up about it sometime then.