So my wife and I finally took our summer vacation. We went down to Santa Rosa Beach in the Florida panhandle where we kept one eye on the sand and water, and the other on Hurricane Irma. It really was beautiful weather which belied the devastation happening in the Caribbean and what was soon to happen to Florida.

If you notice the two shadows in the photo on the left those are sharks.

Going to the beach at this time of year is always an iffy proposition. The height of the Atlantic hurricane season is September 10th. I hope we did just peak and Irma is it for this season.

Since I spent my week away from the laptop I instead was looking at my phone when I wanted to know what Irma was up to. I would open my phone and fire up the Weather Underground App. I could find out what was going on with Irma, Katia and Jose. Another interesting app I came across was the Windy App. It did a good job with forecasting the winds and there was a certain beauty to the winds wrapping around the center of Irma.

As the end of the week approached it was looking more and more like Irma was going to come up the West side of Florida. I knew we were going to leave well ahead of the storm starting to influence the weather where we were. In fact the front that came through on Wednesday led to a change in wind direction from the North that blew biting flies onto the beach. You have three options when the flies come out. Stay inside, go in the water or buy the most powerful insect repellent you can find. Locally they sell “Cactus Juice” and I can tell you it does not work. My wife had brought some Sawyer 12 Hour Picaridin Insect Repellent Spray that she got on Amazon. It seemed to work but we ran out and were besieged on our last day.

My wife was worried about finding gas because this was a problem in South Florida as people were fleeing Irma. I have used the Gas Buddy App and it is a great little mobile app to have when you are traveling. There ended up being plenty of gas but Interstate 10 was crowded with people getting out of the storm’s way. I can’t say enough how handy Waze is for avoiding traffic. It was able to get me off the interstate and get me on and off the local highways.

When we left for Katrina we got ahead of a lot of the traffic and headed in the opposite direction from people going to Baton Rouge or Houston. For Irma I had never seen so many people stopped at the gas stations and rest stops. In Alabama it looked as if people had camped out in the rest area. I hope these people can get back soon and find their homes untouched.

That is it for the week. Looking forward to a quieter remainder to the hurricane season.