Hi Jersey:

just got back from the beach. 96f, hot as hell, ocean almost serene. Guess you should have come here.

Stay safe, remember Dorothy was not a real person, just a movie character.

Frank R.

Hi Frank.

Almost dark here already and pouring down. Irene is not due to hit until around midnight. The eye of the hurricane was over 60 miles wide last night.

PS I think I need to catch up on things with you re UK.

Thinking of you guys. No one try and be a hero and stay safe.

Gotcha.

Frank R

Ditto-it ain't no joke.

My great nephew, at the art school there in Savannah, lamented that the storm had passed them by, he felt cheated.

They are predicting tropical storm strength winds and up to 15 inches of rain by the time it gets up here.

I am fully prepared, the rechargeable torch is plugged in and the Strongbow is chilling in the fridge. All I want, is the power to stay on long enough to watch the Grand prix and I will be mint.

Now we are under a tornado warning. Driving rain is horizontal, trees not looking too safe, house is creaking with the wind. At least we still have power for now.

Hunkered down in the basement!

http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?r...101111&loop=no

It's all gone weak, lame and some what lacking around here at the moment....much like this evenings Patriots performance

As we watch the weather on CNN, MSNBC and the like, we're thinking of all our BE friends on the coast and in areas affected. We truly hope everyone makes it through all right and no one suffers much loss. Bless you all!

My restaurant is closed tonight and tomorrow. It's got lots of glass so I hope no damage.

The odds have it, that one of these days he may get his wish. I can't imagine what it would be like since many of the streets there flood during "normal" heavy rainfalls.

The city was like a ghost town yesterday.

Expected more of a lively ride last night, but managed to sleep most of the way through and wind is minimal even though steady rain continues. We have power, and the sump pump is working furiously for now.

On checking the webs, it looks like Irene's path shifted slightly to the west since I looked last night. As land slows these things down then I assume this is partly to account for the lack of deterioration to the weather just yet. Websites are reporting however that our chance of hurricane winds has increased to 20% and tropical storm to 100%, so the new westerly track (I was initially expecting Irene to track directly overhead) puts us firmly on the windy rather than the rainy side.

Taken advantage of the continuing power to keep everything charged up and make a cup of tea. When you don't know where your next cuppa's coming from you know that things are getting bad...

My jaw hit the floor this morning upon hearing a national US weatherman saying that, "Hurricane Irene will thankfully vanish off into Canada later today." Yeah - take that foreign nobodies who don't matter at all.

This was quickly topped by the Good Morning America team for weirdly referring to New York City as, "the first real city - the Crossroad Of The World - to come under attack from this storm." I'm paraphrasing obviously but the two hosts pretty much expressed the sentiments of, "Screw you lowlifes that don't live in the only real city that matters. We've sent one of our correspondents to your quaint little backward loser-ville city so that we can project our fake liberal Care Bear attitude your way and then concentrate on the only thing that really matters - people in Manhattan."

Which was nice.

Which was then rapidly topped by another GMA correspondent stood on a beach just bewildered at the inexplicable fact that last night the water was "maybe 50 feet out" and yet somehow this morning it magically has moved closer. Cue amazed shaking of heads at the before undiscovered magic known as "tides."

This hurricane was nasty yes. But not as nasty as network news or parochial New York city egos.