100% EMILY

Home in Port Charlotte
High of 96, humid days

Tropical Storm Don made landfall in SW Texas in the early morning hours of Saturday.  It never exceeded 60 MPH winds and there were no reports of flooding.  It had no affect on Florida or elsewhere in the Gulf.

Meanwhile, deep in the tropics of the Atlantic, a strong low pressure system has quickly organized for our next system.  Depicted in red in the photo above, the system has a 100% chance of becoming a named storm in the next 48 hours.  The next name on the list is Emily.  It is currently 3000 miles away from SW Florida, 675 miles east of the Lesser Antilles islands, moving west at 15 MPH.

The area in yellow is a disorganized wave of heavy showers that will become weakened as it crosses the Yucatan Peninsula near Belize and Guatamala.  It has a near 0% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone.

Below are the 8AM NWS radar images of the two systems. Click for full screen.

Closer to home, I spent Saturday our my grandson, Devin, building a floating dock on our canal.  While the other grand-twin, Dylan, decided to stay indoors and not join the labor crew, he was very sweet to show up with cold drinks for us during the job.  He also cleaned Mimi's kitchen while she was at work!

I will post pictures of the finished dock product.  My neighbor Ronnie, from NY, found a plan on the internet and modified it to make his own 5x12 floating dock.  I am using his plan to build mine, while he serves as a telephone consultant, live from New York.  It will replace my frequently popped inflatable dinghy as a maintenance barge and fishing lure recovery vessel.  Not as often as years past, but I still occassionally get lures hung up in trees along the canal.