42 degrees, 47 the high...

Why couldn’t I have had this a month ago? Bah, humbug.

The high for December 24th

81 degrees in Pinellas County, Florida on Christmas Eve. There are millions of Americans that have endured the cold of the late fall and the first few days of Winter with sub-freezing temperatures, snow, ice, and all the weather that marks the season (and the problems they cause).

I get eighty-one degrees… And I’m not in the seasonal mood one bit because of it.

I don’t mean to play the Grinch, or make those up north jealous and play out like I’m ungrateful for having temperate weather as we pass the winter solstice… But I don’t get into the seasonal spirit any more seeing green trees around me (where trees won’t finish shedding leaves until February/March and grow them right back again). In fact it makes Christmas displays feel like Las Vegas light shows instead of the true time of the holiday that I know. It’s easier to tell the season by looking at store displays than with the weather outside.

In Florida you get two seasons: Spring and Summer. Oh, it gets chilly once in a while but every Spring has it’s cold days. And while some may want to defend the fact that it’s winter right now, even in Florida, I must ask how many places consider winter a growing season? In the northern hemisphere, I mean…

Eighty-one degrees… On Christmas eve. I’m sitting here with the grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence mentality. 20 years ago I was jealous of my father being in Florida while we froze our buns off in New York. Right now, I’d rather endure the seasonal shift to cold — because not only would it ring in the time of year better, but it’d make me more appreciative of the warmth of summer. It’s hard to do that when your average temperature is 90 degrees with a sixty percent humidity for most of the year.

Maybe the new year will afford me the chance to escape Tampa Bay. I’d take it, but I don’t think that’s in the cards.

But here we are, Friday, and Fay still hasn’t left the state of Florida. Oh, she’s finally over the ocean again but technically? She’s still here… I mean, those are Florida waters.

And I must say: as a 20 year resident of Florida, following the likes of storms both tropical, non-tropical, frontal, and just standard summer storms… I have never seen a storm take such an abrupt, hard turn before:

Fay -- on Radar -- from Monday (August 18) thru Firday (August 22)

This has been a very sobering wakeup call for west-central Florida. We were lucky — 15 degrees north and the damage would have been the worst disaster in United States history…

That was a forrest… Just imagine what happened to the homes… or click on the link provided above.