P.S.

I forgot to mention this earlier, and doubtless it’s something everyone has deduced by now, but Ivan was pretty much a non-event around these parts. We didn’t get any rain at all. None, not a drop, and I may have to water my lawn to keep the grass from dying if it doesn’t rain soon. There was some ominous cloud activity, and a little wind, but that was really all. I guess the west side really is the weaker side.

However, it did put my mind to thinking about whether in an older non-instantaneous news time, people standing under strange yellow clouds 100 miles from the hurricane eye had any idea that they were being missed by a hurricane. Is there a now lost skill of weather sensing without instruments? How much could they know with any certainty and how little? Did they just think it was a somewhat unusual summer thunderstorm? I’d love to know.