19:30 GMT
Just now Swami, Minerva and I had to come in from the screen porch. Rain is getting my laptop wet. This is only the second evening since getting to Florida that we've been inside. I don't like it a bit I can't afford to ruin another computer.
21:59 GMT
I'm posting this from my phone. It's very quiet around the house now. M. Lee is getting up early to do a Metric Century so he's already sleeping. Swami, Minerva and I are still inside. The storm fried the router and the modem so no internet. It was fast and furious.
A low pressure center settled over Cancun, squished the topical storm brewing there and spewed it out over the Gulf, or so says Weather Underground. A wisp of that must have made it up to Alligator Creek. Something did anyway. And it dropped two, count them.....ONE.....TWO..... bolts of lightning right on our little cracker shack. Holy FUCKING GOD!
The house is on stilts and the lightning dropped below the upper level. I swear I saw it possess my computer screen for a moment. I know that's impossible but my new theory about lightning is that, like rainbows, it has an aura surrounding it as well as being the "thing" we see with our primate vision. Anyway...TWO...
BAM!!! BAM!!!
My teeth could have exploded right out of my head and it wouldn't have shocked me more. There was only enough time after the first blast to babble and huddle together before the second bomb exploded somewhere between us and Frieda's Pineapple Palm (which touches the house). Did I say Holy Fucking God?
And then it was over but for the rumbling and the rain. Now frogs are happily croaking outside in the lagoon otherwise known as the lawn.