Meeting Earl

They say that Earl could be here any time between now and 4:30. In fact, looking out my bedroom window, I can see that he'll be here sooner rather then later. But Earl isn't a family friend, or someone I'm meeting for the first time. Earl is...a hurricane. And soon enough, we'll meet. Right now, this is what Earl is tracking as:

Still a hurricane when he hits us, not a tropical storm. 80mph winds. 80mph. That's windy!

It was all the talk at school yesterday. "Earl's coming." "Hurricane coming tomorrow!" "We won't have to evacuate, will we?"

But then again, we've known we might be hit for a while now.

We've known it's a fairly big storm, with a clear eye, or center. And if you don't know what a clear eye means, just check out this quote.

Sure, we are talking about Hurricane Andrew here in this quote, not Earl, and Earl is really no comparison to Andrew. But the eye is clear. It is still a serious storm.

But this is all in the past week. THIS is today.

"Hurricane Earl skirted North Carolina’s Outer Banks, with the eye of the storm staying 50 miles offshore. However, the Outer Banks were still hit hard by flooding and hurricane force winds.  Some local highways were closed, scattered power outages reported, and at least 400 people spent the night in shelters.

Now, Earl is moving towards New England.  Millions more people could be affected by this storm."

The hurricane is coming, that's for sure. The wind has been picking up just as I type this. We can expect Earl, very, very soon.