I was one of the people stressed out about it mainly because we had just been hit by strong tropical storm conditions from Hurricane Earl which passed north of us. The reminder of what these things can do if given the chance to catch you off guard was still fresh in our minds. With some of the original forecasts suggesting that Gaston would give us worse than Earl did, stress was a modest description of what went on with many of us.
Thankfully the dry air and cooler waters chilled out Gaston all the way back down to a strong tropical wave giving us some relief from the post earl stress syndrome. The NHC and many others kept on suggesting that this wave would get stronger and at one point gave it a 90% chance of developing into a tropical depression. The stress levels rose again.
Even now with it very close to us people are worried about it regenerating. I may be crazy, but at this point I am not worried about the tropical wave that was once a tropical storm. It looks like most of the cloud activity has gone a bit north, it looks like it isn't organizing very well, and its too close to turn into a dangerous hurricane.
I can just hear some people "chupsing" at the last statement. Of course a tropical wave can turn into something very dangerous very quickly. Flooding alone from a tropical wave could cause problems, but not this one. I think the fat lady is singing already here in Antigua about the wave that was once Gaston.
We are still sitting in the peak of hurricane season, and this doesn't mean we can stop looking east. In fact, http://www.magicseaweed.com/ is showing a big hurricane coming towards the Caribbean one week from now. Keep looking east! In the meantime, i will keep uploading photos of what we are getting here in antigua on twitter. today it is way too sunny for the yard work that i plan on doing!!
