Alberto is here

I noticed something unusual today.  The clouds were moving in the wrong direction.

Prevailing winds are west-to-east, so the clouds generally move from west to east along with the wind.  On rare occasions, though, they reverse directions.  Like today: the clouds were moving in from the southeast.  This is a signal that something is brewing to the south.  Another signal is the quick periods of intermittent sun and rain, as if thin bands of clouds--such as the spiral arms of a tropical disturbance--are passing through.  Together, they mean a tropical storm is in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean.  For Georgia, that means lots of rain over the next few days.

This isn't the first storm named Alberto to come ashore.  In 1994, another Alberto parked itself over Georgia and Alabama and dumped an insane amount of rain.  The result was the widespread flooding of the Flint River valley, including most of the southwestern Georgia town of Albany.  I'd never seen flooding like that in Georgia before, and I've never seen it since.

Like most tropical storms and hurricanes that pass over Georgia, I don't expect this current one to do much damage here in the northern part of the state.  These things are usually pretty weakened by the time they make it up here.  They have to cross hundreds of miles of dry land, after all, so they're cut off from their warm-water power source, and they have to climb about a thousand feet uphill, and that saps the storm's strength considerably.

So I'm not worried or anything, and y'all shouldn't be worried for me, either.  Storms like this are good reminders, though, of the sheer power of nature, and reminders like that are a healthy thing.  They help us keep things in perspective.  They remind us that there are some things about this planet that we haven't yet subdued and which might not be possible to subdue.  They also remind us of the importance of preparations and of not ignoring signs of incoming danger... like clouds coming in from the southeast.