DODGING THE BULLET

Things are getting back to normal around these parts, as it seems that West Central Florida has escaped many of the major effects of Hurricane Dennis. The storm, which is expected to pound the Mobile/Pensacola area this afternoon or evening, has remained slightly over 200 miles off the Tampa coast. While we have experienced some wind gusts and occasionally heavy rains from some of the feeder bands, the overall effects have been minimal. Some minor damage in Pinellas County and scattered power outages, along with aggrevating the situation in some areas already affected by heavier-than-normal rains during June, but it could have been a lot worse had the storm come closer.

The shelters that had been set up across the region are being closed, and many of the evacuation orders along the coast have been lifted. Here in Polk County, the Emergency Operations Centre in Bartow was closed Saturday afternoon, and only a few calls had come into the Citizens Information Line; there were no shelters opened here.

It's going to be quite nasty in the western Panhandle area. Dennis blossomed back into it's pre-Cuba Catagory 4 level overnight, with highest sustained winds of 145 MPH. It's incredible to look at on the satellite view. Pray for those good folks; this is something they didn't need after Ivan last year.

If you're interested in checking live coverage of Dennis from the projected strike area, check out this link of WMBB-TV 13 in Panama City, and/or this link of WKRG-TV 5 in Mobile. If you're in the Tampa Bay area and the set/graphics of both stations look familiar, it should. WKRG and WMBB are both owned by Media General, which also owns Tampa's WFLA-TV.