While I will agree with you that some of what I saw yesterday from other posters was a strange combination of normal FL summer patterns, showers moving along as part of the stubborn boundary that's been around for several days, etc., there were still bands impacting parts of Florida yesterday. They just were not up in the parts people were so eagerly posting photos of.
North Central Florida today? Windy, the few usual puffy clouds, but cooler and yesterday the skies were mostly clear. It may rain later, as it does most summer afternoons.
By Tuesday/Wednesday, though, I would expect to see quite a lot of rain and wind if the storm stays east~ish in its new projected path. This storm is really stretched out, so a "miss" is only a miss as far as the storm surge and the worst convection. There's also, at this point, the chance for it to slow down and swirl around for a little over the Gulf before it goes elsewhere.
I agree with you about the hysteria. I always have to stifle a laugh when the media rushes to the same few neighborhoods to show "hurricane damage." If you zoom out, with about 95% of storms, you will see that most neighborhoods are fine. The power might be out for a bit (much more common in N. Florida because of how many trees we have here), there might be a leaky roof or a crushed car or some MIA lawn furniture... but houses are not flattened and the place really doesn't look like the war zone shown on television. However, I am still logically concerned about flooding here, and Tampa is so shittily planned that even a little rain and storm surge could complicate the RNC.
Since we're getting screwed by it, I welcome some complication.
