It's quiet. Too quiet

Our location: 27.9 N, 82.2 W
Charley's location, as of 9 a.m.: 24.7 N, 82.9 W
It's ultra-calm here on the Western Edge, which is cause for concern. Not even a little hint of a breeze. About 85 degrees, sticky humid, dark clouds off to the south, lighter cloud cover off to the north.

I landed back here from St. Cloud, Minn., last night. I was worried that Bonnie was going to prevent access to the Edge of America, but that storm had pretty much dissipated by Thursday afternoon. When I got off the plane, I was expecting a traffic nightmare, owing to the evacuation ordered in neighboring Pinellas County. But it was strangely empty on the roads. Every car I did see had a Pinellas County license plate, and every car I saw was heading east.

The local TV stations have been running nothing but storm coverage since about 3 p.m. Thursday. They're kind of repeating themselves at this point, but I can't really say they've been generating panic. Their level of urgency is in direct and informative proportion to the governmental level of urgency.

Today's St. Petersburg Times carried a 160-or-so-point headline on A1 — "Target: Tampa Bay." The Tampa Tribune featured a large aerial of the evacuation, with the headline "Charley's Mad Dash" reversed out off the photo. See the Tribune here.

I just made what will probably be the last trip to the store for a while. Here's what the stores are out of:

Bread

C and D batteries

Ice

Here's what everybody was buying:

Beer

I finally found three bags of ice at the fifth place at which I stopped. I bought a small portable radio, several AA batteries (which were available) and, well, lots of chocolate for The Wife. Kids are out of school today, of course, and they're staying pretty calm.

We're as battened down as we can be here. We're scrambling to do tasks that depend on our having power: Laundry, running the dishwasher, using the Web. We'll keep you updated from the middle of the storm as the storm allows.

Next advisory due in a few minutes. You can keep up too at the National Hurricane Center's site for general info. We'll tell you here what it looks like on the ground.