Also there is more wind scheduled for the northern plains including North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Southern Canada. We need heavy unrelenting rains now in order to end the drought and put an end to wildfires in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and the Dakotas.
Edit: We'll also pray at 6 PM ET and 9 PM ET tonight.
It's looking like it was Cat 2 at landfall, and was far enough south of Tampa Bay to prevent significant storm surge there, which would have been pretty catastrophic even at Cat 2 if the eye had passed just north of the entrance to Tampa Bay. They are now just reporting GUST speeds, so I think the weather people are feeling a little embarrassed at their forecasting and reporting gusts to make it seem like it was worse than it turned out to be. Maybe prayers did work :)
They did work. Before we went to work, this was a monster category 5 and would have laid waste to a large swatch of Florida. The damage would have been 10 times worse than Hurricane Andrew, but the Tampa Bay Bucs win another Super Bowl so it is all good.
They had always forecast it to decrease to Cat 3 at landfall. I have reviewed available wind data this morning and it appears to have landfalled at no stronger than Cat 2 (Sarasota airport only shows sustained wind of 40 mph!, but a station in St. Pete Beach had sustained wind of 65). I couldn't find any station with data from Siesta Key area, where the eye supposedly went onshore, but the eye was big, and the Sarasota airport would have seemingly showed close to what maximum sustained winds were (but it is not on the beach)