We're on the weaker, west side of the storm, Ophelia is not going to be a Katrina, even if it turns into a hurricane, and none of the forecast models bring the center directly to Jacksonville.

A slight shift to the left of this storm would bring big changes. We all need to keep an eye on this system.

It may well be in our own back yard by the end of the week.

Keep tuned to the forecast, because it's moving hardly at all, it is forecast to drift to the north and northwest. It may well be in our own back yard by the end of the week.

The hope would be that the storm would actually move over land a little quicker because it would prevent it from sitting over the warm Atlantic ocean waters -- these waters 85, 90 degrees -- and possibly gaining strength.

By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as the eye could see. They grouped in the road at the top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place n the iron dark of the world.