Apologies to anyone who lost a day or two of vacation time in the Outer Banks last week, but at least in and around Suffolk, Hurricane Earl was a big dud.

Thinking back to Floyd and Isabel, that’s realistically nothing but good news, although given a lot of the farming stories in this paper in the past couple months, a healthy rainstorm would’ve been welcomed by a lot of folks.

The approaching opening nights of football season were exciting early last week. As was the possibility of seeing the games played out in a piece of Earl.

In the past few years, I’ve been on hand and my camera wound up mostly in my car for two football games played through the remnants or outer bands of tropical storms, and there have been a few other Friday nights with driving wind and rain.

On occasion, a game in crazy conditions is memorable. Considering the fact that Suffolk is more likely to see snow, ice and sleet during early March than the last couple weeks of the football season, and you realize that sideways rainstorms are as good, or as bad, as things are likely to get here.

Thanks to the Virginia and North Carolina barrier islands, the Gulf Stream, global warming or whatever’s kept hurricanes from a direct hit on Hampton Roads for about two generations, Earl, from my perspective, was just a few sprinkles while I was heading out of Wilson High on Thursday around 10 p.m., some rain overnight, nothing by around 9 a.m. Friday and a perfect, pleasant day for more high school games Friday afternoon.

The harshest element of Thursday or Friday night came at Nansemond-Suffolk Academy, when a bank of lights went out for a few minutes of the second quarter.

Thankfully, I suppose, the first two nights of high school football were ideal for high school football.

The Dukes and Saints also put as much intrigue into 48 minutes of football as possible. There were already too many twists in the plot, anyway.

A muddy field would’ve taken some of that intrigue away and messed up NSA’s nice, fresh field for every other football and field hockey game for the rest of the fall.

Thankfully for all four Suffolk football squads, there’s still a lot of football season to go. Most spectators, unlike myself, will root for calm and clear. If a Suffolk school plays long enough into November, though, it sure would be nice to luck into some snow.