ST GEORGE ISLAND COOKOFF RESULTS
Despite all forecasts to the contrary, we ended up having a great cookoff. All week long, the weather was forecast to be bad on Saturday. By Friday, it was up to 80% chance of rain. This was the same system that caused all the tornadoes to the north. Saturday morning, the weather channel predicted 100% rain with severe thunderstorms. The radar showed the storm north and west of us in a line from Panama City to Tallahassee. My phone was off the hook with cooks asking if we were going to proceed. We did, and those that joined us were rewarded for taking the risk. About 10 cooks didn’t show, but 43 did. The sky over the island stayed blue all day and the temperature was down right hot. The majority of our crowd comes from Panama and Tallahassee, so no doubt the weather there kept most people at home. At 11am we heard reports that Tallahassee was having an apocalyptic storm. We still had 2,500 people come through the gate which is half of the previous years numbers, but it was much better than a total washout. We wrapped up our awards at 4:15pm and the first raindrops hit at 5pm long after everyone had packed up.
Our winning team was the Apalachicola Volunteer Fire Department. First time in anyone’s memory that a local team has won the cookoff. The whole town is excited and they’re planning a fundraiser to send the crew to Nationals.
Red:
1st - Craig Gibson
2nd - Terry Metzler
3rd - Will English
4th - Gary Dorris
5th - Lynn Ellis
Grayson
