September 10, 2019
Tropical Thunder
Hurricanes are not to be taken lightly. You know, so many memes make light of hurricanes because people have to laugh at what scares them to give themselves a boost of courage. No, those of us who have been through the eye of any storm do not take any of them lightly.
My little town of Saint Augustine, Florida, has been through some big ones: Dora in 1964 (check this cover of Life magazine!), Matthew in 2016, Irma in 2017, and we were bracing for Dorian. Dorian didn’t do much here, some wind and lots of flooding, but it did what no model predicted as it launched up into a category 5 and slammed the Bahamas Islands as the second strongest storm to make landfall in the Atlantic and sat with its eye just off the island for almost a full day. No model predicted this 1mph standstill of destruction.
Our prayers were with those in the Bahamas.
Seriously, though, I’ve been tracking storms since my Daddy grabbed us with an excited smile looking like a boy just opening his favorite toy – “come see this!” Katy and I raced out of the fortified laundry room where us kids were hiding during Hugo outside into an eerie calm to stare up a black funnel to a tiny circle of stars and I asked, “Daddy, where are the rest of the stars?” We were looking up Hurrican Hugo’s eye in North Charleston, South Carolina in 1989. That became an obsession. I watched “Twister” two years after it came out and that rekindled my interest in meteorology, but that’s just me – I’m interested in everything and have likely studied any topic at some point.
Storms generally follow one of two basic tracks. You can predict them generally based on low and high pressure systems flanking them and the temperature of the currents in their vicinity. Yet, one thing I have learned is that once they break that category 4 threshold; they do what they please. Cat 4 and 5 are totally unpredictable – Daddy called them “Tropical Thunders.” I have looked up a storm’s eye. I have played in tropical storms up trees like pirates on ships at sea while my Daddy sat on the covered porch with his portable radio. I’ve watched gusts of 40mph shove my 6-year-old across the flooded front yard “lake” standing on a boogie board (Hurricane Matthew). I’ve walked – no waded along – the bayfront as Irma approached, while my kids intoned “behold the power to water” like the dragon from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’ve laid over four sleeping children under the sturdy wooden table in the strongest room in the house with Louis over the other side as the kids lay sleeping like Lincoln logs in a row while we prayed the giant roaring train of a tornado spawned by Irma stayed away from our house. I’ve helped countless neighbors with storm debris, cooking food, boiling water, marking downed power lines, etc. after a storm. I’ve watched my kids do as I did and make forts out of the tree debris – and as a parent I’ve shouted, “watch out for snakes!”
Hurricanes are an awesome, beautiful, unpredictable force of nature. You can appreciate their beauty from the satellite imagery and the rolling dark clouds of the ocean as they approach. You fear their terrible strength.
I might seem flippant when I say, “no, we didn’t evacuate.” But no. I’m not flippant at all. I personally understand the devastation a hurricane and its accompanying tornadoes can cause. I have seen the damage where homes are flat, roofs are missing, cars picked up and tossed – my first school was completely flattened by Hugo. I saw the matchsticks that remained of the mobile home parks in Matthew’s wake. I know their terrible power. If Dorian had come toward us as a 4 or 5, I would have evacuated to my mom’s high-ground, very sturdy, 20 mile inland condo. My home is a 1979 mobile home surrounded by huge sycamore and maple trees – no way I’m sitting through a cat 3+ in that thing. Sure, we stayed. But we were vigilant. We watched, tracking the storm and plotting various paths. We had our “goto” bags (2 changes of clothes, baby diapers, important documents, etc.) where we could grab them and go instantly if needed. We also were prepared for days without power as we were last time. Not a single outage and our power often goes out in simple thunderstoms. Still, I will never laugh off a hurricane threat.
I won’t run at the drop of a hat. I do know how to help others and I know that shelters are for those who can’t live without power (I can, we actually make it a camping adventure!). I don’t have anyone in my family with a severe medical condition. I do have animals depending on me to protect them. Yes, if we evacuated, they would be in our vehicles (one with doggies and Minuit & the other with Guinea Pigs & hens). I don’t live in a flood zone. I don’t live in an evacuation zone.
I respect the storms just as I respect the ocean.
I understand the power of “a little wind and rain” as some memes laughed. I seriously do. Daddy filled every 5-gallon bottle with drinking water and the tubs with water for flushing toilets before each storm. Even if most of the time we emptied them without using them. He never got complacent. When we were in an apartment and watching Matthew come (our house was in inland GA at the time) a coworker laughed at Daddy and said, “you really gonna run?” Daddy laughed right back, “I weathered Hugo in a solid brick house up high, think I’m staying in some stick and drywall apartment when a cat 4 is coming that’s wider than the entire state?” Yes, we went back home for that one.
Nature is wild. We are given brains to be able to perceive the threats and move ourselves out of danger. 114 years ago when the 1905 Galveston hurricane hit, they didn’t have any warning and were just going about life’s normal business. Today we have radar, satellite, news channels, severe weather updates on our phones, and easy access to evacuation routes. All of this was put in place to help people be able to choose to move to safety if needed. I choose to use this knowledge when needed and keep my family safe.
Sure, I will laugh at any hurricane joke just like any other Floridian. I see the image of plywood Florida with battered eyes tucking it’s peninsula up against the panhandle and I laugh too. This is our risk. Some places have ice storms, (how do you even drive on ice, seriously?) dust storms, tornado alley, weeks of rain at a time with no sunshine, etc. We have the occasional hurricaine, coastal flooding, and severe summer thunderstorms. I’m a Floridian. I’m a computer-travel child who joked that “named hurricanes followed my family around” as my tracking obsession led me to realize they were aiming at us (no matter where in the Southeast we landed, there was not a single peaceful hurricane season for us – we always had at least one named storm directly on us!). I might joke about them, but I hold a reverent fear of the awesome power of the force of nature called the “tropical cyclone” aka “hurricane.”
Be vigilant & safe!
Type at you next time,
~Nancy Tart
