Wake up, freak out, check the National Hurricane Center site, wet pants or breathe sigh of relief … and repeat. Do this about 20 million times a day, pass out exhausted at the end of the day drooling on the couch, and prepare to do it all over again at 5 a.m. the next morning.
If you were like me this week, those three hurricanes tearing through the Atlantic in various directions got you properly worried. And there was good reason: IT WAS SCARY AS ALL GET OUT!!! We’re talking horror movie scary. We’re talking “are you kidding me!” scary.
As I write this column on Wednesday morning (just woke up, freaked out and checked the National Hurricane Site …), Hurricane Florence was heading to North Carolina, but there’s still all kinds of bobbing and weaving to be done before it would be over. Who really knows? (Excuse me one second while I go check the …)
If I’ve learned anything from living in Florida my whole life — and through the last two years of Hurricanes Matthew and Irma — it’s to take nothing for granted. Always expect the unexpected. Never turn your back on a tropical beast that twists and twirls, and can bulldoze a whole ocean into your backyard.
Wake up, freak out, check the …
And if you’re anything like me, you’ve now burned out all the memory on your iPhone from loading various hurricane tracking apps that provide all kinds of data you can’t understand. Windfield analyses and raw numbers from forecast models. Huh? But I diligently read it all! Don’t understand a lick of it, but I stare intently and nod my head.
If you’re anything like me, you don’t fully trust the weather forecasters. Not because they’re bad people or don’t know what they’re doing or their super-computing weather models aren’t up-to-snuff. It’s because they’re not going to come to my house and help me board up windows and pack my car if they’re wrong. And THEY COULD be wrong!
I find myself second-guessing forecasts all the time. I do this after developing far-fetched theories based on meteorological expertise I have picked up by reading a couple of paragraphs on Wikipedia. That makes me qualified, right?!?
If you’re anything like me, you’ve stared at so many spaghetti models and ensemble tracks, and you’ve always noted that that there is one outlier who puts the storm right over your house. Out of 14,000 tracks. And THAT’S the one, you’re convinced, the storm will follow. Like the hurricane mulls it over like a summer vacation and says, “Yeah! Let’s go there.” (Nevermind that this track was caused by an errant forecaster who accidentally spilled coffee on his keyboard.)
If you’re anything like me, you’ve started stress eating already. (I ate about seven bags of potato chips watching The Weather Channel the other night.)
And if you’re anything like me, you just want it all to be over so you can return to your happy little life, free of 140 mph winds and angry oceans that want to play in your backyard.
Until then, I guess I’ll just stick with the wake up, freak out and repeat routine.