Dare we breathe, fellow Floridians? Dare we tempt the fates and say it? No, don’t say it. Barely think it. Why bring on the meteorological jinx? All because we think we’ve dodged another hurricane season.
But it’s weird, isn’t it? It’s the end of October. There’s been nary a storm to threaten us all year, and we’re past the peak of the season. The tropics are quiet. There are no scary, swirling monsters spinning in the Atlantic or the Gulf. The weather is changing. Getting chillier. The tropical fuel tank is running low.
You still don’t want to tempt fate, though. Or let your guard down. Only fools act too early. Hurricane season runs through the end of November, after all.
And still, here I am starting to wonder if it’s time to ramp down some of my hurricane season “ramp-ups.” Some things like:
• Can I stop waking up early each morning and scanning the hurricane-geek Web sites? Running all the forecast models while my dog sits beside me with a look on her face that screams, “Feed me, weather nerd, or I’m hitting the kitty litter buffet-bar again!”
• Can I start raiding my emergency supply of canned white-meat chicken? I have a cargo container worth of the stuff. Not sure what I thought I would do with it all. There’s plenty to last the next century. But while I have enough tins to bear me through a water-borne apocalypse, I never think to stash some crackers or condiments. Or even a can opener. I imagine myself sitting in a deluge of rain and wind while beating a can of white-meat chicken with a fallen branch. The headline would read: “Florida man drowns while stabbing can of chicken with stick.”
• Can I finally start doing some of the things around my house I’ve put off until AFTER hurricane season? Like spray-cleaning the windows. Or planting new flowers in the front. Or mowing the grass. Or taking out the garbage. There are so many things we just know will be a waste of time if we do them and then a storm blows in. But that rationale has allowed me to put off major projects for … oh … 15 or 20 years. Need to go to the dentist? Yeah, but what if a freak storm hits while they’re polishing? Better hold-off a little longer. Until 2037 or so. Never mind that there are mushrooms growing, and my teeth are starting to look like weather-worn granite peaks.
• Can I stop sleeping with my emergency “go-bag” and rain boots next to my bed? I keep them there just in case I wake up to hurricane-force winds and torrential rains. I try to be always ready. So ready that sometimes my unconscious-self must hear a little wind in the trees while I sleep because I wake up and I’m driving to New Jersey with a 50-pound bag of emergency beef jerky in my lap. Unfortunately, my family is never in the car, so I need to train my unconscious-self to leave a note before I bail out.
• Can I finally stop pretending that I know what technical weather terms like “vorticity” or “convection” or “evacuate your neighborhood” mean? It’s kind of embarrassing. I mean, I could just look these things up on the Internet, but I never do. Instead, I go around using them as if I’m some kind of weather expert: “Notice how the vorticity off the coast of Africa looks like a dragon or a tiger with toe fungus? That’s how you know it is developing into a tropical storm.”
• Can I, now that I have taken down the huge, dying tree that was looming over my house, and my nightmares, assume that I have lessened the threat of a storm? Because we all know that hurricanes are magnetically-attracted to sick or weak trees that threaten property. I learned this on my weather-nerd Web sites! Just in the past couple of weeks, a branch the size of Long Island came down in my front yard. And the trunk had a huge cavity that had rotted down into the roots. When people sneezed, I worried the whole thing might come down. Thanks to psychic magnetic properties, I feared that tree was a siren’s song for storms. But now that it’s gone, I believe I have lessened our threat. If so, you’re welcome, St. Augustine. Go eat some canned chicken!
Or maybe I’m tempting fate by even asking such questions. Thinking we’re in the clear. Dreaming of clear skies and calm coasts until next June, when it all begins again.
Probably too soon. Better to wait. See it through to the official end of the season. It’s only a month away. And I hate white-meat chicken out of the can. Never any condiments or crackers around. I also don’t have any fallen branches around to beat it open with.