Dare we breathe, fellow Floridians? Dare we tempt the fates and say it? No, don\u2019t say it. Barely think it. Why bring on the meteorological jinx? All because we think we\u2019ve dodged another hurricane season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s weird, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s the end of October. There\u2019s been nary a storm to threaten us all year, and we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You still don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And still, here I am starting to wonder if it\u2019s time to ramp down some of my hurricane season \u201cramp-ups.\u201d Some things like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 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, \u201cFeed me, weather nerd, or I\u2019m hitting the kitty litter buffet-bar again!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 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\u2019s 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: \u201cFlorida man drowns while stabbing can of chicken with stick.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Can I finally start doing some of the things around my house I\u2019ve 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 \u2026 oh \u2026 15 or 20 years. Need to go to the dentist? Yeah, but what if a freak storm hits while they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Can I stop sleeping with my emergency \u201cgo-bag\u201d 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\u2019m 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Can I finally stop pretending that I know what technical weather terms like \u201cvorticity\u201d or \u201cconvection\u201d or \u201cevacuate your neighborhood\u201d mean? It\u2019s 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\u2019m some kind of weather expert: \u201cNotice how the vorticity off the coast of Africa looks like a dragon or a tiger with toe fungus? That\u2019s how you know it is developing into a tropical storm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 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\u2019s song for storms. But now that it\u2019s gone, I believe I have lessened our threat. If so, you\u2019re welcome, St. Augustine. Go eat some canned chicken!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or maybe I\u2019m tempting fate by even asking such questions. Thinking we\u2019re in the clear. Dreaming of clear skies and calm coasts until next June, when it all begins again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probably too soon. Better to wait. See it through to the official end of the season. It\u2019s only a month away. And I hate white-meat chicken out of the can. Never any condiments or crackers around. I also don\u2019t have any fallen branches around to beat it open with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dare we breathe, fellow Floridians? Dare we tempt the fates and say it? No, don\u2019t say it. Barely think it. Why bring on the meteorological jinx? All because we think we\u2019ve dodged another hurricane season. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s weird, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s the end of October. There\u2019s been nary a storm to threaten us all year, and we\u2019re 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. <\/p>\n
You still don\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n
And still, here I am starting to wonder if it\u2019s time to ramp down some of my hurricane season \u201cramp-ups.\u201d Some things like: <\/p>\n
\u2022 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, \u201cFeed me, weather nerd, or I\u2019m hitting the kitty litter buffet-bar again!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[578,558,569],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-nutshells","category-florida","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2315,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions\/2315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}