Hurricane Joaquin is heading our way. Or not.
It just depends on which of the 20-plus scenarios your favorite weather forecaster is offering at the moment on this Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 130 mph.
In some circles (which you can read as my older boys), it would be one of the coolest things ever for a hurricane to drop right here and wreak havoc. Newbies to the South and its perennial hurricane watches, they think it means the cooler weather and rain-like conditions they’re used to getting in the Pacific Northwest.
I chuckle at this naivety. Having lived through several hurricanes including the infamous Hurricane Hugo, as well as having covered others such as Hurricane Floyd when I was a newspaper reporter, I have witnessed the devastation and destruction that a hurricane’s wrath can force one to endure.
To my wife, hurricanes are no laughing matter either. I know this because I once left her a phone message that a weekend trip to the beach was going to be delayed a bit because I was stuck in an oncoming hurricane. She was worried to the point of being sick, and very unamused to eventually hear that I was kidding. I’m not sure how I ever got out of trouble on that one.
While hurricane season started months ago, this is the first one to really hit the trail since we ended up in North Carolina almost a year ago.
It’s made my wife and I reminisce about previous storms, and in talking with other family and friends, it’s amazing how weather events such as these really leave a mark, like a notch on a tree, to delineate a period in your life for good or for bad.
I was a senior in high school when Hurricane Hugo hit. I’m not sure I remember much preparation for it, but living in Charlotte, about 150 miles inland, who would’ve thought any hurricane would give us a bother? But there we were, huddled in the downstairs of our two-story house, whipping winds, leaking roof, power out, and suddenly my dad and I looking wide-eyed at each other as the pressure dropped in the house to nearly nothing.
At the same moment, the sound of a train came up behind the back of the house and out through the front to disappear again as fast as it approached, my ears popping, and me realizing how close a tornado, created by the land-driven storm, had come.
The next morning, surveying the damage, the tornado’s path was evidenced by the trail of decades-old trees torn out of the ground like toothpicks. At our place, the back doors to the garage were ripped off their hinges and a potted plant, whose owner I never could discover, had nestled itself just under my car, where the slightest increase in height would have crashed it through the passenger car door and into the front seat.
After eating for breakfast the half gallon of ice cream that was slowly melting in our refrigerator, I remember spending the next several days cutting timber here and there (trees were down everywhere), while my job as a waiter at a country club left my feet swollen and sore, with blisters on my hands from carrying hot plates to hundreds of patrons. Somehow, this location had power while most of the city lay in darkness, patrolled by the National Guard.
Many years later, I remember the call from work. Hurricane Floyd was on course to slam straight into Savannah, Ga., and wouldn’t it be great to have a reporter there to cover it?
So a photographer and myself loaded up the back of his truck with supplies (bottled water and potato chips) and headed toward the storm while the rest of the coast made a beeline for drier, more solid ground.
It’s the first time, and could be the only time, I witnessed the interstate highway system used for one of the reasons it was designed: massive evacuations. All lanes both directions were taking cars northbound out of Savannah as state patrol cars directed traffic. We were forced to find a backroads detour to reach our destination, gouged for gas before the storm had even hit.
Hurricane Floyd eventually passed Savannah to crash further up the East Coast, meaning coverage wasn’t what it could’ve been. But after sleeping one night on a cold concrete floor in the basement of the emergency management center, I got to meet Dan Rather, also in town covering the hurricane for CBS Evening News.
With less wind than expected, my photographer and I chuckled as we watched Rather’s crew muss up his hair for a little better television viewing. But as soon as the shot was over, he chatted with us both extensively, even trading business cards with me as if I was his peer. A personal Christmas card from his wife and him that year was an incredible trophy of sorts for a journalist, and I’m ashamed to say we didn’t send one back.
Now, I’m waiting again to see what the next 48 to 72 hours will bring. While every hurricane is basically the same, each is also different: in name, wind speed, size and destruction.
Will we see 5 inches of rain or 15? Will the backyard creek flood? Will the wind lash and wail, as if waiting for an invitation to come inside?
With so many defining moments these past 12 months, can a storm named Joaquin add to our list of blessings and woes? And what will my children see and then say years from now if this really is some storm of the season? How will it mark their lives?
Whatever happens, I want to be prepared. I’m going to fill the freezer with ice cream. At least then we won’t have to worry about what to eat for breakfast.