Hurricane Irma

Ladies and Gents, it’s looking more and more likely that the deadly Category 5 Hurricane Irma is headed toward South Florida and I am terrified for all of my friends. Also, I am GLUED to every meteorologist on twitter (Bryan Norcross, anyone?? What a silver/blond fox). Personally, I have been tracking the storm since Saturday, paying closer attention to the direction of the “cone of uncertainty” than I paid attention to any of my classes in college. Or high school. Or anything in my life, TBH. The one class I did pay extreme attention to in college: Extreme Weather; thanks UF for those interesting GenEd Science credits. I took that class the year of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma and I remember tracking them in class using cold and warm fronts, air pressure, wind speed and direction, altitude etc. Something about hurricane-tracking is mesmerizing. Maybe it’s the fact that we don’t really know where it’s going. We’ve all seen the meme about weathermen constantly being wrong.

Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s the one major devastating weather pattern that we can actually track days in advance. Talk about Must-See-TV… The Weather Channel LIVES for this! And one week after Hurricane Harvey, too. I didn’t forget about the thousands of people affected by Harvey, but I have a much more personal connection to Florida, so Irma has been catching my eye.

Irma is already record-breaking, with sustained wind speeds of 185 MPH. As a point of reference, the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures hurricanes (common knowledge for a Floridian), has 5 categories of hurricanes with 5 being the biggest. Category 4 is 130-157 MPH, which is a 27 point range. Category 5 is over 157. Irma is 185, 28 points above that. Basically, if a category 6 even existed, it would be that. That is terrifying.

I moved to South Florida in 1997, hot on the heels of the last huge category 5 hurricane that hit Florida, Hurricane Andrew. Andrew hit in 1992, so you may argue that 5 years later was not “hot on the heels,” but I would disagree. I remember specifically the real estate agent mentioning hurricanes when we were looking at houses, because it was still on everyone’s minds. Would a house withstand wind gusts of 100+ mph? If we get a house with 20-foot ceilings and 20-foot windows, as almost all two-story houses have in South Florida, who would put the hurricane shutters up? Are the windows hurricane-resistant? I distinctly remember these questions.

If you didn’t grow up in South Florida, or any hurricane-prone region, you probably think I am nuts. Alternatively, you think Florida peeps have it all figured out because you have seen all of the memes that Floridians post about “preparing for a hurricane” aka buying beer and wine and downplaying the whole thing. But I can tell you from my very selective Facebook sampling of my South Florida friends – they are all officially freaking the f*ck out. Many of them are using the popular hashtag #Irmagerd. I had one friend who saw two armed police officers guarding the new supply of water at the grocery store. I have another friend who woke up at 3 am to try and beat the lines and fill her car up with gas, only to wait 45 minutes in line and then find out that all of the pumps were empty.

Social media can be both bad and good in these times of crisis:

Bad: Group hysteria. Horror stories abound. Also, sometimes fake news is shared. Don’t tape your windows guys, come on. I thought this was common knowledge by now.

Good: Keeping in touch with friends (until power goes out). Sharing preparedness tips and tricks, like this amazing quarter on a frozen cup of ice trick. Crowd sourcing any stores that still have water or propane. Finding AMAZING stories on twitter, like about the Delta pilot who flew his plane in and out of Puerto Rico yesterday between the bands of the hurricane. What a crazy person. Separate but related: I had my #bestdayever on twitter yesterday, I got 78 likes on a tweet about this pilot. I barely have 45 followers! P.S. FOLLOW ME!

My Famous Tweet:

My entire life has led up to this point, waiting for the internet to reveal who the @delta pilot is on #DL431 and #DL302 #hurricaneirma

— LongLegsBigCity (@LongLegsBigCity) September 6, 2017

I have some fond memories of my hurricane-preparedness in South Florida, and luckily, a big one never hit. Rather, I should say I never personally experienced one. Hurricane Wilma was pretty big and my family lost power for over a week. Also, the back windows blew out and my mom and brother evacuated to Atlanta. I was already at college at the time, so I didn’t personally feel the effects. But the fact that a big one didn’t hit when I lived at home doesn’t mean we didn’t prepare for a big one more than once. I remember filling the bathtubs with water, filling the cars with gas, stocking our canned goods and readying our internal camp-out room. We used to uninstall the shelving from the closet underneath our stairs, line the floors with cushions, pillows and blankets, and settle down in our window-less bunker, waiting for the hurricane to pass. My brother and I used to love hanging out under the stairs. Once, we even convinced our mom to keep the pillows and blankets in there as a play fort for an entire week after the storm. Luckily for us, it was all fun and games. And luckily, we were smart enough to be prepared every time.

So to my Florida BFF’s, BE SAFE OUT THERE!! And keep making memes. If you laugh, it’s harder to cry. And if, FINGERS CROSSED, this thing takes a sharp turn east and misses you, please still prepare next time. Better safe than sorry. Build your blanket fort and grab your beef jerky and transistor radio. I’ll meet you under the stairs.

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