This Mainer Has Been Through A Hurricane

Don’t just read the first four words of that headline.

I lived in Florida from 2002 until 2008. So there were plenty of hurricanes over the years. The season is about four months long and everybody is used to what to do if a hurricane is predicted for your area. Or should I say most everybody?

Once I was there and a hurricane was predicted and an evacuation order was optional.  Meaning we were going to be on the outer band of the hurricane. It’s amazing that what is good news for some is also bad news for others. They can predict very accurately where the worst will hit. And it’s rather amazing how many hurricanes there are that are somewhere else and your weather might not be anything but close to normal.

When you must evacuate most just leave the coast and go to the interior to a friend or relative or if you book soon enough, a hotel that is away from the coast.  Once a hurricane makes landfall, in most cases the high winds die down as it moves through.  I decided to stay. I can’t remember what hurricane or even year it was.

Most houses are block, so you have very thick cement walls. The damage is if your roof is ripped off by the wind, or debris is blown into a window that shatters.

In the lead-up to the hurricane, it was very calm and I was catching up on emails, probably watching a movie too, and as the skies darkened I thought this won’t be so bad. And it wasn’t. Until the power went out. No internet. No lights. Time to read an actual book with a flashlight.

I made it through the night, even though the wind was howling and the rain was coming down hard. Then early the next morning, not even an hour after the storm had passed, the wind was calm, the sun was shining brightly and the only remnants of the hurricane were the downed tree branches everywhere. Yet 25 miles away, lots of destruction.

Here’s hoping everyone was as lucky with Henri as I was with whatever hurricane it was that I sat through.