Waiting for the hurricane …

It’s a lot different than waiting for a snowstorm. 

With snowstorms, you can expect to be shut in for a while. Your power might go off for a bit, but you can always bundle up until power comes back on, which usually is fairly soon. 

Snowstorms are mostly predictable, too. 

Forecasters can pretty much predict with fair accuracy where and how soon snow will start falling. They’re less certain about expected snow totals at times, but when you see the snowstorm pattern on the news, you can be somewhat certain it’s coming, and possibly coming your way.

So you stock up. If you have a fireplace you bring in some wood.  And, of course, you make a run to the store for bread, milk, eggs and toilet paper. 

Now, big snowstorms can be scary.  With enough snow, roofs can collapse.  Even with a little snow, driving can be dangerous, as too many people with a 4-wheel-drive SUVs think somehow they are suddenly professional stunt drivers in a Jeep commercial. 

In contrast, hurricanes, even smaller ones, can be downright terrifying. For good reason. 

Hurricanes are wildly unpredictable. A hurricane can start as a tropical storm somewhere off Africa, gather some energy over warm water, and jump overnight from a Cat 1 to a Cat 3, 4 or 5. Depending on fronts and the jet stream a hurricane can turn and move just about anywhere, and lose or gain speed and strength. At times it can make landfall in one place, lose some energy as it moves somewhere else, cross warmer water again and regain its energy, make a giant loop and pound the first landfall all over again. 

Most of the deaths during snowstorms come from heart attacks. Most deaths from hurricanes come from drowning.  A roof can collapse during a very heavy snow. Hurricanes rip roofs off, blow buildings apart, cause windows to pop out, and turn lawn ornaments into high-velocity projectiles capable of piercing concrete blocks. 

An exceptional blizzard may have snow driven by 50-60mph winds.  The lowest level of hurricane – a Cat 1 – has winds averaging at least 75mph.

Oh, and tornados often accompany hurricanes. 

But the biggest danger from a hurricane is from flooding, especially along the coasts. Hurricanes can easily drop a foot or more of rain everywhere along their path. The circular motion of a hurricane can also pile up water offshore and then push it forward resulting in a deadly storm surge at some point.  Imagine for a moment a wall of water perhaps 10-12 feet tall, or more, suddenly headed for a coastline that’s only a few feet above sea level. That would reach the second floor of most buildings, and the roofs of one-story houses. 

It took a storm surge of 4-5 feet to cause all the damage at the Jersey shore during “superstorm” Sandy. Now mentally double that, and think of the force, and weight, of all that water. And make no mistake, water is heavy – a cubic foot of water weighs more than 62 pounds. The force of a storm surge coming in and then going out is beyond comprehension.   

Everyone who lives where there are hurricanes knows all this. Certainly, some people will die here in a hurricane because of other reasons.  But the real reason so many people in this country die during hurricanes is typically because of their own arrogance and stupidity.

There will always be those who plan to hunker down and ignore evacuation orders. They refuse to go to emergency shelters, they think because they’ve survived other hurricanes they’ll do it again, or they want to prove how tough they are. 

But there are always fewer of them after each hurricane.  Because they are dead.   

The uncertainty over a hurricane makes waiting for one – especially here in Florida – way different than waiting for a snowstorm when we lived in Pennsylvania. Snowstorms are rarely life-threatening; hurricanes are always potentially deadly. With a hurricane, you really don’t have any idea what might happen. Nor when it will arrive. Nor how powerful it will be when it gets to you. Or even if it will get anywhere near you at all. 

So all you can do is prepare for the worst. Instead of stocking up on bread, milk, eggs, and toilet paper, here you stock up on water, canned goods, paper towels and batteries and make certain your car has a full tank of gas. You fill your bathtub with water as a backup to fill your toilet tanks if the power goes out.  You move all your lawn furniture inside, along with your grill, as well as anything that could be picked up and weaponized by the wind. 

You worry whether you’ve done enough to prepare, and worry what kind of damage your home might sustain, and how long your power might be out.  That’s a lot different than wondering if your office will be open tomorrow, or whether your kid’s school will be closed.     

Most of us here have been glued to our TVs for days on end watching the path of our most recent hurricane – Irma. You’ve probably watched the lines of traffic from South Florida heading north to escape Irma. Millions have already left South Florida.

When Irma was projected to go up the east coast, people there fled further inland and some went over to the west coast. Then the projections changed, and now the storm is projected to go up the west coast. I don’t know what those people will do.  I don’t know what the people who drove up to Georgia and Alabama will do, either, since both those areas are now in Irma’s path.   

That’s the nature of hurricanes. It’s the uncertainty.   

No matter how long you’ve lived here, or how many hurricanes you’ve survived in the past, it’s important to have a healthy respect for any hurricane – present or future.

People who don’t have a lower probability of survival.