Finally! A legitimate reason for me to talk about weather! The forcasters get all hyped up and spaztastic this time of year, but it seems Hurricane Fever has hit the greater Columbia area as well. Which makes me laugh. As of right now, they don't know what the hell this storm is going to do and I've been so busy working this morning (hello, this is a STATE JOB, has no one gotten the memo that there's supposed to be a lot of down time around here?), I haven't heard the latest non-news about where it's supposedly headed. Early this morning they said basically the same thing they said late last night, which is it *looks* like it's headed for this state, but the warnings are out for all the way down to the East coast of Central Florida to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. That's a pretty wide swath there, buddies. I like that word, swath. A few storm models are saying Charleston though, and that's what's gotten people around here all riled up, their panties bunching as we speak.
Let me just say this today, with possibilities of changing my tune later this week. I'm not worried. At all. Like, I'm hoping we get a nice breeze from this thing and maybe some refreshing rain.
It's like I was telling a co-worker this morning, I'm from Florida. Hurricanes in early September are like Christmas decorations coming out the day after Halloween - it's inevitable and only somewhat annoying. We lived through four, count them one-two-three-FOUR pretty major storms in 2004 and while some people were really messed up from them, the worst we got was a big oak tree down in our back yard that crunched our fence and some intermittent power outtages. I realize it could've been a lot worse and I'm thankful it wasn't. At one point I was at my sister's house in Orlando and we all spent the night in the living room listening to their windows rattle, but that was really the only time I was scared.
See, I embarrassed myself during the first one of that year, Charlie and I'm still getting teased about it four years later. There we were in Brandon, closing our office early and going to O'Brien's for an impromptu hurricane party. Lots of tall drinks were had. Then we went home and Brian passed out while I sat up half-drunk listening to impending doomish reports that kept sounding worse and worse. Finally at 2 a.m. I couldn't take it any longer - I woke him up (not easy), got the dog, our wedding album and drove 80 miles north to Grace's house. Knowing Inverness was only slightly further inland than Brandon made no difference - it's my hometown and seemed to my drunk head, the only logical place to go to survive. We arrived at Grace's a little before 5 and when she came to the door mostly asleep, she couldn't figure out what we were doing on her doorstep, but used to things like that, just let us in without asking any questions. After hearing me explain Tampa was about to sink into the Bay and we were all going to die, she woke up and we turned on the Weather Channel. You know what's coming, right? There we were, "hunkered down" (whoever made that the "it" phrase for hurricane season should be punched in the neck) and the more Brian sobered and woke up, the more he couldn't believe he let me talk him into leaving home for what turned out to be a small rainstorm and some curtain-blowing breezes. Damn you, Hurricane Charlie, damn you right to hell. Of course after that, the next three storms were way worse and we didn't go anywhere, because I felt like an idiot.
So Hanna? Not so worried. I don't even know if it's still a Cat 1 or if it wimped back down to Tropical Storm status, but either way, meh. We're a hundred miles inland here and should the storm actually hit Charleston like they were saying, we could have an interesting couple of hours Friday night/Saturday morning. Considering our power goes out here when dew falls off the trees, I'm sure we could be reading by candlelight or something. Whatever, man! I. Am. Unimpressed.
So, you know. I probably just set things up here for the Storm of the Century to hit my neighborhood. God, this whole blogging thing is for entertainment purposes only; you know this, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment