They always seem to strike in the middle of the night, making their arrival even more demonic — the darkness hiding their face. We hunker down in the center of our home, camping out in the windowless family room. While exhausted from all the prep and the sea of emotions, sleep is impossible. Wind screams against the side of the house. The dog growls and barks as debris from the 100-year-old live oak in our front yard bounces off the roof.
I pace the hallway, stare at my two young sons sleeping on mattresses dragged from their bedrooms and placed on the floor. My wife looks at her phone, her face aglow in blue light. Has the path changed? Is the eye still projected to run over our lives? The storm models look like spaghetti thrown against the wall. I had to stop looking at them. I turned off the television. I couldn’t take another second of the men and women standing in the rain wearing parkas, yammering into microphones.
Two weeks before Milton blew past us in central Florida, I was in Dunedin, a quaint beach town on the Gulf of Mexico just north of Clearwater. I was helping a close family friend pull her belongings to the curb. Helene’s storm surge flooded her entire neighborhood. Her grown kids and a cadre of friends were reducing her cute, manicured bungalow to the studs. The waterline was halfway up the interior doors and walls. Everything submerged was now trash.
As she tried to dry out photos from her wedding album in the sun, we wheeled appliances, furniture, beds and a life’s worth of keepsakes to the growing pile by the street. The dock she was about to renovate was now only a few pilings. A Sea-Doo from God knows where ended up next to her house, waterlogged and too heavy to move. Her gas grill, patio furniture and a shed were chewed into bits and strewn about a once beautiful patio where I’ve watched the sun sink into the Gulf in a menagerie of orange and pink. What a difference a few days can make.
Seeing her crawl through what was left of her bedroom on her hands and knees, looking for earrings that belonged to her grandmother, was too much to bear. “It’s all gone,” she said. Couches can be replaced, heirlooms not so much. I wanted to ease her pain but couldn’t find the words. Just a sweaty hug.
The devastation Helene wreaked on North Carolina twists my throat into an emotional knot every time I look at the photos and video. I love Asheville. We escaped the Florida heat there this past summer, and went tubing, fishing and panning for gold in the rivers. We fantasized of retiring there one day. We looked at real estate listings. I called my buddy who lives outside Asheville every day after the storm but didn’t get through for nearly a week. He was OK, his home spared. “It’s a war zone,” he said when we finally connected. We were planning a smallmouth bass trip in the area next summer. That trip was the furthest thing from his mind, the rivers still raging, a slew of chocolate milk.
Survivor’s guilt overtakes me when we emerge from a storm unscathed. Floridians know what I’m speaking about. If you live in this state long enough, you’ll see your share of hurricanes. Milton scared me. The storm blew up to a Category 5 in record time, churning in the warm waters of the Gulf. At one point, winds peaked at 180 mph, pushing the boundaries of what is mathematically possible. Thankfully, its strength diminished before landfall near what is left of Siesta Key.
We made the gut-wrenching call to ride out the storm. These decisions are not taken lightly; they cost you sleep and long hours of internal debate. We prepped as best we could. Waiting in long lines for sandbags, loading up on supplies, making blocks of ice, gassing up cars and cans. There were a few dicey hours as the eyewall went by to our south. Tornado warnings rang loudly on my phone throughout the night, but our home and our lives were left intact.
Hurricane anxiety is no joke, but truthfully, I’m fascinated by storms. The first thing I do when I wake up is look at the weather. Wind, moon, barometric pressure and tide are clues to the oceanic puzzle. Maybe that’s part of the reason we often ride it out. To witness it all firsthand. We’re also 45 miles from the coast and don’t live on a flood plain. But it seems there is no longer such thing as a safe zone, although my buddy in Asheville and I did joke about renting an Airbnb in Arkansas for the remainder of hurricane season.
Living on the coast is a roll of the dice, the price you pay to have the ocean at your fingertips. You plan. You evacuate. You rebuild. You hold your loved ones close. The rest of it is out of your hands.
