What’s up with Hurricane Season?

No, seriously. I’m asking. What’s up with hurricane season? We were supposed to have a more active season than normal. It’s almost September, and we have only had three storms so far, none of them major, and one that crossed over and was really more of a Pacific storm than an Atlantic storm.

The conspiracy theorist / borderline hippie in me wants to stir up plots of cosmic doom in my head. Like, does this mean that we are going to have a crazy mini-ice age type of a winter? Or… is all of the heat in the ocean just building and waiting for the right moment in September or October to create a super colossal monster storm worthy of a sci-fi movie? (I’m totally going to write a book and/ or screenplay about that if it happens).

The prepper side of me really kind of wants to test my survival skills, although to be fair, with prices the way they are and a wage that is pretty much fixed, I am already in survival mode, but whatever. The socially acceptable side of me doesn’t wish the death and destruction on my community.

So, basically, hurricane season is a bust, and my many sides are at war with whether or not that’s a good thing. That basically sums up how things are going.

Really though, I kind of want to know what’s up with hurricane season. In the past, we have had seasons that were sluggish to start. Hurricane Carla didn’t make landfall until September in 1961, and that was a really big storm. I wasn’t here yet, but I read about it on the internet and heard stories about it from my parents. So, it’s not completely unheard of to have seasons that start late and end up being strong, but this is just odd anyway. Hurricane Rita hit in late September, but we were already up to “R” that year. I’m not sure why I would expect anything these days to be normal, but it’s not like hurricane season is connected to the pandemic. (Enter the ominous music that would suggest a connection that we hadn’t thought of previously).

These days, it’s honestly kind of hard to even know what normal is. I think that normal is just some nebulous idea of what we think things should be. Unless we are talking about people, in which case, normal is not a desirable quality. The most interesting people are never normal. I’ve struggled to be normal over the years, but I don’t do normal very well. I’m not saying that I’m interesting. I mean, my idea of an entertaining Friday night is hanging out with my dogs working on a project (usually knitting, quilting, writing, etc.), not really what most people would consider interesting. Also, I’m a writer, so my moods vary according to what I am writing, and I don’t always feel like paying attention to anyone. I think the not wanting to pay attention to anyone has less to do with the fact that I’m a writer and more to do with the fact that I am a teacher and have to pay attention to about 180 people in groups of 30 or more all day every day.

Besides, normal is so last season.

Which brings me back to hurricane season. I really want to know what’s up with that. The meteorologists have been blogging about but their opinions vary frequently, not unlike their forecasts, and I really haven’t gotten a concrete answer. The headlines seem to suggest that the sluggish season may soon spring to life, but I’m not sure if that’s based on science or based on the fact that they don’t know either.

Where are the hurricanes?

Hurricane Prep Checklist

Living on the Texas Gulf Coast, hurricane season is a big deal around my house. Over the past few days, Hurricane Ida slamming into Louisiana as a power category 4 storm, with winds of 150mph, kind of renewed my sense of urgency in making sure that my house is set up for storms.

Over the summer, I canned up quite a few things (everything from chicken to squash, to jam to cherries) to augment some of my non-perishable supplies. Which, okay, let’s be honest, non-perishable foods are not in fact infinitely non-perishable. They eventually go bad; they just stay good months longer than they would otherwise.

If we are talking tropical storms that juts dump a bunch of rain for a couple of days, I’m fairly well prepared. But, Hurricane Ida was a monster storm. A storm like that would require a whole different level of ready than what my readiness level is now.

The other day, I had a few minutes, and I decided to put together a basic hurricane readiness checklist. This is not an official recommendation. I am not employed by any of the offices of emergency management, nor do I work for any official agencies like the National Weather Service, or the National Hurricane Center (although seriously, I don’t think I would turn down a job at the National Hurricane Center. That would be freakin’ awesome).

Anyway, I decided to share my list with you so that you can check it out and then tweak it to work for you.

hurricane-prepchecklistDownload

Feel free to download this. I put it in pdf format so that you can open it on any device. Again, this is based on my personal needs, but you can change this to fit your situation. For example, I don’t have any small kids in my house. So, if you have small kids, you would want to make sure you had diapers, wipes, bottles, etc..

To all of our neighbors to the east in Louisiana, our hearts and prayers are with you. There are already several organizations around our area that are taking up donations of supplies and equipment to take over there as soon as the roads are open again. We have been there ourselves (through Ike and Harvey most recently). We understand what you are going through and wish you all of the best.

Early to Rise…

When I was a kid, I always looked forward to the day that I would be a grownup and not have to go to bed so early. Even in high school, I had a 9:30 bed time. Nobody ever told me that there was a possibility of having to go to bed early as a grown up. My parents weren’t a normal example. My dad was a merchant marine (a.k.a. sailor). He would be gone for a month or two at a time (longer after he switched o a different company), and then he would be home for that same amount of time (less with the second company). My mom was a stay-at-home-mom. So, neither one of them had an early bedtime at home. I guess other kids whose parents worked more normal jobs probably saw their parents go to bed earlier, but I never really thought about it because mine didn’t have to. I figured I would get to stay up as late as I wanted as an adult.

Then I became an adult.

My bedtime now is earlier than it was in high school. Not even exaggerating. Full disclosure, I hardly ever get to bed as early as I need to for 8 hours of sleep, and I usually end up with quite a bit less than the recommended 7-8 hours. Consequently, I am usually really tired by the end of the week. Plus, I’m not entirely a morning person. Although, I still insist that if the sun is not up, it shouldn’t count as morning even though technically anything after midnight is morning. For example, 2am is 2 in the morning. But really, that’s just the middle of the night. So, it shouldn’t count against me as not being a morning person if I am not personable but the sun isn’t up yet. Just saying.

One of the only benefits I can see in getting up as early as I have to for work is that I get to see the sunrise.

This was before school started. Notice my cat photobombing.

Sunrises and sunsets are both amazing, but for shear beauty, I prefer sunrises. It is usually quieter, and depending on where you are, there are fewer people around. The day is still crisp and new and hasn’t been sullied by whatever happened during the day. I would really like to take sunrise pictures at the beach. The only problem is that I would have to get up even earlier than I do during the week to get down there in time, and that just sounds like cruel and unusual punishment.

In the meantime, I have to just be satisfied with the occasional sunrise picture on my way to work. I’m getting pretty good at taking a picture with my phone while looking at the road and not the screen. I got a couple of weird blurry shots, but I’m getting better.

Pretty good for just pushing the shutter button on the phone while not actually looking at the screen.

This was in the parking lot. Never fear, my car was not in gear.

Also from the parking lot on a different day.

I like taking pictures of clouds and weather. I like weather in general. I’m not quite hot enough to be a weather girl, but I think that if I were ever going to go back for my PhD, I would do it in either meteorology or oceanography. Both of those are super interesting.

Right now, I am a high school math teacher. I like it in general, but I don’t like having to get up so early, and the pay is a bit underwhelming. My background is engineering, so I was a little shocked when I was given and Algebra 2 position to start with instead of calculus. It turns out that most people (or at least the ones who are relatively comfortable with math) prefer calculus because those kids are motivated and actually do their work. I taught Algebra 2 for several years, but then I branched out. I have been teaching Advanced Quantitative Reasoning for a few years now, which is a project based, real-life type problem solving class. We do a lot of different things, including a really long unit on finances, but because I am a little obsessed with weather, and because it is hurricane season and we live in a hurricane prone area, my students end up spending some time with hurricanes. I usually make them track storms, calculate how far away they are and then how long it would take to get here if they came straight here. I enjoy it a lot. I’m not sure if the kids enjoy it, but at least it is interesting.

So, the past week, we have been tracking Hurricane Grace, which made landfall in Mexico earlier today. We’ve also been watching Henri. Henri has developed into a hurricane and is supposed to make landfall in New England over the next few days. I guess that’s fitting that a hurricane would go into New England instead of making landfall in Texas or Louisiana in a year where even Seattle was hotter than here. I guess I’m okay with New England getting our hurricanes, as long as they don’t give us their winters. We are not prepared for that.

This is the satellite view of the Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center website has a lot of cool tools, and the satellite views are probably the coolest.