03 June 2007

Hurricane Season

my budding meteorologist (a.k.a. Little Man) has been non-stop over the last few weeks about June 1st - the official beginning of hurricane season for the Atlantic basin. being coastal dwellers, this is a wise idea! as the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry pass over us today, we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Little Man's birthday present: a wireless weather station that looks like it will make Jim Cantore obsolete in our home!

the kid comes by this honestly...i have been a weather channel junkie since we were first able to access it in 1989. whether we were in central Pennsylvania, the mountains of Virginia, the foothills of South Carolina, or here, on the coast, hurricane tracking via the Tropical Update has been a must for me. i have been known to stay up all night to see the landfall, watching with much sadness as Hugo pounded my favorite city in the US.

some years ago my D. (husband of 20 years!) said of the area of coast NC where we now live that it looked just like a catcher's mitt for hurricanes. he wondered from our home in Charleston SC, after the '96 season, why anyone would want to live there. well, we live in that catcher's mitt now! we are forever asked by dwellers inland, "How do you do it?" the answer is not so hard: the beauty is amazing all year long, our insurance policies are paid, things are only things, have a written plan, leave if the authorities tell you to do so, natural disasters are EVERYWHERE, and pray like you mean it!!

we weathered our first "real" hurricane in the '05 season: Ophelia. she stalled off the coast and gave us a good pounding for many days before officially making landfall as a category 1. we were not asked to evacuate and so we boarded up and rode it out. there is something unnerving about a dark house, howling wind, and your shingles ripping off!! but we lit candles, did our homeschooling for that day, and utilized every single piece of Tupperware to catch the drips! my hat is off to those who have weathered stronger storms - the power of nature is utterly amazing.

on that note... i leave you with this...my hurricane season prayer...Psalm 107:29:

"He hushed the storm to a gentle breeze, and the billows of the sea were stilled."

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